Crew Connection

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post-production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post-production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

The season is coming to a close, but at its peak, winter sports are where it’s at here in Colorado. Some businesses even have a powder-day clause. This post is a celebration of what happens when two of our favorite things–creative filmmaking and extreme winter sports–collide.

Candide Thovex is the only person who can make a cliffside parachute skier seem tame. Whatever he does, when Candide Thovex dons a GoPro and some skis: get ready for the ride of a lifetime. Hint: stealing a horse is the least of it. Another epic ski video featuring a camel but no snow will also leave skiers itching for a powder day and filmmakers scratching their heads.

Even after a look behind the scenes, anyone who spends time behind a camera will still be left trying to figure out how it was all done.

Below are some of the behind the scenes images from Candide Thovex’s Instagram account.

View this post on Instagram

Rabbit hole

A post shared by Candide Thovex (@candidethovex) on Mar 14, 2016 at 10:04am PDT

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post-production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

Our crews are in a class of their own. To become our crews at all, they go through a strict vetting process. Once they’re a part of our online database of international crews and post-production teams, clients can be assured they’re dealing with true professionals. And according to our clients, they’re also just plain delightful to work with. We interviewed Kelly O’Neill, production manager for one of our true standouts—Video Dimensions—to learn more about this month’s featured crew.  

Just like our clients, we love working with Video Dimensions. Having a dedicated staff member available for clients means Video Dimensions is able to provide a high level of service from the initial contact through the shoot itself. O’Neill is always on the ball and able to respond to client needs almost immediately—a huge plus in the fast-paced video world.

Crew Connection: What’s your company’s story?

Kelly O’Neill: After being a stringer for news and working in a few other avenues, Steve Liebowitz started Video Dimensions in 2005.  When I started in 2008, we shared an office and had all the equipment in one room. We’ve grown steadily since then and now have two studios, plus a room for gear, a makeup room, and more. And everyone has their own offices!

E! News has been our biggest client since the company’s early days—we cover their movie premieres and celebrity interviews. They’re still our bread and butter, but now we also shoot a lot of corporate interviews, multi-camera shoots, live events, and more.

CC: What sets you apart among the competitive New York set?

KO: We have the biggest staff. In addition to having a dedicated staff member for client needs, we also have two people dedicated to taking care of gear, a full-time editor, and three vehicles available to send out crews. This sets us apart from owner-operated situations. Our infrastructure and staff allow us to get things done quickly and smoothly.

CC: What are some interesting shoots you’ve done recently?

KO: We recently did a very complicated Facebook Live shoot with Pampers. It was a live, 4-hour webcast moving between both studios with the singer Ne-Yo and other prominent bloggers. It required a massive coordinated effort and just speaks to our level of organization.

We also got to visit the granddaughter of the artist who created Wonder Woman. We got to tour her house, which is now a Wonder Woman museum. It was just so unique and exciting.

CC: What gear do you use most often?

KO: It’s really important for us to upgrade our lighting, audio mixers, and other gear often. We just added a third Sony FS7 because that camera is going out so much. We also have some new Prime Lenses, a C300 Mark 2s, and a Panasonic VariCam 35 (which is the kind of camera Orange Is the New Black is shot on). Basically, we’re always upgrading to new equipment.

We use our one-by-one bi-color LED lights a lot because they make setting up for interviews simpler, especially when we’re on a short timeline or don’t have a lot of space.  

The bottom line

O’Neill says Video Dimensions is a “soup-to-nuts company.” They have producers, editors, writers, videographers…everything…and can put a whole production together within reasonable budgets.

About Video Dimensions, Midtown West:

Video Dimensions Inc. is a full-service production and post-production company. Boasting the ability to shoot on location or in our studios, VDI can equip your single or multi-camera productions with either union or non-union crews. We can see your project through from start to finish with producers, makeup artists, grips, gaffers, teleprompting, and editing in addition to our first-rate video and audio crews.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a world of video and post-production service providers at your fingertips. In just a few clicks you can search, chat with, and book vetted crews local to your shoot—all on your own schedule. Rely on Crew Connection’s team of media experts to organize the crews and gear you need for multi-day and multi-location video projects anywhere in the world. Our professional crew coordinators are on call around the clock if you ever need live assistance. Sign up on CrewConnection.com, call us at 303-526-4900, or shoot us an email at info@crewconnection.com.

