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All Posts By

Brandon Buck

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November 9, 2018

Automating Personalized Videos with FFMPEG

About a year ago, Lee Martin published a Medium post about a marketing campaign he recently completed on behalf of Marilyn Manson's new album, Heaven Upside Down. Using geolocation data from a previous concert contest, Martin rendered 25,000 unique videos that were emailed to Manson fans that gave the impression of a satellite specifically monitoring their home, while the song "We…
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October 10, 2017

Curiosity and Reward – Make Them Want You

Going further into concepts of piquing audiences curiosity, I came across Stephen Anderson's post in the Johnny Holland blog on applying curiosity to your audience in customer experience and design. There are two particular components that are pretty brilliant. Hot Wheels sells Mystery Cars, which are cars covered in solid black plastic packaging, so you have no idea what car you'll…
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October 10, 2017

Piquing Curiosity Is A Memory Enhancer

I was listening to an episode of the Tell Me Something I Don't Know podcast, and an interesting concept came up from a study in the 1980's. According to CalTech Behavioral Economics Professor Colin F. Camerer, students were asked trivia questions while their brains were being scanned for activity. Scientists were able to map out where curiosity lies within our brains…
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December 10, 2015

Encryption In Video Production

It seems like for the last few years, on an almost monthly basis, we are alerted to some major company getting "hacked," and all of our credit card and private information is stolen- major box retailers, healthcare providers, and even two of the three major credit companies. Couple that with the Edward Snowden NSA revelations, and the celebrity nude photo leaks, and there's…
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December 10, 2015

The 3-2-1 Backup Solution for Filmmaking

Filmmaking is stressful. Filmmaking is not "usually," not "often," and not "sometimes" stressful, it is stressful. The stress comes from coordinating anywhere from a handful of people to hundreds, the complexity of locations and communication, the opinions of everyone who wants to be involved, and the nuances of everything that is in and out of control. Producing a film shoot can be like throwing a wedding…
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December 8, 2015

How To Apply Matte Photography Effect in Photos and Videos

The Matte Photography effect has been a popular image setting recently in the web, particularly because it gives pictures a vintage feel of classic chemical prints, or like the picture was printed in a design-focused magazine. Instagram and a plethora of photography mobile apps proliferated distorted camera effects to peoples daily pictures, so most publishers and photography bloggers sought to find…
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May 28, 2014

Music Video Interaction, Not Music Video

NPR recently posted an interview they had with an EP of Radical Media, talking about the fall and rise of music videos, now that videos are being made by the artists themselves on video platforms like YouTube. The article was inspired by the success of Pharrell Williams' "music video," "Happy", and how Billboard's Hot 100 takes YouTube interaction into account…
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April 28, 2014

Sprout Social Growth In Social Networks Vs. User Engagement

Social Media Engagement Is Growing In a new published report by Sprout Social, we see that although all signups and uses of the major social networks is growing, the engagement grows exponentially. This shows that a brands presence on these networks online is no longer a passive experience, where users simply consume what is pushed to them in their networks,…
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March 28, 2014

Nielsen On Connected Devices While Watching TV

Nielsen published a new report about US consumers use of connected devices, including how most have four devices, and spend 60 hours a week consuming media across them all. 84% of smartphone and tablet users admit to using their devices "as second screens" while watching TV, which is the key takeaway from this study. Viewers want to engage with what they're…
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February 18, 2014

5 Steps To Optimize Video For The Web

Videos Can Be Optimized Almost As Well As Text Video has always been a complicated matter on the web, as it demands dedication from the creator to make something good, time commitment from the audience to watch, speed and power from both the web server and user-end, and labor from search engine crawlers to understand if it's what their users…