Category: Interesting

Interesting things we have come across related to photography and film.

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Things to do on your trip to Newfoundland!

The wedding season is coming upon us! Chances are you have friends and family coming to help celebrate your special day in Newfoundland. To help you out, we have made a list of things to do during a holiday on “the rock!”

Visit Quidi Vidi. Quidi Vidi truly is one of a kind. Nestled in between giant rocks on a small quiet harbor, you will find a quaint village that has it’s own little community of locals and travelers alike. You can do a brewery tour at Quidi Vidi Brewery and try some of the local beer. They even have one that is made using water collected from icebergs and it it is appropriately name Iceberg. If you are feeling a bit hungry, stop by Mallard Cottage, a very quaint restaurant set up in what used to be an antique shop. Mallard Cottage has a great menu with traditional Newfoundland food selections. This restaurant couldn’t suit Quidi Vidi more and it is a must for anyone traveling to Newfoundland. If you are not looking for a full meal, consider the Inn of Olde. The Inn of Olde’s owner, Linda, will always happily greet anyone that walks through her door and perhaps even offer you a bowl of soup! This is a bar like nothing you have never seen. Literally every inch of the wall is covered in some sort of Newfoundland memorabilia. It’s just like stepping into an old cabin and it even has it’s own traditional wood stove! If you are curious about what this bar looks like, there are photos online of this bar, but it’s really something you have to go see for yourself.

Try some wild game – If you’re not a vegan or vegetarian, you should try some of our wild game. It’s all natural and organic and full of vitamins and essential nutrients to keep your body going during your Newfoundland vacation! Moose is a popular meat in Newfoundland and it is very low in fat and high in nutrients. You can eat it in the form of a burger, steak, sausage, in a pie or in stew! We also have caribou, rabbit and of course, all of our seafood. One restaurant that celebrates Newfoundland cuisine and has won multiple awards, including a gold metal at the Olympic Gold Metal Plates Competition, is Bacalao. Bacalao has earned an excellent reputation in St.John’s for offering unmatched “innovative interpretation of Newfoundland cuisine.” A favorite among locals and travelers alike, Bacalao is a a great place to experience expertly crafted dishes that draw inspiration from traditional Newfoundland dishes.

Experience the Ferryland Lighthouse Picnic. We can guarantee that this is a experience you will never forget. The Ferryland Lighthouse Picnic has actually been around for a while but many people have yet to discover this exceptional place. To get there you will drive along the Irish Loop until you get to a quaint little town called Ferryland. Ferryland is rich in history and has it’s own museum where you can learn about the locals and their history in this small town. You drive up to a gravel parking lot and then it’s about a 10-20 minute walk (depending on your pace) to the lighthouse. You will be surrounded by rolling hills, rugged coastline and trees with a gentle sea breeze blowing in. Once you get to the lighthouse itself, you can go inside the old building and decide which menu you want. You will be given a blanket and a little stick with a flag on it and they you can choose where on the rolling hills you want to sit. (Don’t worry there is a ton of space and you will be surrounded by beautiful coastline no matter where you go). Whales are often seen breaching near the shore here and it is a good place for them to find fish so you may even have some live entertainment, courtesy of mother nature!

Shop Downtown St. John’s. St. John’s is the oldest city in North America, it as been captured by the French, British and the Dutch and each of these nations have left their mark on our beautiful city. A great way to spend a few hours in St. John’s is to go on foot and explore Water Street and Duckworth street. Here you can pop into various locally owned shops that sell great gifts, handmade souvenirs and unique clothing. During your shopping outing, you can have a coffee, beer or lunch at one the many local eateries in the downtown area. This old city is a leading contender in the food industry which has boomed over the past few years and you’re sure to be hungry if you et out on foot to take in the local merchandise these shops are selling.

These are just a few of our suggestions on things to do in Newfoundland. There are many other things that tourists and locals like to do such as go camping, hike the east coast trail, go on a boat tour or attend a music festival. This province offers a lot and you’re sure to enjoy you’re time here no matter which activities you choose to do!

