For people who are new to the world of video production, and what goes into producing a high quality piece of work, it can be a little surprising how much planning is involved. Sarah Hickey, creative director and founder of Melbourne based film and video production company Monster & Bear, helped to break down some of the key aspects of pre-production to help with the smooth sailing of your project once on set.

Video production is a potentially lucrative and rewarding sector. Video content is a key part of our digital landscape, and businesses are keen to include it as part of their marketing, training, and overall branding efforts. Not to mention that to punch through the noise of the competition, there are opportunities to be creative.

As 2020 comes to a close and the media industry begins to look to the future, it’s clear that long-term archiving and remote production will be two of the most important trends in 2021.

On March 9, 2020 I was riding high. I had just wrapped up a busy job with a major financial company and my 1st quarter was turning out to be the best period for my 4-year-old business yet. It seemed like my young production company was turning toward a bright and busy future and as the weekend came I was planning on celebrating with my friends. I was also turning 34. As the week rolled on and the Coronavirus was coming into view in the Bay Area, upcoming clients began canceling one by one, starting with a live streaming conference the following week. It surprised me at first how quickly all my work was evaporating but by the end of the week with the economy closing down and shelter in place beginning it seemed inevitable that everything on the books would be canceled.

Johann Balbuena is a bi-lingual, LGBT Dominican filmmaker. Her new film, Dancing With The Devil, is centered around the manic depressive protagonist Lily, who recently got control of her mental health, when she finds herself dabbling with the ghost of her pre-recovery identity upon meeting Will, a US Navy Veteran. Johann is a Cannavist, Navy Veteran, Executive Producer, and Cannabis Licensing Consultant powerhouse living in San Diego. She talked to ProductionHUB about her break into the film industry and how she's changing the narrative on what it means to be Black and successful in both the film and cannabis industry.

What is good or bad “set etiquette”? Depending on where and how you got involved in production, and your experience level, I’m sure everyone probably has a different idea how to answer this question. I can only speak to my own experience and style, which I’ll share here.

With in-person concerts on hiatus, Grammy-nominated rock band Underoath turned to Odd!Life Studios to help produce a live streamed concert series so fans could enjoy their music while at home. Creating an immersive experience that was equal parts performance art, the concert series (“Underoath: Observatory”) consisted of three concerts over the course of three weeks, with each concert covering one of Underoath’s albums in its entirety. Cinematographer, Director and Producer Lief Thomason from Odd!Life Studios spoke exclusively to us about what it took to successfully pull off the concert series, including how using a Blackmagic Design workflow powered by four Pocket Cinema Camera 6Ks, an ATEM Mini Pro, ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K and ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel helped them get everything done within their tight two week turnaround time.

With translation, your films and videos, or those of your clients, can reach an international audience using dubbing or subtitles. For some of you out there in the Production Hub world, adding translation services can mean another stream of income. It also means that you can become a one-stop shop.

I'd like to take a couple of minutes to run down a few tips for new location sound mixers. These are observations learned in over more than 30 years in both broadcast and location sound. These are not technical tips. Rather, they are lessons that I've received that made me a more professional, team oriented and in demand mixer.

Let me tell you a short story. When Quentin Tarantino was working on The Hateful Eight, they rented an extremely expensive 145-year-old guitar for the purpose of shooting a scene. In that particular scene, Jennifer Jason Leigh's character was supposed to play the guitar, when Kurt Russel's character snatches it and breaks it on the floor. The idea was to cut the scene at the right moment, replace the guitar with a fake, and then break the fake guitar. However, that was not communicated properly to Kurt Russel, and the rest is history. As you can see, there are certain rules and tips for working with rented gear on your shoot. To prevent any similar mishaps, let's see what are the best practices you should follow.