Hurricane Harvey has left much of America’s fourth largest city underwater. We’ve seen photos of harrowing rescues, and of submerged homes, buildings, and highways. We’ve heard reports of the months of cleanup and billions of dollars in recovery efforts ahead for Houston. Like so many, we at Crew Connection have been wondering what we can do.

Below are some resources and unique ideas for those personally affected and those who want to support:

I’ve been affected. Now what?

The Texas Tribune offers information on shelters, flooded streets, and more here. Once you’re out of immediate danger, a simple way to set your friends’ and families’ minds at ease efficiently is by marking “I’m safe” through Facebook’s Safety Check.  You may also be wondering what’s next or trying to sort through a deluge of information and possible rumors. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides a reliable Hurricane Harvey resource page for everything from safety tips and emergency phone numbers to rumor control.

Know your rights: Hurricane Harvey evacuees and/or first responders may be eligible for worker’s compensation or payroll relief.

As always, stay informed and ask questions.

I want to support relief efforts

It’s unfortunate, but true: disaster scammers are out there. Still, you can defend yourself against those ready to take advantage of compassionate hearts and make a few bucks for themselves. Beyond sticking with well-known charities like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and United Way, you can also find vetted charity efforts through the IRS’s search feature. There are certainly unlisted yet still legitimate options, including Undies for Everyone, which is taking new underwear as well as monetary donations to buy underwear wholesale.

Wherever you choose to support, take the usual precautions. Avoid giving personal information to anyone soliciting donations. Use a check or credit card rather than handing over untraceable cash. You can also report suspected phishing attempts to the IRS here. 

Ask your human resources department if your company is matching employee donations. You may even be able to donate the monetary value of sick leave.

In addition to donating food, money, and other items through such charities, you may wish to roll up your sleeves and volunteer your time.

The bottom line

Hurricane Harvey is going down as one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history. In these situations, words always fall short, and yet we do want to say that our hearts are with victims and evacuees as well as their friends and families. We also send endless gratitude to the rescue workers and volunteers stepping up to provide lifesaving efforts and comfort.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a world of video and post production service providers at your fingertips. In just a few clicks you can search, chat with, and book vetted crews local to your shoot—all on your own schedule. Rely on Crew Connection’s team of media experts to organize the crews and gear you need for multi-day and multi-location video projects anywhere in the world. Our professional crew coordinators are on call around the clock if you ever need live assistance. Sign up on CrewConnection.com, call us at 303-526-4900, or shoot us an email at info@crewconnection.com.

Think video might help accomplish your goal of building your brand? You’re right.

Video content is surpassing text online at a rapid pace. We don’t even have time to read a whole phrase like “be right back,” favoring “brb” instead. The marketing world is responding in kind. L’Oréal, for example, is working on 6-second commercials to replace those cumbersome 30-second ads of the past. It’s unwise and unprofitable to ignore your audience’s increasingly teeny tiny attention span. Srsly.

If video isn’t a central part of your brand already, it’s time to make it so. Here’s how to make a video that speaks to your audience.

Three tips for building your brand with video

1. Know your audience. This is the first rule of all communication, and therefore, of marketing efforts. It’s essential to effectively build your brand. If you’ve spent any time in meetings with marketing teams and ad agencies, you may be surprised by how much time they spend on this point before talking about the message or the product. That’s because if you don’t know to whom you’re speaking or what literal and figurative language speak to them, you’re already missing the boat.
2. Focus first on the why, not the what. Simon Sinek makes a strong case for focusing on your cause and beliefs in the way you “think, act, and communicate” before you talk about facts and figures. Apple is one of the ultimate examples of this. They sell their products, which, at the core, function remarkably similar to their competitors’ offerings, using language that focuses more on their core beliefs and on “thinking differently” than on the nuts and bolts of their product.  
3. Keep it simple, but sharp. You don’t have to have stunning effects and the latest technology to capture your audience’s attention. Simple videos that speak to the target audience and focus first on the why are most effective.

The bottom line

Okay, so you’re convinced you have to have a video in order to reach your audience and you know that in the digital age, the shelf life of those videos is ridiculously short. So why not just shoot and edit on your phone and move on? Simple: Because the only thing worse than no video is a bad video. Shaky footage will make your audience sick and bad audio and poor quality will cheapen your brand. It’s best to get the pros on the job. And using our global crewing database makes it easier than ever to hire a video crew that will represent your brand well.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a world of video service providers at your fingertips. In just a few clicks you can search, chat with, and book vetted crews local to your shoot—all on your own schedule. Rely on Crew Connection’s team of media experts to organize the crews and gear you need for multi-day and multi-location video projects anywhere in the world. Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock if you ever need live assistance. Visit CrewConnection.com, call us at 303-526-4900, or shoot us an email at info@crewconnection.com.