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Promotional Videos for Businesses and Organizations

promotional video newfoundland

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has predicted that video usage in social media will “explode” in the next few years and eventually surpass the usage of photos in the future as newer technologies develop. More and more companies are realizing this and are now using videos to help promote their business and give them an edge on their competitors. Videos can also help you communicate better with your customers and give your brand a unique identity. What is it about your business that makes it different from the rest? You can tell your own story with our videos.

Here are out top 5 reasons to have a promotional video for your business or organization:

It will help your search ratings greatly! Videos are given higher priority in search engines than text and photos. So when someone searches “hotels in Newfoundland” the ones with the video will be boosted to the top over their competition that don’t have videos.

Videos stay in your memory. They appeal to more of your senses and immerse your audience in your message. People remember what they see and hear and the video is a combination of both. What are you more likely to remember, an ad in a magazine that you skip over or a commercial?

Promotional videos can be the most powerful way to reach target markets.
We upload our promo videos on Vimeo and Youtube, the latter being one of the biggest search engines in the world. You can use SEO along with your video to reach the target audience that is looking for the product or service you offer. You can gain new customers in your target market while retaining ones you already have with creative and relevant videos. If you are introducing a new product or service, videos are the best way to announce them and reach the people that will want to buy them.

Videos last for years and their exposure increases with time. With the abundance of smartphones and tablets people are always connected. Promotional videos can now be viewed anywhere at any time and they go hand in hand with social media which has spiked in popularity in the past 10 years. You can use your promotional video for specific promotions or contests and even after it is all over, the video will still be on your site and your social media pages, increasing the number of views and exposure for your brand.

Promotional videos help you win trust and develop brand identity. They show that a  company is serious and cares about their image. Videos make a company look professional and help develop brand identity which is very important no matter what field you are in. People are more likely to trust a video where they can see, hear and feel what your business is saying and they feel more of a connection to it.

Source:

How video can help businesses drive engagement and revenue on mobile

http://wpgurus.net/advantages-of-video-marketing/

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Why should you hire a videographer for your wedding?

It’s your big day and the cost of everything can add up very quickly. From transportation rentals that go upwards of $1000 in peak season, to tent rentals that are so expensive they make buying a tent and reselling it more economic. Who doesn’t want to cut corners when calculating their wedding budget?

This is one of the most important days of your life, isn’t it? Photos will capture your day for sure, but you will get so much more when you include a videographer into your plans as well. Most photographers and videographers can work really well together and ensure that you have everything on your wedding day covered. Sometimes there are special moments of the day that you never see – it could be something simple, such as your flower girl twirling in her little white dress in the grass or a family member wiping away a tear during your ceremony: this is where the videographer comes in, we’ll make sure we capture these small moments for you that you can share them with everyone for years to come.

Here are my top 5 reasons to hire a videographer:

Reliving the day: With the added bonus of video you can hear and feel the environment of your wedding day again and again. We have had so much feedback stating our videos help the couple to relive the happiness of their day. Also, some people can’t make it to your wedding and having a trailer video/highlight reel or a video of your favourite speech to send to them is a way you can make them feel as if they were there. This also works for future children and grandchildren – imagine how great it would be to see your grandparents exchange their vows on this wedding day!

Video = MULTIPLE Stills (pictures) Videos are essentially pictures in order, a LOT of them. The frame rate is the amount of pictures per second that are taken in video. Typically most people shoot at 24 frames per second, 25fps or 30fps so that is a lot of photos from our videos to choose from that can be extracted and the exact moment they look their best. We do this with each of our packages so you get both videos as well as pictures – two birds with one stone!

It’s 2015, wedding videos have changed a lot since their popularity in the 90s. Long gone are the days of grainy images in extremely long videos (sometimes 10 hours long) that sit on your shelf and collect dust. In the past 5 years there has been a huge comeback in videos for weddings and other occasions, they are made for the client to watch them in a format that is more clean cut and precise instead of dumping a ton of footage on a VHS tape. Videos have also become more incorporated into Social Media and we have stated in one of our previous posts that even the creator/founder of Facebook, Mark Zukkerberg has predicted that video usage in social media will “explode” in the next few years and eventually pass photos in the future as newer technologies develop.

