Training – WalterBiscardi.com

eLearning Project Underway

Walter Biscardi — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 12:29:20 +0000

BCM has started production on the largest eLearning project we’ve been a part of. We’re working with Interactive Advantage Corporation to bring this training course to life. Focused on safety, BCM is producing over 20 video elements featuring over 1 hour of video content to be part of the interactive eLearning product. Walter Biscardi, Jr. is leading the video production team with field producer Ann Kellan and DP Marion Laney overseeing the location filming. Filming started in June 2017 and is expected to be completed by August 2017. We can’t share any details at this time, but once the job is finished we’ll follow up with more details and hopefully some images.

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In a progressive career with renowned creative agencies as well as up-and-coming and well-established brands, Walter Biscardi Jr. has conceived and implemented numerous successful and often award-winning creative campaigns. Guiding all aspects from media, video, print, and animation, he consistently delivered premiere, revenue-generating solutions that surpassed result forecasts. He is known as a leader who bridges the gap between creative and operational processes, ensuring on-time and within budget delivery for clients and organizations such as Food Network, PING, CNN and Georgia-Pacific.

Creative Strategy & Implementation / Concurrent Project Management / Branding / Communications / Operations / Budget Creation / PR / Animation / Art Direction / Video Production

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Take Time for Fun over the Holidays!

Walter Biscardi — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 03:58:51 +0000

The older we get, the more the Holidays seem to get stressful. Doesn’t matter which Holiday you celebrate this time of year, there’s so much pressure to have the “perfect party,” get the “perfect gift(s),” “get everything done” and of course get stuck in traffic, especially on weekends near a shopping center. The Holidays are supposed to be a break from the stress of our “real work.” So do something different and fun, like build your own gingerbread house.

The Gingerbread House is typically associated with Christmas but I don’t see why you couldn’t use a gingerbread design to celebrate many of the Holidays we share this time of year. It doesn’t even have to be a house, the beauty of gingerbread is you can carve it and make it into just about any design you desire.

Now it all starts with a good, simple recipe that is easy to cut into shapes and holds those shapes well when it bakes. I found this one on Epicurious. This makes plenty of gingerbread to build a good sized design. If you plan to eat the gingerbread, I would add more of each of the spices. It’s good as is, but for my tastes, it would be better with a bit more spice. Oh and you don’t need to let the dough sit for 6 hours. 1 hour is really all the dough needs. So start out by making your dough and get it into the fridge to chill.

Now create a design. That same recipe offers a great starting point with a simple house. I recommend actually drawing out their house on paper or cardboard and assembling it to give you a sense of scale and how much the gingerbread will build. I felt like I had enough gingerbread to make about 2 of those houses from the amount of gingerbread the recipe made. Now that you know the scale of the original house, design something yourself.

I was inspired by a classic 1970’s TV home. No particular reason other than it seemed like a silly, fun thing to build. So I started by drawing and cutting out the various pieces.

You really need to draw it all out AND assemble the house to make sure it all comes together. I highly recommend an Xacto or Sheetrock knife to cut the paper using a straight edge. Just tape the pieces together and make sure it comes together like you want it to. Oh and label all the pieces so you remember what they are when you break the template apart to cut the gingerbread.

The roof was the trickiest part because it’s a two piece roof with a long slope on one end of the front of the house with a side roof coming in at a steep angle. I was able to make it work, not perfectly but good enough to cover the mistakes with icing later.

Now it was time to cut the shapes into gingerbread. I put parchment paper on either side of the dough as I rolled it out to keep it from sticking to the board and the roller. Then laid the template shapes onto the dough and cut through both layers of parchment. Remove the top layer of gingerbread, but LEAVE the bottom layer attached to keep it from sticking to the baking pan.

Something to keep in mind is that any pieces that will be inside the house and not seen, such as supports for the roof, can actually be cut out of stiff cardboard. There’s no need to bake interior supports. This was my very first gingerbread house so I didn’t think of that, but I will next year!

Now you bake the pieces, let cool completely and start assembling. Well actually I recommend you do a bit of the decorating while the pieces are flat as it’s easier. The royal icing was always a bit too thick, it really does need to be a bit thinner to be more sticky to hold the pieces. Just cut the corner of a ziplock bag to use for piping the icing. As you assemble, anything that you have pre-attached to the walls may fall off, but you can just stick them back on.

