Here is a fantastic example of what a small team of dedicated creative people can accomplish.  Three guys on a very limited budget needed to create a complex, expansive, war scene.  Here is their description:

Bloody Omaha was created by Colin Thornton, Neil Wilson and Steven Flynn who run the graphics company Compost Creatuve . www.Compostcreative.com

The music used Is Two Tribes by Frankie goes to Hollywood.

Team Compost headed out to Omaha Beach for 4 days armed with a Z1 camera, a pop up greenscreen, some soldier uniforms and 2 rubber rifles (we couldnt afford 3), and begun the process of covering the beach (with camera on the cliff top), and re-enacting the veterans moving accounts. When back in London (and back in our real day job) we began to piece together all wed shot using adobe after effects, (and a little 3d modelling in maya) turning the 3 of us into the invading U.S. army.
6 Weeks later the work was completed and provides a moving insight to the U.S veterans memories of storming Omaha beach, for BBC 2's Timewatch: Bloody Omaha.

(click here if you can't see the video)

I have read Dan Roam's book, Back of the Napkin...I just ordered the workbook as it appears that this might help me embrace a little practice that was missing from my first read.  I love the look of hand-drawn diagrams.  I love the simplicity of this kind of'visual explanation. This video below serves as a good example of the visual style Jimmy Ray and I are pursuing with a few projects as we seek to add some additional elements to our TechWiseTV production tool box.  So look at this with both the content in mind (what Dan is saying) but also much of the style in which he delivers it within the video...the white background, the use of sound effects to bring some drawings to life, etc. 

This is both incredibly funny, instantly recognizable and yet somehow instructive for anyone looking to a simple model for building an interesting news package.  Corporate video has not even gotten this interesting....but we are working on it.  Kudo's on this fantastic roasting of the format. (click here if you can't see the video)

Here is a great look at story-telling as set up for a new version of a video game.  From a technical perspective, a great 'behind the scenes' with green screen for all live action forcing all 750 shots to have backgrounds created in post.  One of the most frustrating things is often the perception that green screen is the 'easy answer' to creating an environment and avoiding travel for a field shoot or challenging location.  It is an option yes...but often it requires much more work. The specifics don't get very detailed on this aspect until about halfway through but notice the legions (legions...get it....never mind) of computer programmers and artists that are creating the backgrounds and tweaking the tracking to make it realistic.

(video)

I can't tell you how inspiration and valuable this is.  I was naive to who Don is or was....but the impact of 'Tell me a Story' is so on point. This is a great special edition of 60 minutes. I love the insight into the strucutre of how the stories are told, how the edges are pushed and the creative output that follows.  What a life well lived. What a great set of guidelines and goals that can be pulled from this to say - how far can we go with how we tell stories on TechWiseTV?  How can we change the way it is done?   I love this.  (click here if you cannot see the video).

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