San Antonio Video Production

San Antonio has long been the home of media titans AT&T and Clear Channel, energy conglomerates Valero and Tesoro and financial services leader USAA. Recently other high profile companies have discovered there’s a lot to like about building your business in this part of Texas as well. The new Tundra manufacturing facility for Toyota, a WaMu call center, up to a billion dollar investment from Microsoft and a Lowes data center are a couple examples of that trend in action.

If you’re a media professional who’s relocated to San Antonio to join one of these Fortune 500 companies, or one of the city’s entrepreneurial new startups, or one of the many public and private sector organizations in between, we wanted to take a moment to welcome you to the neighborhood.

Corporate transfers can present many challenges – finding a new house, getting the kids in a new school, learning how to get around a new city, not to mention the time it can take to develop new relationships and rebuild your professional network. Geomedia can’t help you much with the house or the school, but we might be able to offer you a little something that can help you build your list of media contacts more quickly.

In that spirit, here’s an overview of some of the media related companies that we’ve gotten to know over our 12+ years of doing video production, post production and visual effects in San Antonio. You might think of it as a Guide to the San Antonio Video Production Market.

The proverbial light bulb.

One common element we’ve found in all our projects that were later determined to be successful is that they all started with a great idea. You no doubt know this part of the process by its industry term, creative. Maybe creative is your strong suit, and if so, congratulations. That’s a special talent and the city can sure use you. But if that isn’t where your gifts are, and you aren’t blessed with someone like that in house, then you’re going to need some help. Geomedia provides creative support services, but much of the work we do is with advertising agencies who specialize in exactly that – developing innovative strategies for communicating your message. Agencies bring us an idea, and we help them build it.

If you’re searching for an advertising agency in San Antonio, the San Antonio Advertising Federation is a good place to start. Over the years Geomedia has delivered successful projects for San Antonio based ad agencies of all shapes and sizes, like The PM Group, Texas Creative, The Wood Agency, Rudd Creative, Lynn Riddick, Bromley Communications, Parker Creative, Cutting Edge Communications, Crittenden Communications and the Thompson Agency to name a few.

We cherish the many friends we’ve made at these San Antonio agencies. And now as the world gets flatter, we find ourselves working with more and more agencies from all over the world. So whether your needs are local, national or international, please don’t hesitate to give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help you with your search in any way we can.

Now, how the *$#&@ do we build this thing?!?

Turning that great idea from a sketch on a napkin into something that’s ready to distribute to a large audience is the part of the journey where Geomedia really shines. In our San Antonio post production house you’ll find a full time team of award winning editors, animators and designers who are passionate about their jobs. But we’ve learned along the way that paying attention to all the fine details is another trait of successful projects, so we sometimes bring in ultra specialized talent to help your project achieve it’s full potential.

For example – where are you going to shoot?

Some projects are shot outdoors on location, but other projects require the controlled environment that only a high quality indoor studio and soundstage can provide. We designed the Geomedia facility to be the best choice in the city for pre production, post production and creating visual effects. You’ll find comfortable suites constructed around tools of our trade like Softimage XSI, Avid, Final Cut Pro, After Effects and more. But when we need a location for a large indoor studio shoot in San Antonio, we often turn to Maverick Studios.

Geomedia’s booked Maverick studios to capture everything from live action footage for a traditional 30 second spot to green screen footage for a complex project destined for international film distribution, and those experiences have always been positive. In fact, some of the footage for one of our editor’s recent winning entry in the 48 Hour Film Project was shot at Maverick as well. (way to go Smiley!)

In the interest of full disclosure, we should mention here that some members of the Maverick team are also part of our regular Thursday night pickup basketball game. And though there’s little doubt that their jump shots may be lacking, we’ve found their desire to provide the physical space where you can shoot your project is not.

I’m ready for my closeup now.

Ok, so now that you’ve found a place to shoot, where are you going to find the talent to star in your San Antonio commercial, industrial video or film project? Though some members of the Geomedia team have been cajoled into making a cameo appearance over the years, our professional life is better spent behind the camera, so we turn to specialists in the area of finding actors and talent. Condra Artista, Calliope Talent, Entourage Model and Talent and the Avant Agency are the San Antonio talent agencies we rely on for help in finding just the right face for a project. For another recent project, we suggested a client may want to try out the services of TalentMatch to help them find their pitch person for a national campaign and they reported back good results. Austin based Agence Talent is also very good at what they do.

