Chasing Down Chevy.

Recently, one of our clients came to us with a pretty cool job- The Chevy Prize Patrol.

Basically, it consisted of us surprising unsuspecting Chevy drivers...






   and giving them a couple of these bad-boys (visa debit cards)... all for driving a Chevy.

One happy Chevy driver and his $50 prize!

Overall the day was a huge success and was tons of fun. Here are some more pictures from the shoot.

Our wonderful talent- Sara Meddock and Clancy Bundy!

Jim and Ben- on the lookout for Chevys

Cramped quarters in the coffee stand on the South Hill.

ILF Crew briefing before the next location.

Keep your eyes peeled, the spots should start airing soon!

Wrap up- just in time for the weekend!

It's been a pretty busy week for us at ILF. With shoots every day of the week and booked solid edit & graphic suites, it has been a little hectic! 
   On Monday we had a shoot involving 30 extras, 4 Producers, 3 locations and 2 cinematographers. 

 It was a pretty simple concept on paper. A young woman wanting to enter the medical field.  The :30 spot followed her from the classroom, through her graduation ceremony to her new career.

The spot was edited the following day and turned out beautifully!

(How about the adorable talent front and center!)

Another shoot this week, entailed us mounting our $90,000 camera on top of a 10-foot ladder.

DP Jim Swoboda will do anything for the perfect shot. (See below)

Talent for this spot was spot on!

Producers Amber & Steph with their client oversee the whole shoot from our elevated observation deck.

 You can't tell from this picture but work has begun again for our sadly neglected studio B. Studio B hasn't seen a lot of activity due to the recent renovations to our first floor producer offices. But now that that work is complete we are working hard on getting Studio B buttoned up!




 
One of our Graphic Designer superstars, Rick, was busy all week on several different projects, including a new video for Avista Utilities.

Gotta Love an A+

Found this while Internet surfing one day.

Better Business Bureau Gives ILF Media an A+

Even though most of us are years and years outta school, you can't take the overachiever out of us.

The Evolution of the Deliverable

   Today, we are hurriedly exporting, compressing and converting several videos for one of our clients. The final formats are: WMVs, iPad, iPhone, Mp4s and Mp3s all delivered on a shiny red 500 GB hard drive. 
    All this converting and compressing got me thinking of how far we have come in the last few years. Not only here at ILF Media, but the industry as a whole. 

Below is an elementary overview of the Evolution of the Deliverable.

The Evolution of the Deliverable

Way back when, there was film. (Let's be honest, this was before my time. In fact, we don't have a ton of film laying around, so the picture below is tape. We'll just pretend it's film for now.)

    Film was cumbersome and difficult to edit, but created some beautiful end results. Though the hefty price tag turned off many potential advertisers.

 Until there was beta...

 

    Not as sexy as film but certainly more practical. Betacams & Beta SPs dominated the industry for a long time. The price tag for betas was reasonable, allowing a wider range of advertisers. 

    It too had its limitations. However the benefits and lower price tag would trump any of the drawbacks. That was until high definition started becoming more popular. You simply can't deliver HD spots on Betas.  And... that would be the end of the hegemonic rule of betas.

Introducing the short lived lives of CDs & DVDs

     DVDs, more importantly Data DVDs were used briefly as a deliverable. They were never really the solution to providing higher quality spots, yet more of a temporary band-aid until something better came along. We'll still use DVDs from time to time. Yet, as more and more of our clients are requesting several different formats for the various types of media, DVDs just aren't cutting it.  

 Hard Drive & Thumb Drives

     In a quickly evolving world of iPads, Smart Phones, Interactive Websites, Social Networking and more, we find ourselves making more and more videos for all different types of medias. That means everything needs to be converted and compressed specifically for the type of media it will be played on. It makes our clients' lives easier (which is always our goal!) but it makes delivery of all these different formats and files, time-consuming. (Especially when you're talking about HD videos which are HUGE files!) External Hard Drives are a great solution. The one pictured above is 500GB and more then big enough to house everything on it. Thumb drives are a great alternative for smaller projects.

    With continuously evolving technology and the proliferation of this new technology, it's our job at ILF to keep up. No longer do our clients come to us simply asking for a :30 Standard Definition TV spot. But now they need their HD spot via FTP for 10 different stations to download, an ipad version, an iPhone version and a QuickTime for their website & YouTube  (which will be linked to their Facebook, Linkedin and Blogger accounts). 

Luckily, we're up to the challenge of the ever evolving deliverable.

Our Logo has finally found its home

A local Spokane artist has been hard at work on our logo for the last few months... getting it just right.

  Our lobby has been a little naked while waiting for this beauty to arrive.

Snow= Pizza Lunch

It's another snowy day here in Spokane, so the bosses deemed it a Pizza Lunch day. (Let's face it, with our busy schedules, the only time we can sit down together as a group is when free food is involved.)

ILF Welcomes Debra Diamond

    In late October we began the hunt for our sixth producer. We searched high and low, received hundreds of resumes, interviewed numerous candidates and finally... we found Debra Diamond.

Debra and Mikey

 Debra comes to us with over 15 years of experience producing for various networks, including HGTV, Discovery Health, Animal Planet, and DIYNetwork..  After producing so many shows about "all things crafty", she's finally come away with a skill only slightly more useful than getting the smell out of Tupperware: if you're ever cold on a shoot, she can knit up a hat in about two hours!

A Year or Two in Review

Starting off a New Year, we always like to take a look back and see just how far we've come. 2010 was an exceptional year... but for that matter, so was 2009 and 2008. So we thought it would be nice to re-cap the last few years and see just how truly far we've come.

  
2008 was a big year for ILF. We purchased the old Spokane Art School building across the street from the Spokane Arena and began renovations.

540 West Cataldo

3rd Floor Before

 The renovations took a full year. But now we get to call this... our home away from home.

3rd Floor Lobby

One of four Edit Suites

Audio Studio and our Audio Designer, Caleb hard at work.

2nd Floor Conference Room

Studio A

In 2009, much like our building renovations, we re-branded ourselves from the ground up. A new logo, meant new everything else- from letter heads, business cards, to vehicle decals we did it all.

We went from this...

To this!

We also redesigned our website which was in need of much TLC. Being in 'the business' we thought it would be pretty easy. Were we wrong. It's easy to design and build a website for our clients. We take their needs, sprinkle in some creativity and wha-la! But In-house projects are a different story.  Having so many creative people involved in one project, we had too many great ideas floating around. We were constantly changing direction. Finally we created a website we were all happy with. Clean & Modern- just what we were looking for.

But now... looking back on the website, we're left scratching our heads, asking ourselves, "What were we thinking?"  Like a bad perm, our once wonderful website started looking dated and turned out to be.... not so user friendly.

We decided to re-design our website... but that's for another post.

We've also added a few new smiling faces to our team. 

Caleb- Audio Designer

 

Paul- Computer Programmer

Carly- Production Coordinator

For now, we are left reminiscing over the last couple years, thankful for our new building, our new and old clients, and the new faces that make up ILF's family.

Happy New Year!