Be sure to have a nice solid platform to build your house on such as a thick cardboard base. I cut a piece of thick cardboard and covered it with parchment paper. This makes it easy to move the house around once it’s built.

I’ll admit the initial assembly of the house was a bit ugly. Could not get the first three walls to stand up square. I ended up putting a piece of cardboard in as support to help these first pieces stay up and used a few coffee mugs to keep the very heavy “gumdrop wall” from falling forward. Then it was actually fairly easy to get all the walls up. Some of the baked walls didn’t quite line up, but that’s what icing and decorations are for!

For trimming the baked pieces, you need a REALLY sharp knife, such a straight razor knife and a light touch. Just let the sharp blade do all the work with just a little pressure. It took me about 10 cuts across the gingerbread to get it to cut all the way through, but I didn’t break anything and got clean cuts.

So this project took one day. A lazy Sunday afternoon and it was fun. It was a reminder that the Holidays should be fun. So get your hands a little dirty, make something silly and have a little fun! Save the stress for when you’re back in the office.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, it was “The Brady Bunch” house that was the inspiration for my design. I drew my design from this photo. Why be normal, right?

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Sailing the Celebrity Silhouette: With an iPhone and iOgrapher!

Walter Biscardi — Mon, 16 May 2016 23:39:48 +0000

While on vacation recently, BCM Principal Walter Biscardi, Jr was able to combine two of his passions. Video production and cruising. Just before sailing on the Celebrity Cruises “Silhouette,” to the Caribbean, he picked up an iOgrapher which makes a very useful camera platform for the iPhone and iPad. Featuring interchangeable lenses, cold shoe mounts and tripod mounting points the iOgrapher essentially turns the iPhone into a professional camera giving the videographer great camera stability.

The cruise was the perfect testing platform as we’re looking for new ways to work with video, especially in social media. We’re also testing some new ideas for the upcoming Contemporary Living Network and we can see the benefits of creating original content with this setup.

The one thing he didn’t have on this trip was a shotgun microphone. Since the phone is mounted sideways on the iOgrapher, the microphone on the phone is not great for picking up natural sound and spoken word. Before the next vacation, he’ll be adding a shotgun mic.

We also didn’t know about some additional apps for the iPhone that allow for manual Iris and Color Balance controls on the phone. You’ll see the auto-iris kick in quick in quite a bit with all the bright / dark areas. And the color balance does change from time to time. We’ll add those apps before the next vacation as well.

All in all, very impressive to see the picture quality and especially the stability of the images. This entire project was filmed with the iPhone 6. Absolutely NO camera stabilization was added to any of these images in the video below.

Also VERY impressed with Celebrity Cruises and their Silhouette. This was our first time on Celebrity and we were so impressed with the ship, the crew and of course, the food that we booked another cruise on the Celebrity Reflection. Celebrity is just top notch, white glove treatment but without the stuffy attitude. Beautiful ship, wonderful people and a great time.

To read more on the iOgrapher: http://www.iographer.com

To read more on Celebrity Cruises: http://www.celebritycruises.com/

To find those light leaks and many other effects: http://rampantdesigntools.com

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Day One – Editing on DaVinci Resolve 12.5

Walter Biscardi — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:00:56 +0000

At the recently completed NAB Show in Las Vegas, Blackmagic Design took the wraps off DaVinci Resolve 12.5. It really could be a Resolve 13 but they probably wanted to avoid that unlucky number. I’ve been predicting for over a year now that NAB 2016 would be the year this tool became a full fledged non-linear editing system and sure enough, it’s a solid editing platform.

For those who don’t know the history, DaVinci Systems’ Resolve has been around a very long time in the film industry and was the de-facto standard for color grading and color enhancement in the industry. At one time it costs millions to set up a single Resolve color grading suite. When Blackmagic Design purchased the company, it was on its last legs and after first shoring up the product and bringing it into the modern era, Grant Petty and his team began evolving the product into a full fledged video editing system.

The Media Panel on the new DaVinci Resolve 12.5 (Beta)

Today I spent my first full day editing a real project on the 12.5 Beta. The first thing I did was to purchase Alexis Van Hurkmann’s tutorial “DaVinci Resolve 12.5 New Features” from Ripple Training. He’s such a great trainer and I kept that open on the second screen as a reference while working. It’s the best $49 dollars you’ll spend if you want to get up to speed on the new features in a hurry. Use the code resolve40 when you check out.