Or if you prefer to turn your whole search for talent over to a San Antonio Casting Agent, Brenda Ambrize is a name you should know.

Lights, _________, Action.

Being a media type, it probably took only a split second for your mind to find the word to fill in that blank with – camera. Matching the right video or film camera for a project is an important decision. Unfortunately, you can’t always find what you need in San Antonio so we often turn to Gear Rental in Austin when we need something like a Panasonic AJ-HDX900 or a jimmy jib for a shoot. Roger Castillo at Fawn Mountain has really delivered for us in this area on occasion as well.

Just as important as finding the right camera though, is finding the right person that can make that camera sing. Someone who can capture every ounce of emotion and subtle nuance a scene has to offer, and make it look great. That is often the job of the DP and one of our new favorite DP’s to work with is Zach Nasits. In addition to helping us capture some beautiful footage for several recent ad campaigns, you may have seen some of Zach’s camera work on projects like Friday Night Lights on NBC, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Ruffian from ESPN Original Entertainment.

Another DP we’ve enjoyed working with is Peter Simonite. With credits like Idiocracy and A Scanner Darkly to his name, we’re always glad when Peter is available for a project.

And Vance Holmes is a versatile and talented DP we’ve only recently started working with. The pleasure has been all ours so far as Vance has really come through for us. If you’re looking for someone with experience in aerial photography, you may want to talk to Vance.

Can you hear me now?

Here at Geomedia we provide a full service audio suite, including such everyday necessities as a dedicated mic booth, a full Killer Tracks library and a Mac based Pro Tools workstation. But sometimes an audio project requires more horsepower than that. When that happens, some places you can turn to for San Antonio audio production services are New Age Recording and Keith Harter Music.

I need 2000 copies of that DVD tomorrow…please.

Your project is in the can, ready for release. Sometimes delivering your content means uploading a digital file to Vyvx for distribution to broadcast stations, or on to our own server so that those who require access to the project can easily retrieve it. But many times a project still requires the need to deliver a large number of physical media, like DVD’s or video tapes, via FedEx. For large scale dubbing and duplication, Geomedia is set up to do runs up to about 500 units or so. For projects with duplication needs beyond that, we’ve turned to Matson Multimedia here in San Antonio and Allied Vaughn in Austin and have had good results.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

OK, your project is out there now and it’s time to let the MSM know all about it so they can help tell your story. We get the chance to work with a number of San Antonio Public Relations companies who specialize in doing just that. From international heavyweights like Fleishman Hillard, to local veterans like Guerra DeBerry Coody, to Social Media specialists like Kami Huyse who we only recently crossed paths with on our myspace page, San Antonio has many choices to offer you in this area.

The next generation.

When you need to add some in house talent to your team, one of the first places companies often look are local colleges and universities. And San Antonio is no different. We’ve found the Computer Graphic Arts Department at the University of the Incarnate Word (CGA@UIW) to be a great place to look. Jeremy Kenisky, who does 3D modeling and more for Geomedia, is a product of that program and is turning out to be a bright young star. Trinity University has also been the source of some great talent finds in the past, and the Radio Television Video Film Department at San Antonio College continues to turn out a steady stream of people with the training to hit the ground running.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

Someone asked us why we regularly devote part of our web site to mentioning and highlighting other companies, even sometimes offering links to our direct competition. That’s a fair question, and has been the topic of some internal debate. Our answer speaks to the underlying philosophy here at Geomedia. It can sometimes sounds a bit cliché these days, but delivering the most value to the client is really what we’re all about, and continues to be at the core of the Geomedia foundation.

It takes collaboration with all kinds of talent to keep delivering success. Letting you share in the knowledge that we learn along the way and letting others share in the credit they’ve earned is a way that we, like the city we call home, can continue to grow, together.

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related item: The San Antonio Film Commission, a part of the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau, offers an online production manual that is a great resource for information on film, television, and commercial industries in San Antonio.

tags: San Antonio; video production; 3D Modeling; VFX; CGI

High Fashion

Pinball Wizards

Be the ball… In this final installment of a trifecta of visual FX spots for Mexico theater chain MM Cinemas, we take the viewer on a pinball’s journey through the machine. Completing a huge re-branding campaign, this exciting, fast-paced theatrical policy trailer reinforces the company’s brand partners and touts the theater’s numerous amenities while encouraging courteous behavior from it’s patrons. This project is the culmination of our efforts through agency SOS Publicidad for client MM Cinemas, in what has been a very successful transition for the company.

