Making a video

Like any creative process, at Mikromedia, it all starts with a brainstorming session. Once we have a clear understanding of what the client wants, we work together with our team of experienced and qualified staff to come up with creative ideas to achieve the most effective results. Since we can create just about anything that can be seen on a screen the possibilities are endless. Once we know what we want to create, our team gets to work and the vision starts to take form through the design of the set and props. All our modeling is done with the latest version of 3D StudioMax and we take no shortcuts when it comes to detail. Throughout this process we pay special attention to lighting and shadows to make the results as realistic as possible. Whether it be real or imagined, realistic or abstract we can create the right look and tone to suit your product and image. The next step is to shoot the live actors. We start each shoot by giving the studio a fresh lick of paint before laying the tracking points. Once the lighting has been set up and the actors have been given direction, its time for action. Equipped with a dolly, tracks, a steadicam and even a green treadmill we can create any moving image without leaving the building. Clients are invited to watch the shoot on a large LCD screen in our comfortable viewing lounge. Once we have our actors performance on tape, we take the footage into one of our After Effects suites. Here we track all of our motion shots and merge the actors into their pre-designed sets taking great effort to make sure the two are perfectly aligned. Once this is done, special effects and title treatments are added to give the video pazaz! We also do color corrections if necessary and grade the video to set the mood. Due to our compositing methods, we are able to create absolutely anything that comes to mind opening up endless possibilities. Be it scenes from Hong Kong, Paris, New York and Alaska, we can achieve this without leaving our building, saving client huge costs and massive amounts of time. Rendering is a vital part of the process and because each frame can take up to an hour to complete, it is also usually a time consuming one. This process needs serious processing power but with our heavy duty Dell render farm, we are able to reduce the time it would usually take and get your job done on time. Once all our images are in place, its time to add the sound. We are serious about quality and have been using Sounds Exact for years. Run by Gavin Mcculog, one of Johannesburgs top composers, Sounds Exact is fully equipped with recording booths and state of the art equipment. It is here, based conveniently right outside our main door, that we record voice-overs, compose and record music and complete the final mix on all our projects. Finally we add the finishing touches by using flash build to put the videos into an interactive interface. We use flash CS4 to merge video, sound and data seamlessly and Action Script to co