NextShoot Video Production

New Ad for The Guardian

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:11:06 +0000

Louis Vuitton behind the scenes

admin — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:29:17 +0000

We shot the last day of a 3-day shoot for Louis Vuitton recently, and our model Jacqueline looked stunning in top-to-toe LV. The dress, bag and heels were chosen and styled by a Louis Vuitton personal stylist and our make-up artist Silver provided the finishing touches.

Here are some behind the scenes photos of the preparation, and one of the gorgeous Jacqueline as Louis Vuitton client ‘Nathalie’ ready for the shoot. If only they’d insisted the crew were in Louis Vuitton too…

Our make up artist Silver prepares Jacqueline for the shoot

Silver applies the finishing touches to our model

Jacqueline as Louis Vuitton client 'Nathalie Morgan'

Medium and Message in Online Video

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:08:20 +0000

By Mike MacNamara

Marshall McLuhan (he of the medium is the message) may have suffered the ignominies of hindsight and our rapidly evolving cultural space but he still got a few things right. He observed that the way content was distributed and displayed “shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.”

It has a real pertinence for us today. What difference does it make if you don’t craft a message with its medium in mind? A whole lot of difference it would seem.

Many people fail to understand the shifting dynamics of the online world, and instead aim to produce traditional TV spots. These videos rarely work on the Web, where most people now see them. And analyse them. And satirise them.

You can’t put a stage play on TV without adapting it and you can’t do a slapstick on the radio. But we keep forgetting to grant the internet such singularity.

Online video requires a drastically different approach because it is consumed in a highly specific way, especially on YouTube. People don’t watch online video like they watch television. They play it. And that’s not just semantics. They make a conscious decision to select one video over another and expect to be rewarded for their endeavour.

YouTube’s founding innovation — putting the play symbol on the holding image of a video — set the standard grammar of the online video experience by involving the viewer in animating that image from the start. It’s an active, not passive, experience.

An entire feature film might be reduced to one line of dialogue. It always did. It’s just we were never in a position to distill the whole to this one endlessly replayed and mimicked signifier of its meaning. Or, at least, its meaning to us.

YouTube, in its brief and rapid evolution, has been transformed from a playback tool to a means of creative expression. Whether this is by means of a ‘mash’ or by allowing users to share and embed and so place the content in a new context they own.

The challenge to anyone making online video is to make video that is played without being recontextualised, misunderstood or simply ignored.

A series of videos for the Excess Baggage Company

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:48:56 +0000

By Dominic Sutherland

When this extremely cute little boy loses his favourite cuddly toy at the airport, the Excess Baggage Company helps reunite the two and it’s a happy ending for everyone!

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We were commissioned to make a series of videos for the Excess Baggage Company for their public-facing website. Anyone who’s travelled through a major airport will have seen their ubiquitous left luggage and baggage wrap service counters. We made a series of four videos, highlighting their services using a mixture of video, voiceover and bespoke graphics.

New book on Millwall FC by Michael Calvin

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:31:30 +0000

We recently shot a profile with award-winning author Michael Calvin, whose latest book deals with the passions and pride of Millwall FC over the course of one incredible promotion-winning season. Calvin was given unprecedented ‘access all areas’ at the club, and was at manager Kenny Jackett’s side from pre-season training to their historic Wembley playoff final. But Family: Life, Death and Football is not just about the glory of winning. Calvin gets to the heart of a team dogged by its own troubled history, and doesn’t shy away from the more controversial aspects of this distinctive but much-maligned club.

Filming meant a chance to see the historic Den, and catch a glimpse of the inner workings of the lower-leagues. Millwall may not have the millions of the Premiership, but the passion and the determination are there for all to see. We’re not Lions fans, but it was hard not to be won over by this remarkable club.

Michael was a delight to work with, and we wish him every success for the future.

The state of HTML5 Video

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:02:05 +0000

By Mike MacNamara

It’s a year since Google told us that Chrome would be dropping HTML5 support for the mp4 h.264 codec in its native HTML5 video player.

It hasn’t happened yet, but at NextShoot we thought it would be a good time for a re-examination of the issues surrounding the HTML5 roll out and the state of play.