Invoicing day: The day independent contractors love to hate. For any production crew without a standalone accounting department, invoicing simultaneously keeps businesses afloat (hello cash flow!) and keeps you away from the work you got into the business for in the first place. It doesn’t have to be so painful, though! Like everything on Crew Connection’s online platform, invoicing is easy and streamlined.

Here are some best practices to help you simplify invoicing and get paid quickly.

The invoicing process in a nutshell

Here are some simple but important keys to uploading your invoice to Crew Connection:

1. Wait until the day after the shoot end date to upload your invoice.
2. Click the “Upload a New Invoice” button (bottom left).
3. Be sure to export a PDF file (no larger than 2MB) from your system of choice.

When will I be paid?

We pay within 30 days of the day you upload your invoice (not the end of the shoot date) and we always initiate payments on Wednesdays. The later you upload your invoice and the more revisions you have to make in order to finalize it, the longer it will take after wrap to get paid. It behooves you to make the invoice a priority the day after you finish the shoot and to make sure you avoid revisions.

What causes rejections?

Nobody likes to be rejected. It’s usually just a matter of clearing up some confusion, but here are the two most common reasons we have to kick back invoices:

1. There are discrepancies between the estimate and the invoice (for instance, new line items without explanations/notes, or unexpected costs such as parking and meals).
2. There are mistakes—the wrong date, client name, or location, for example.

How can I prevent confusion on my invoice?

Once a client approves your estimate, it becomes a project. Basing your invoice on your project keeps everything consistent. That means we’ll likely have fewer questions for you and more time to cut your check. (Need a refresher on creating an estimate? Click here.)

Here’s what we mean by consistency:

1. Make your invoice look as similar to the estimate as possible. If you bid on the project as a package, don’t submit an itemized invoice. On the flip side, if you break down costs such as camera operator, labor, gear, audio, etc., do so on both your estimate and your invoice. Either way, pick your approach and stick with it.
2. Be sure to include your preliminary total, less our finder’s fee, and your net on every invoice. Not sure what we take a commission on? Get the scoop here.
3. Provide proof of purchase. Spent some extra cash on the job? Include those lunch, parking, and other receipts as pages of your invoice or as separate “invoices” for the same project. Make a habit of including meals and parking receipts. Vague extra costs make clients nervous, while clear communication makes them feel more comfortable.

When anything doesn’t line up, we have to go back to the production crew and find out what changed. We notify you via email and give you a chance to fix it. That said, it still delays the whole process (and often the payment). It will just be a quicker and smoother process if you take your time and do it right upfront.

The bottom line

We built our online database to make getting paid fast and easy already, and these little tips will set you up for success from your very first estimate. Uploading your invoice on Crew Connection is the fastest way to get it in front of our crew coordinators and get you paid. It’s easy. Promise.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post-production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

Whether they’re pros at filming, post-production, stills, drone photography, or a little bit of everything—our crews are the bee’s knees. We know that for a fact because our team personally vets every single one of them before adding them to our global crewing database.

We thought it was about time to toot some of their horns, starting with Scott Stewart and Resolution Post.

We love working with Resolution for the same reasons our clients do:

1) They are flexible and offer a wide range of production services—from green screen shooting to editing and graphics work.

2) They’ve fully adopted our online platform which allows them to seamlessly work with us and our clients.

For the scoop on what makes Resolution such rockstars we talked with Scott Stewart, Resolution Post’s Creative Director and President, and a true gem in the industry. He’s been with the company for over 25 years and does everything from filming to post-production; which includes color correction, editing, graphics animation, After Effects, and Cinema 4D worlds.  

Crew Connection: What sets you apart?

Scott Stewart: We can do everything in the house. After we do the shoot, we take it back into the suite, do the creative aspects, and deliver the final product. That means we can accommodate just about any situation. One of the benefits to clients is that you save time in post when the guy shooting the project also edits it.

CC: What gear do you offer and what are your specialties?

