Sloan Productions

Capturing intended responses from children has a unique set of challenges.  For one thing, children are much smarter than most adults give them credit for.  Acting silly or stupid is a dead giveaway to most kids that the production is lacking authenticity.  In this photo, a Swift Media producer asks questions of children for an [...]

Chris La Palm directs while Bob Sloan shoots with the Canon 5D Mark II.  One of the Canon 5D‘s advantage for a DP is that it has a full frame sensor which allows for very shallow depth of field to help isolate your subject from the background.  You also have the entire line of Canon [...]

It isn’t often that I get to work with someone who helps set the standard for talent, ability, professionalism, and genuine character.  Leslie Ann Nichols of  Junkdrawer Media, Philadelphia, produced and coordinated the video production for Hall Media, Philadelphia of the Taking Care of Your Diabetes conference in San Diego last month.  Sloan Productions provided the crew and equipment, [...]

In preparation for ESPN’s telecast of Monday Night Football in San Diego, Director of Photography Bob Sloan leads a Sloan productions high definition crew and shoots the helmets of the opposing teams. San Diego hosted the Denver Broncos during ESPN, ABC, and Disney’s 40th year production of the most popular football telecast of each football [...]

Now that we’re in a high definition video production world, more attention must be paid to the quality of the makeup job and artist.  High definition images have much greater resolution than our old NTSC system showing more flaws in the skin; aging, wrinkles, etc.  On a recent shoot for a corporate website video client [...]

Director of Photography, Bob Sloan directs camera angles for a recent infomercial production by RW Advertising of Chicago.  Bob helped Sean Ryan and Alan Woods of RW block camera angles and engineered the three Sony XDCAM-HD camcorders during the two day shoot in Beverly Hills, California.  Photo by Jeff Landie www.rwadv.com

Many times we have incorporated our client’s PowerPoint slides into their video and DVD productions. Because computer displays and television displays are different, keeping a few things in mind will be of help to both of us. PowerPoint presentations are optimized for computers. DVDs are optimized for television. There are a number of differences between [...]

Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world’s leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, JVC, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The [...]

First of all this discussion only matters if you are producing something that needs to be time accurate in NTSC, (standard definition) video. Examples are TV commercials & programs. Drop Frame and Non-Drop Frame write address positions for specific points on video clips, tapes, and programs differently. Non-Drop Frame is “frame accurate”, a specific number [...]

If you were painting a rectangular section of fence in 1080i, you would paint from top to bottom, left to right and put two coats on it to make up one frame of video. If you were painting it in 720p you would put one coat on it in the same manner to make the [...]

What are High-definition DVDs? High-definition DVDs will make watching movies at home even better. With far sharper images, better sound and more features, high-definition will greatly improve home entertainment. There are two formats of high-definition DVD: Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. What is the difference between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc? HD DVD and Blu-ray [...]