The editing system is a new 27″ iMac 5k Retina 4.0 Ghz with 32GB RAM and all the top of the line graphics card. Media is stored on our 48TB Studio Network Solutions EVO media share connected via 10GigE converted to thunderbolt. The original materials were shot on a Panasonic GH4 at 4k UHD resolution in the H264 format.

Ingesting and organizing the bins was very straightforward if you’ve used any non-linear editing system before. Can either select and drag individual items over or drag in folders from the Media panel. The new layouts and options in the Media Panel are very intuitive as is the metadata editor. After watching Alexis go over this panel in his tutorial, I jumped right in and started adding the Scene and Take numbers along with Comments on the good takes. Really made it super simple to organize. I really like the dual Metadata / Inspector Window. Nice use of space to make them both share the same window.

Alexis Van Hurkmann’s “DaVinci Resolve 12.5 New Features” open on the right hand monitor. Entering metadata into my project on the left hand monitor.

All audio was recorded separately on a Zoom H6 recorder and as always, we made sure to audibly slate each scene and take along with a proper slate or hand clap. After placing all the video and audio clips into a single bin, I used the “Auto-Sync using Audio Waveform” command. There were about 50 clips to sync and it was done in about a minute or so. I LOVED that no new clips were created. No multi-cam clips or extra clips to be sorted through. The audio from the Zoom recorder was simply placed on a new audio track on the video clips. Double click the video into the Source and I heard the clean zoom audio.

For the most part it worked perfectly. There were 7 B-Roll shots that had no Zoom audio recorded for them, which I should have left out of the Sync bin, but forgot. Resolve sync’d some random Zoom audio to those B-Roll shots. I tried using the Clip Attributes function to select the original camera audio for those B-Roll clips but it didn’t work. Most likely a bug and this is beta software after all, so that’s to be expected. I reported this issue via the Blackmagic Design forum for the Beta software.

At first I set up using the FCPX keyboard shortcuts but almost immediately switched over to DaVinci Resolve shortcuts. They’re definitely modeled on the FCP 7 shortcuts and I picked them up very quickly.

At first the system seemed very snappy but after I made just two edits it became sluggish. I had a feeling it was the 4k H264 files. Even Premiere Pro gets sluggish with 4k H264s. The file sizes are very small, but there is a lot of processing involved to let them play smoothly. Each time I loaded a clip into the Source window, it took a few seconds to draw out the frames and then when I hit play, there was a delay. So I used the Media Management tool in Resolve to Transcode everything to ProRes. Time well spent because the system was EXTREMELY responsive as soon as I started editing with the ProRes files. Instant loads, instant JKL response on the keyboard.

Everything about editing in Resolve 12.5 so far is intuitive. The Trim commands are fabulous and I especially love that some features are active by simply hovering over a different area. Hit Trim and hover over the thumbnails in the video track and you’re automatically Slipping the video. I use slip a LOT and loved this. It was very intuitive and easy for me to poke around and discover stuff.

The ease of video and audio track assignments was refreshing. I’m used to double setting the audio and video in Premiere Pro and then having a second set of commands for Pasting or snapping the playhead along the timeline.

The audio level control within the timeline is fantastic. Full range of volume and loudness just by raising and lowering the volume without the need for any sort of gain control. So simple.

The biggest thing I’m trying to figure out now is how to force Resolve to leave my 4k material at full 100% scale instead of scaling it down to fit my 1080 HD editing timeline. I’m sure the moment I ask on a forum I’ll have the answer, but that’s about the only thing I couldn’t figure out on my own today.

There were some hiccups to be sure and I’m still trying to find some of the controls but as far as editing, it felt like trying on a new pair of shoes. I was walking for a bit and then in an hour I started jogging. Not up to full speed yet, but for a first day editing on the system, it was easy and intuitive.

Grant, Paul Saccone and the entire Blackmagic Design team have done an incredible job building up this app to be really useful, intuitive and simple to move into one of the most powerful color grading tools on the planet. That’s Day One, I’ll update as we move along in the project.

Read Day Two here.

Grant Petty and I at NAB Show 2016. The man behind the Magic.

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Biscardi Creative Completes “The Impossible Project.”

Walter Biscardi — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:39:57 +0000

BCM completes “The Impossible Project”

7 Days. 5 Shoots. 11 Locations. 8 Cameras. 5 Completed Videos.

The call came in on Friday. “Our client saw the 4k culinary work you did and would like you to create 5 original videos with a mix of 4k and HD formats. And we need it by next Friday. Can you do it?” It became what we called “The Impossible Project” and we were just insane enough to agree to do it.

