Politics in High Def. Delivering post-production services in high-definition for the 2008 Presidential Race
Henninger Media Services and Avid team up on key Presidential Ads.
Arlington, VA (PRWEB) November 28, 2008 -- "Every town has its industry, and you have television people to support that," says Jef Huey, senior editor at Henninger Media Services, "and obviously the industry of Washington is politics." Therefore, politics in one form or another drives the video industry in Washington, D.C. --advertisements being one of the largest areas. The District of Columbia has the largest concentration of firms that do political consultancy, and they mostly make political commercials to support their candidates. While some have in-house facilities, many of the larger consultancy groups use out-of-house facilities such as Henninger Media in order to keep up with the volume of ads they run.
Henninger has a regular staff of 85 people who work at their Arlington, VA and Washington D.C. locations, and with the 2008 political season being so hot, this year the company added seven freelancers. The locations, set up for both HD and SD workflows, have nine Avid DS and Symphony dual-boot systems, seven regular Symphonies and eight audio suites in order to handle the bulk of the workload for both major political parties.
One of the reasons Henninger serves the larger political consultant groups--sometimes running 20-30 races--is that a few years ago, the company added a shared storage system enabling its staff to push projects from edit room to edit room. The staff found the 90TB Facilis Technology Terrablock system, which they divvied up into various arrangements for the different editing situations to be a very open system. But being the only facility doing the variety and volume of both HD and SD projects this year, Henninger had to write its own manual on workflow and content security.
While Henninger did a lot for the Obama team this year, including the 30-minute Obama TV show, the company did not do any McCain projects. Nonetheless, it still churned out a huge number of TV and radio ads for both parties. Estimates show the largest number of spots that went out in one day was 16. Huey says he can't even guess the amount of political spots the company does in a year, which is a testament to the facility's efficiency--partially due to the Avid workflow the team put in place.
At this point in time, most political ads are run in standard definition. However, most parties are shooting HD as each campaign needs to have a library of footage to call upon--for preparedness for the future and the eventuality of when, not if, delivery of HD spots occurs. Additionally, they need to be able to illustrate certain points at any time during the campaign, and being able to pull HD footage from their own library is the most is the most cost-effective way.
The Obama Media Team decided to create something special to air during the Olympics. It was decided that since this was a national ad buy during an international event, the spot "Hands" should be produced in HD. And since they had been filming the senator in HD for months, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Huey said, "there was a lot of excitement because the producers had not delivered a 24p HD political spot before. And integrating a variety of stock footage into that format can be challenge. But they decided that's what they wanted to do. It was a fun trip."
"We've noticed that because of the strong effects tools in the Avid DS system," Huey says, "the producers are getting more ambitious with their ideas. We constantly look at regular ads and say, 'Hey, can we rip that idea off and make a political ad about of it?' We're always trying to catch viewers' attention and make them not just tune out and say, 'Oh, it's just a political ad.' So we're always trying for unique, interesting looks. But as it gets to final weeks where things are crazy, you're working around the clock and you tend to get more formulaic."
Beyond just television spots and the 30-minute Obama show, Henninger Media Services also helped put together the Michelle Obama documentary that was shown at the Democratic National Convention called "South Side Girl." This 6.5-minute piece was also edited and delivered in HD and it was eventually projected onto large screens inside Denver's Pepsi Center.
About DigitalContentProducer.com
Digital Content Producer magazine and its website digitalcontentproducer.com serve the information needs of the multi-platform content creator market, from complete end-to-end video production and display to motion picture production and post, focusing on the gear, techniques, and technologies that are driving changes across the broadening content production marketplace. The magazine recently launched an online community for content creators at reel-exchange.com. For more information contact Digital Content Producer Senior Digital Media Editor Craig Erpelding at 312-840-8431.
About Henninger Media Services
Henninger Media Services (HMS) specializes in a full range of high definition services, including original script-to-screen production, video editing, color correction, film transfer, quality control, and duplication; as well as surround sound audio, motion graphics, design, and DVD. HMS has served broadcast, corporate and government clients for over 25 years, with facilities in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. Information on Henninger Media Services can be obtained by calling Michael Delpierre at 703-908-4021. Further information is available online at www.henninger.com.
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