January 2009 Newsletter
Project of the Month
Water’s Edge - the evolution of a TV spot
Water’s Edge is an exciting new high-rise residency located in downtown Clearwater, Florida. If you’ve driven to Clearwater Beach over the Memorial Causeway Bridge or even driven through downtown Clearwater in the past year or so, you’ve no doubt seen Water’s Edge as it’s by far Clearwater’s tallest building and sits right near the waterfront.
Water’s Edge recently opened the doors to its first residents and the property’s management has begun an expanded advertising campaign. As part of the new advertising, Water’s Edge’s ad agency, Godfrey Design & Advertising, hired DMS to produce a simple but elegant 30-second TV commercial to air on local cable channels. As this spot is comprised mainly of still images, graphics and voiceover, it serves as a resource for studying the evolutional phases a TV spot can go through.
Click here to witness the evolution of a TV spot.
Marketing Tip
A down economy is a marketing opportunity
Tech Tip
High Definition Television Formats
February 17, 2009 marks the end of the analog color television broadcasts that U.S. television stations have been sending over the airwaves since 1953. Well, at least it was supposed to be. It appears that legislation is about to be passed that will extend the analog broadcasts until June 12, 2009. But that’s another story.
For those of you who aren’t completely comfortable with all the HDTV lingo, we present this primer. High Definition Television broadcasts come in two flavors - 720p and 1080i. The 720 and the 1080 refer to the number of horizontal scan lines that make up the picture in each format. Another way to think about this is to assess the pixel dimensions of each picture; the 720p system broadcasts a picture 1,280 pixels wide by 720 pixels high. 1080i uses 1,920 pixels across and 1080 pixels up and down. All digital TVs support both formats. Which one is better? Well, hold on just a second; we haven’t talked about those little letters after the numbers.
The “p” stands for progressive and the “i” stands for interlaced. These terms refer to the manner in which the TV lines are scanned across the TV screen. Unlike your local movie theater that projects individual frames of a movie by flashing a light through a strip of film and presenting one full frame at a time, your TV “draws” the frames of a video picture line by line. In the progressive system, each line is drawn in sequence, or progressively, starting at the top of the screen with scan line 1 and ending with scan line 720. It does this 60 times per second to create the illusion of continuous motion. The interlaced system draws all of the odd lines first - 1, 3, 5...1077, 1079 - and then goes back to the top and draws all of the even lines (2, 4, 6...1078, 1080). The two “half-frames” are interlaced together 30 times per second (60 fields/second) to display the motion of video. Networks can choose which format they use to broadcast their signal but they can only chose one, not both. ABC, FOX, ESPN and others use 720p; NBC, CBS, TNT and others use 1080i. OK, now can we talk about which one is better?
Well, let’s first say that they’re both vastly superior to what we’ve had up to this point. Our analog system used 525 TV lines and only 480 of those were for picture information. TV lines were scanned in an interlaced manner and, as all of us have seen at some point, the analog system was subject to artifacts such as ghosting, picture noise, interference and other anomalies. The digital system takes care of most of those problems.
To determine which format is better - 720p or 1080i, - we really have to look at how each is displayed on different types of sets. In general, 720p looks best on 720p sets and 1080i looks best on 1080i sets. But most medium and large sets we now see in stores have a big 1080p sticker on them; what’s that all about? Well, 1080p is a progressively-scanned format that uses a 1,920 by 1080 picture size. There is no broadcast format that supports 1080p. 720p broadcasts must be up-converted to display on a 1080p set and 1080i broadcasts must be de-interlaced to display on a 1080p set. Neither of these reformatting steps improves picture quality; they, in fact, degrade the image to some extent. But, in general, up-converting is often less detrimental than de-interlacing. Another factor that effects picture quality is the type of programming. Fast motion images like sports usually look better on progressive systems because of the lack of interlacing artifacts; more picturesque images often look better on 1080i systems because of the higher resolution. Both are very good and there’s no clear answer as to which one is better. For the absolute best picture, get a Blu-Ray player to watch your movies with - Blu-Ray does support 1080p!
All imagery and content copyright © 2009 by Digital Media Services & Consulting LLC. All rights reserved.
One of the first areas to suffer budget cuts during down economies is often marketing. On the surface, this seems to make a bit of sense as companies - both large and small - tend to try to slim down on anything not vital to the operation of the company. However, a down economy often presents an opportunity. As the economy slows down, many of your competitors are doing the same thing - cutting their marketing and advertising dollars. But doesn’t this mean that there is less competition out there vying for your potential clients’ attention? Perhaps this is a more important time to build your brand through advertising than you may have thought.
As additional motivation, be sure to watch the $3 million-per-30 seconds Super Bowl commercials; they often provide inspiration for your marketing. This year marks the 25th anniversary of one of the first ads to use the Super Bowl as a spring board - the “1984” spot by Apple Computer. That Super Bowl ad was a big success for them. Will anyone have that kind of results this year?
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Extras
Other cool DMS projects
With the Super Bowl coming to town, the DMS staff have been busy with NFL-related projects. Vince Mann is working as a camera assistant for various DirectTV broadcasts and Sean Deren is providing photography for several of his corporate clients’ Super Bowl events. During January, Vince also helped build sets for Florida Matters, a new TV show being broadcast from the WUSF studios, and Sean recently shot several photo projects for Palm Beach Media Group.
Brian Satchfield and Lance Robson shot high definition video footage for a TV pilot about a mobile tattoo parlor from Inflicting Ink and Rob Kildoo’s band Mind Static just announced that their song “My Stalker Lover” will appear on an upcoming WMNF 88.5 FM compilation CD.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? All are greatly appreciated! Email us by clicking here or call us at 727-512-9998. We’d love to hear from you!