Blackmagic 4k Cinema Camera on the slider at the Tannery Row Ale House

The parameters were laid out by the client needing our team to create 1 – 3 minute videos of 5 specific types of genres and elements. Interior architecture, Urban Life and City, Parks and Nature and elements like that. They wanted all original photography and the idea was to utilize as many 4k and HD cameras and formats as feasibly possible.

Blackmagic 4k RAW image of a skateboarder catching air in Atlanta

Led by Principal Walter Biscardi, Jr., a plan was quickly formulated to make this project a reality. “Marion Laney and I have collaborated on a lot of projects since our ‘Good Eats’ days and with a project this crazy and with so many elements to pull together, he was the first person added to the team.”

While Walter pulled together the plan to execute the overall project, Marion formulated a 2 day shooting schedule throughout the Atlanta metro region that would cover the City and Urban life along with Architectural interiors. His input on locations was invaluable to get the imagery needed in a short amount of time.

Panasonic GH4 4k image of the wheel in downtown Atlanta

Walter shot for three days on his own and he teamed up with Marion for two days to shoot all over Atlanta, the Caribbean and Dauphin Island, Alabama. “The Caribbean materials that I had shot in 4k and with my iPhone while on vacation turned out to be fortuitous because some of that fit perfectly with what was needed for this project and Marion happened to be in Dauphin Island so he was able to film some materials there.”

Blackmagic Design URSA Mini 4k detail of a Chevy Camaro ZL1

The key to the entire project was media management from the start. “If we overshot with the cameras, which honestly I typically do, it would have overwhelmed the post production process. So I made sure that we limited the raw photography to just ‘quality selects.’ We essentially shot as if we only had one camera card to use in an entire day so we both focused on just getting the best images for the project,” notes Walter

Sony a7rII 4k detail of the Tannery Row Ale House

In total around 10 hours of new original materials were shot using the 8 various cameras and all of this was edited down about 15 minutes in 5 videos for the event. Not only did we finish the project, we delivered it at 10am on Friday. “It was a lot of long hours, very little sleep, but wow did have a great time working on this project. It was satisfying to not just deliver an original project of this magnitude to quickly, but to exceed the client’s expectation and deliver outstanding quality imagery. That’s what makes it all worthwhile,” said Biscardi.

Sony a7rII 1080HD slo-mo at the Centennial Olympic Park fountain

We can’t divulge the specific details about what the project was produced for except to say that they’re being used for a private event and the footage will most likely be re-used for marketing into the future. Here’s the specs on the cameras and formats used.

Cameras:
iPhone 6:
Panasonic GH4:
Canon 70D:
Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera:
Sony a7rII:
Blackmagic Design 4k Cinema Camera:
GoPro Hero 2 and Hero 3:
Blackmagic Design URSA Mini:

Formats Shot:
4k RAW:
4k 3:1 RAW:
S-Log:
S-Gamut3.cine:
4k ProRes HQ:
ProRes:
ProRes HQ:
4k H264:
1080 HD H264:
720p H264:

Shooting 4k RAW details at the Tannery Row Ale House

Very special thanks to Lake Lanier Islands Resort and the Tannery Row Ale House for accommodating us on short notice. Special Thanks to Flanders Scientific Inc for their assistance with the MYT Works slider / skate combination and for all the fun with the URSA Mini and the drift trike.

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Where You’ll Find Walter Biscardi at NAB Show 2016

Walter Biscardi — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 19:07:00 +0000

The view entering South Hall Lower

NAB Show 2016 is upon us and my schedule is coming together. I’ll be primarily appearing in the Studio Network Solutions booth SL11113 giving the presentation Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing Best Practices. (full details below) I’ll also be at some of the evening events and just hanging out. So if you have the chance, come say hello and let’s chat! Heck, if you want to meet up for a coffee and talk shop, ping me on Twitter, @walterbiscardi or drop me an email walter (at) biscardicreative.com. Look forward to seeing you all!

LOVE Stef and Sean from Rampant Design Tools

Saturday: Arriving in the afternoon and honestly, this is my quietest day. If you’re in town and want to meet up to chat, ping me! I’m staying over in the MGM Grand / NY NY area of the Strip.

Sunday: If anyone wants to meet up for breakfast, ping me. I’m also around in the early afternoon. 9pm I’ll be at the #PostChat meet-up outside the O’Shea’s Bar in The Linq restaurant district. Outside between The Linq hotel and Flamingo. I might even go up in the High Roller observation wheel Sunday night.