There’s no doubt that the condition of native ‘in-browser’ video on the web is looking better these days. Two-thirds of browsers now support the HTML5 video tag. Support for video tag attributes has improved as well, with both Safari and Chrome offering full support and Firefox 10 (soon to be unleashed upon an update weary user base) supports, of all things, Full Screen! Incredible but true. Who would have thought that a button to let you decide what you see could have been such a source of consternation and a security issue to give the assembled brains of McAfee and Symantec sleepless nights?

However, with older versions of Internet Explorer still loitering (only IE 9 and up support the HTML5 video tag) Flash is still a requirement for viewing video.

As we’ve pointed out before, IE8 is to Windows 7 as IE6 was to XP, and so, for all the talk of ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) the main and favoured point of access on a large organisation’s network is, and will continue to be for some time, IE8.

Couple that with the loss of enhanced functionality – statistics/engagement data, the lack of support for closed captions and audio descriptions in any browser, advertising support (beyond pre-roll) and, of great importance to the revenue models of content-driven online enterprises, the glaring holes in HTML5 video security, Flash will likely remain the only option for at least some portion of the web for some time.

The codec conflict is, unfortunately, no closer to resolution. For a programme that set out to simplify the process of getting video online, W3C and WHATWG’s floundering around this issue must stand out for criticism as an unforgivable failure – neither the end consumer or the content owner (let alone their tech providers) serves to realise any benefit from the current impasse. Whether you’re wary of the long-term intentions of the owners of proprietary codecs or the as yet unrevealed goals of Google’s WebM strategy, it doesn’t bode well for the bright new future of co-operation and brotherly love.

We’re of the opinion that mp4 h.264 offers the best quality to bandwidth option by a long run. Have you watched a video in .ogg? It’s like a return to the days of 56k connections and Windows Media Player. WebM is undoubtably improving but the chasm in quality of output may offer some explanation for Google’s reticence in making their codec the only HTML5 friendly choice in Chrome.

And so, again, Flash (which will play the mp4 h.264 codec in all browsers) still has the edge.

Adobe, in the meantime, have stated that Flash will now be desktop-centric and concentrate on premium content and gaming. In fact this coincides rather nicely with the announcement that the new generation of Android mobile devices will drop support for Flash.

It’s all very confusing. Add to this Apple’s abandonment of the video production industry with their laughably (if it wasn’t so expensive) bad new incarnation of Final Cut.

Is Apple banking on the next generation of online video being user-generated? Was it a tactical decision to drive their loyal regions of users into the warm embrace of Adobe Premiere? They did it once before with the rollout of OsX when the entire Print industry dropped Quark and bought InDesign and, let’s be honest, that decision to focus on the consumer didn’t harm their profile, share price or popularity.

Anyway, the figures can be seen here courtesy of the nice people at Long Tail Video, home of the JW Player.

The things that stand out for us?

- How little, despite their seeming popularity, the iPad/Andorid axis features in the figures. A combined total of 6%? Really? I think if the research was conducted solely in central London and Manhattan those numbers would be very different.

- Firefox’s support for WebM must be of huge consolation to Google and in terms of user inclusion puts it on an even footing with h.264 mp4 as the natural choice of codec for HTML5.

- The staggering inability of a new standard to adhere to anything resembling standards must be of particular note. Look at the figures on accessibility. This from an organisation that has been preaching about tagging images for the last decade…

- The main lesson though is that it seems Flash will be around for some time to come and that the ‘enhanced’ experience it offers won’t be there for mobile viewers of video until the industry can agree on cross platform standards. VHS? Betamax?

Rupert Sanderson Window at Selfridges

admin — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:06:30 +0000

Sass & Bide shoot at London Fashion Week

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:51:27 +0000

Sass & Bide press pack at London Fashion Week

Our tireless filmmaker, Fabio, beneath the arrow

Sass & Bide audience at London Fashion Week

Dominic West Outtakes

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:16:26 +0000

A little while back, we recorded Dominic West, star of US blockbuster ‘The Wire’, reading from Charles Cumming’s new novel ‘The Trinity Six’. This outtakes video has just been released to coincide with the publication of the paperback version of the novel.

NextShoot talks to Miranda Donovan, rising star of the UK art scene

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:28:41 +0000

Miranda’s work addresses the darker sides of civilisation and its decay. This beautiful video shows the artist at work in her studio, and out in the urban environment from where Miranda draws much of her inspiration.