Future Projects: Nothing can replace memories and that is what videos are, memories. With our videos you can easily take them and use them 10, 20 or 50 years down the road with new footage as a sort of time capsule. An example of this would be an Anniversary video that we made for Doug and Joanne a few months ago using footage from their 10 year anniversary edited with their original wedding video, take a look here!

Why not? Yes, hiring a videographer means more expense added to your budget but it is something that if you don’t get it for your wedding day then you will never have that chance again. Some people regret not hiring a videographer and some people don’t; it is really up to you and it’s your decision on what is important for you to have on your wedding day as well as how much you wish to spend on it. You can’t regain your special day (unless time travel happens!) so the next best thing is ensuring you are having your day captured by talented professionals. We will ensure you get to watch and re-watch those special moments that you otherwise may not see yourself because you are too busy living in the moment of your wedding day, as you should be!

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Wedding Videography in Newfoundland

Wedding videography in Newfoundland is something that has taken off in the past few years. Back in the 80s and 90s wedding videos were pretty popular in Newfoundland and everywhere else. The problem was that people found that they were left with a really long 8-hour tape that they simply never had the time to sit down and watch. Who does, really? Just imagine having a video like this one except it’s 8 hours long… This type of wedding video was the bees knees back in the 90s though, tenor sax and all!

Not only were the videos quite long, they were put on VHS tapes. With technology changing at such a fast rate, after some time, most people couldn’t even play their videos anymore as they had thrown out their old VHS players and replaced them with DVD and Blueray players. So things died down for a little while for wedding videographers, which made sense really when you think about it. A wedding is expensive enough and why would you pay so much for something that you may never watch and will one day be outdated to the point you won’t even have anything to play it on?

That’s when advances in technology struck again, but this time to help videographers! You could now all of a sudden buy cheaper cameras with a much higher resolution. Mind you, the really good ones are still pretty pricey, but compared to the prices of professional cameras in the 90s they are pretty affordable. Not only that but for a low cost, videographers could also burn their own DVDs and Bluerays, put videos on flash drives or even upload them online for clients to download themselves, using no physical medium that would ever become outdated.

Things changed pretty fast. Videographers in bigger cities such as Montreal, London and New York started doing “video trailers” and treating wedding videos as more of an art form. Now instead of wedding videos that are like long movies, couples could get something shorter but with a personalized style that was easier to share with their friends and family. When was the last time you watched a full wedding video from the 90s? Did you enjoy it? How about a 5-10 minute video summarizing someone’s whole day? Chances are you are more likely to watch and enjoy the shorter video if a friend or family member showed it to you.

Wedding videos are now catching up with our interactive online lifestyles through social media. Most people now have friends and family that live away and can’t always make it to their wedding so these new online videos are a perfect way to make them feel bad about not being able to come! (Just kidding). But all in all, wedding videography in Newfoundland is making a come back just like everywhere else. Hiring a professional videographer is a great way to capture the essential moments that made up your day. Paired with great photos (and there are a lot of extremely talented photographers in Newfoundland), you’ll be able to have something that you will be able to keep forever that will be a reflection of how you felt on your wedding day. Contact us today to book your videography package for your wedding in Newfoundland!

 

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Presenting….. our logo!!

media production newfoundland

Well here is the final product! Thanks to Kimberly Jose Yapp, Tin Bird Productions has its very own logo! I’m so happy with the results. In case you may be wondering about the name and logo of Tin Bird Productions, it comes from my grandfather. He used to have little wind up toys and would sometimes carry them around in his pocket. A little tin bird was my favourite so when it came to picking out a name, it was the one that stuck out to me. I had other ideas that didn’t make the cut but I might write about them for another blog! One interesting fact about the logo is that the key on the back of the bird is actually 3 apertures, which are essentially mechanisms inside cameras that control the amount of light. This was something Kimberly came up with and I loved the idea. To see more of Kim’s work, visit her webpage and Facebook page here:

http://www.kimberlyjy.com
https://www.facebook.com/kimberlyjyDesigns

She is a graphic artist you will want to keep your eyes on as she is working on some really interesting projects and this is only the beginning of her career.