Meeting Vashi! at the #PostChat meet-up

Monday: I’ll be in the SNS Booth SL11113 all day and presenting Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing Best Practices at 10:30am, 2:00pm and 4:00pm.

In the presentation I will take you though best practices for Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing. These management tips can apply to other NLEs as well. I’ll demonstrate the techniques I developed for managing the wealth of digital data created in today’s video production world, whether you’re in the corporate, broadcast or digital marketplace. I’ll cover the basics of standardizing your project management including: Media Management & Organization, File / Folder Renaming, Transcoding, Media Cache, Shared Projects (2 or more editors sharing the same project), Cross Platform (Mac & Windows), Archiving. This is a must presentation for anyone looking to bring order to an expanding digital media workload and library.

I’ll also be available all day in the booth to answer any questions you have about Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Shared Storage Workflow, 4k, UHD, Post Production and of course, anything to do with cooking. Pizza On the Grill is my favorite! So stop on by and say hello!

Monday Evening: You’ll find me at the Media Motion Ball located in the Monte Carlo.

Tuesday: I’ll be in the SNS Booth SL11113 all day and presenting Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing Best Practices at 10:30am, 2:00pm and 4:00pm. (see full description above) Again, I’ll be available to answer any questions you have on all matters Post and of course cooking. So stop by and say hello!

Tuesday Evening: You’ll find me for a little while at the Supermeet located in the Rio. I don’t stay for the entire event and I generally just hang out in the vendor area to chat with folks. Generally I end up going out for dinner after a few hours here.

Wednesday: I’ll be in the SNS Booth SL11113 all day and presenting Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing Best Practices at 10:30am, 2:00pm and 4:00pm. (see full description above) Again, I’ll be available to answer any questions you have on all matters Post and of course cooking. So stop by and say hello!

Wednesday Evening: I’m attending a private event and then will be on my way back to Atlanta bright and early Thursday morning.

I really hope I get to meet up with you this year. Have fun!

BISCARDI CREATIVE MEDIA is a full service digital media production company near Atlanta, Georgia. Quite simply we’re the people who make video and media production easy for you. No technobabble. Just clear, concise and creative content delivered where and how you need it, on time and on budget.

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Where You’ll Find Me at NAB Show 2016!

Walter Biscardi — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 18:46:24 +0000

LOVE Stef and Sean from Rampant Design Tools

Saturday: Arriving in the afternoon and honestly, this is my quietest day. If you’re in town and want to meet up to chat, ping me! I’m staying over in the MGM Grand / NY NY area of the Strip.

Sunday: If anyone wants to meet up for breakfast, ping me. I’m also around in the early afternoon. 7:30pm I’ll be at the Colorists Mixer in the Venetian. This is a paid / ticket required event that is sold out. 9pm I’ll be at the #PostChat meet-up outside the O’Shea’s Bar in The Linq restaurant district. Outside between The Linq hotel and Flamingo. I might also try out the High Roller observation wheel Sunday night.

Meeting the amazing Vashi! at the #PostChat meet up

Monday: I’ll be in the SNS Booth SL11113 all day and presenting Adobe Premiere Pro Project Management and Project Sharing Best Practices at 10:30am, 2:00pm and 4:00pm.

Monday Evening: You’ll find me at the Media Motion Ball located in the Monte Carlo.

Media Motion Ball

Wednesday Evening: I’m attending a private event and then will be on my way back to Atlanta bright and early Thursday morning.

I really hope I get to meet up with you this year. Have fun!

About the Author:

Walter Biscardi, Jr. is a 25 year veteran in media production and the Founder of BISCARDI CREATIVE MEDIA, a full service digital media production company near Atlanta, Georgia with services that include Video Production, Sound Production, Sound Mixing, Graphic Design, Animation, Post Production, Video Editing, Color Grading, Finishing, Digital Asset Transfer, Digitizing and Archiving. He’s also the Founder of CONTEMPORARY LIVING NETWORK, a digital lifestyle network coming soon featuring Life Worth Living. He and his team have been a part of many national awards including the Emmy and Peabody. Walter is also a frequent speaker at national industry events and offered training and consulting in the media industry. www.biscardicreative.com www.contemporaryliving.tv

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Elevating Your Brand Through 4k Ultra High Definition Imagery

Walter Biscardi — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 02:32:59 +0000