SS: I can shoot with all the cameras. I learn the technology when it comes out. Rather than investing in several different cameras and being limited to those, I invest in the lenses and lights so I can accommodate different clients who want different packages. It’s a smooth transition from camera to the camera because I just need to get the settings right for the environment.

CC: What are some interesting and challenging projects you’ve worked on recently?

SS: We had a client ask us to create a galaxy for them. Our Art Director, who can build a model in the 3D world, dug into his tool bag and figured out how to do it.

We also work with professional athletes who don’t have a lot of time. That means we have to pull off perfection in less than five minutes. We charge batteries, clear audio cards, and do all camera checks ahead of time so we can stay in front of everything and make it work.

One of the coolest jobs we’ve done recently is editing a three-episode run of FIFAKING (also known as Chad Johnson…also known as Ocho Cinco).

CC: What are your favorite tools and why?

SS: My new favorite tool is the GH5—Panasonic DSLR. It shoots 4K 422 uncompressed footage to a Ninja Inferno monitor/recorder. It’s a lightweight package that works with Cine DS Rokinon lenses. I also have a cool mixer (Zoom H6) right on the camera so we can cut out the sound person for smaller shoots.

All of that means we can match our camera packages to the budget and client while still offering excellent quality. We can do a nice corporate shoot or a green screen shoot without using a RED. The truth is that if you put footage from a RED Dragon next to a GH5, very few people can tell the difference—especially on the web.

And for bigger broadcast jobs, we can still use a RED, Alexa, or Sony F5 and hire larger crews to support the scope of the project.

CC: Why do clients like working with you?

SS: We focus on customer service and go above and beyond for every job. If we’re not done with a project at 5 p.m. and it’s due the next morning, we’ll stay until 3 a.m. to see it through. If I get an email at 9 p.m. that the client needs the video in a different format, then I send it to them from home. It’s all about relationships.

The bottom line

Resolution Post and JSS Productions are broadcast, design, and acquisition specialists with a host of Fortune 500 clients and government agencies. They specialize in creating visual content for any screen. Click here to book Resolution for your next high-end corporate piece, marketing project, awards show, commercial, promo, or multimedia experience.

About JSS Productions/Resolution Post

Resolution is a video, film, and multimedia broadcast design and digital agency based out of the Washington, D.C. metro area. Since its creation in 1989, Resolution has produced films, videos, and multimedia for some of the top fortune 500 companies of the world and government agencies. We are most proud of the fact that we have established long-term relationships with our customers and have earned their respect as strategic communications partners. The majority of our work consists of creating high-end corporate imaging, marketing, awards shows, commercials, promos, special effects, training videos and multimedia experiences. We help our customers define their business and communications objectives and we study hard to understand the product and what the audience needs to know.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a world of video service providers at your fingertips. In just a few clicks you can search, chat with, and book vetted crews local to your shoot—all on your own schedule. Rely on Crew Connection’s team of media experts to organize the crews and gear you need for multi-day and multi-location video projects anywhere in the world. Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock if you ever need live assistance. Visit CrewConnection.com, call us at 303-526-4900, or shoot us an email at info@crewconnection.com.

Where you choose to eat. Where you choose to work. Where you choose to live. Location means everything.

That’s why it’s one of the first things we ask you when you’re searching for a video and post-production provider on Crew Connection. So we must have location filtering pretty locked down, right? Maybe not as much as you’d think. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

Crews who have satellite offices or are based in small cities will often serve locations outside of the standard 25-mile radius at little or no cost. If our stellar crew in itty bitty Mason, Texas, happens to be the only one available to cover your event in Austin on short notice, Crew Connection gives them the flexibility to choose if they want to charge for travel or not. All you have to do is hop into your Crew Connection messages to work out the details with them before booking the project.

At Crew Connection, we strive to empower our video and post-production providers to make their own business decisions while ensuring that you are matched up with the perfect team for your project—whether it’s around the block next month or at each of your international offices next week.

Click here to make sure you’re up to speed on everything you should consider before hiring a non-local video and post-production provider.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a world of video service providers at your fingertips. In just a few clicks you can search, chat with, and book vetted crews local to your shoot—all on your own schedule. Rely on Crew Connection’s team of media experts to organize the crews and gear you need for multi-day and multi-location video projects anywhere in the world. Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock if you ever need live assistance. Visit CrewConnection.com, call us at 303-526-4900, or shoot us an email at info@crewconnection.com.