Given only the general concept, it was up to us to design the look, direct the action and move the story. In addition to reiterating the typical policy message i.e. turn off cell phones, no smoking… We also had to highlight features such as digital surround sound, the food court, wide aisles and comfortable seating… among others.

Conveying these messages with only a few pop bumpers, flags and drop targets proved to be quite a challenge. For some of the trickier concepts we departed from traditional pinball mechanisms and scale. A good example of solutions for some of the more difficult to convey messages are the scenes describing stadium seating and digital audio.

With most of the story-line and visuals figured out we began constructing the pinball machine. 3D modeling was carried out in Softimage/XSI practically single-handedly by our own Jeremy Kenisky. It was like modeling a small city! There were hundreds of individual elements to construct and numerous iterations of the model were presented before reaching it’s final form. The model had to literally function yet be consistent and visually interesting. Design modifications and additions occurred right up to final delivery as we made sure were getting the best use of available real estate to tell our story.

As the model neared completion, references of it’s geometry were sent to the graphics department to begin the arduous task of texturing. Geomedia artist Rudy Martinez handled the bulk of the 2D design of the table and prepared most the texture maps. A blackbelt in both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, He crafted a beautiful theme and palette based on the re-branded motif of the theaters. Additionally, hundreds of functional design elements i.e. arrows, pathways, logos, lights… would need to be designed and consistently integrated. All textures received careful attention to insure sufficient resolution in close-up shots. It was an enormous undertaking given the huge number of geometric elements in the model, all requiring individual textures. Rudy also designed and animated 2D motion textures which appeared on the backglass and pathways. The finished spot would not have turned out as special without such terrific design and artwork… Kudo’s Rudy!

While modeling and texturing continued, scene blocking, animation and lighting were being developed. Animation Director Troy Davis was responsible for lighting and the overall look of the spot. Troy also oversaw animation and camera work as well as render wrangling and technical direction. The scene had well over 100 lights. High dynamic range (HDRI) arcade environment maps were used to great effect on the highly reflective pinball and metallic surfaces of the machine. Ambient occlusion, shadow and motion vector passes were rendered separately to be incorporated later in compositing. A particularly challenging aspect to the lighting was the sequencing of lights illuminating the playfield during specific moments of game play. The pinball table had around 75 embedded playfield lights. Manually keying believable and interesting sequences would be a bit tedious… Scripting to the rescue! Geomedia artists developed a small animated image map which corresponded with the placement of the 3D playfield lights in XSI. Troy wrote a script in which a light is triggered to be on or off based on the animated image map. Utilizing this method quick changes could be made to the lighting sequences simply by editing the animation of the 2D image map in After Effects. We tweaked the image map animation until we had something we liked and then plugged it into our XSI script to trigger all the lights automatically… Brilliant!

Rendered image passes of the film-resolution frames were composited in After Effects. Ambient occlusion and shadow levels were dialed in. Motion vector data files output from XSI were utilized in the composite to generate motion blur as a post effect. This greatly reduced the already substantial rendering burden of processing the 2K files. Color correction tweaks and subtle glow effects were added on a shot-by-shot basis as needed. Fireworks effects were created via 2D particle system and tracked to match the camera move in the climactic final crescendo as the player scores the ultimate point. Audio was scored and posted in Mexico. Final frames were delivered as digital files for film-out and duplication in Mexico City.

Once again, I’m thrilled by the creativity, talent and teamwork exhibited by the entire Geomedia crew in pulling off such a large and complex project. We’re told that the spot looks awesome on the big screen. We’ve received effusive compliments from the MM Cinemas client and the spot has become very popular with the audiences.

ENJOY THE SHOW!!

CLIENT: MM Cinemas

AGENCY: SOS Publicidad

ANIMATION/FX: Geomedia, Inc.
Troy Davis, Animation Director
Martin Jaeger, Compositing/FX
Jeremy Kenisky, 3D Modeling/Animation
Rudy Martinez, Graphics/2D Animation