Dallas Production Company Creates Media for a Gambian-Inspired Cookbook

West African Prospective by Margaret Ellis

Cookbook Author: Margaret (Badjan) Ellis

Looking for something delicious to try for dinner?  Then you might just want to try out this new cookbook.

Margaret Ellis knew she was onto something.  Those delicious meals recipes her mother had been preparing for over forty years back in The Gambia, West Africa?  Margaret knew other people would be interested in them, too.  Many West Africans have come to the United States and lost touch with their cultural food heritage.  Helping these people reconnect with their culinary roots was a part of her inspiration, but she knew the tasty dishes would be appreciated by anyone.

But her vision was bigger than a collection of recipes squeezed between the covers of a book.  Her vision included step-by-step photographs and videos.  She knew people might want to see the results of her recipes before they cooked them and the popularity of cooking shows told her they also wanted to watch the recipes being made.  So she called LeniCam, a Dallas Video Production Company.

The production of the first photographs and video from LeniCam were a case of trial and error. Margaret had the vision and LeniCam had the technology.  Margaret wanted high quality media, but she also needed to keep a cap on expenses.  She was able to lean heavily on LeniCam’s John Lenihan and Michelle Pourciau.  John Lenihan is the founder of the company, our producer and one of our videographers.  Videoing a cooking show is nothing new to him.  He’s worked for Rachel Ray.  Michelle is a photographer and a videographer.  She’s also our associate producer.  Together with Margaret, they labored to create something spectacular.

When LeniCam was through with production and delivered the first video, Margaret was thrilled.  She couldn’t wait to get started on the rest of the series.  Margaret’s book is out in soft cover and hardback.  The ebook and videos have not yet been released.  You’ll want to get her cookbook and try out her recipes.

Shooting the Green Screen Video

Dallas Video Production Company Shoots Green Screen Music Video

What is Green Screen?

You know when the weatherman shows you a map on TV?  Well, he’s not really standing in front of a map.  He’s standing in front of a blank screen.  The map is actually generated elsewhere and technology merges the two images to let the viewer see the weatherman pointing out a storm front.

Special effects companies do the same thing.  They film your favorite characters or space ships or whatever and then superimpose them onto whatever landscape they want to.  We all know something like that is going on, but that’s part of the fun.

When it comes to photography, programs like Photoshop make it pretty easy to cut out a background and insert something else, even without a green screen.  A videographer films 30 frames per second, so editing all of those frames, even for a relatively short sequence, would be prohibitively time-consuming.  Hence the use of green screens.

Why green?  Well, there is a certain shade of green that is not present in skin tone.  A video producer tells technology to ignore anything in that particular shade of green in a video and super-impose something else in it’s place.

This technique is used in pretty much every kind of video, from animated films to corporate training videos.  Most recently we used it to create a music video.

Abby Lakew – Ethiopian Singer

So, Abby Lakew lives in America, but the company which produces her music videos is in Ethiopia.  The cost of producing a music video is high enough.  Shipping the artist back and forth between the States and Ethiopia would do nothing but raise the price.  So how do they get footage of Abby singing her music to put into the videos.  They called LeniCam Video Productions.

We set up the equipment in our studio: green screen, videocamera, lights and audio.  Abby came in and we filmed all the sequences needed by her music video producers.  Through the magic of technology, we filmed Abby and got the footage to her production company faster than she could have boarded a plane at DFW and for a lot less money that the travel would have cost.

Though this is not the first music video Abby’s team produced through this method, it was their first time to use LeniCam.  They were much happier with our work than what had been sent to them in the past.  The music video we participated in hasn’t been released yet, but in the meantime, you can enjoy other work by Abby by clicking here.

At this point of the summer break from school, moms are hearing a lot of complaints about boredom.  LeniCam, a Dallas Videographer Company, is anything but bored.  In fact, this summer has been full of new and unique projects.

Brides

Summer is bridal season for us and as usual, we’ve sent our videographers to many this year.  A trend we are seeing is a preference for wedding trailers over the more traditional highlight videos.  The trailers are shorter in length, have little to no relation to the order of the events and the activity in the video is often cued to a favorite song or music from the celebrations.

These wedding trailers are designed for sharing on the internet and our brides love them.  The trailers are just part of the LeniCam wedding video package we’d like to design for you.  Our full length, fully customised, fully edited video of your wedding will include all your special moments, before, during and after your celebrations.  The scene selection feature allow you to watch the whole video or pick out a particular moment in your day.  You’ll have five copies of your BluRay or DVD discs to share with family and friends.  You can even choose alternate audio tracks to capture sweet words from your new spouse you don’t want to share with anyone else.

Sports

With kids out of school, sports are a great distraction.   Just last week, we were the official videographer for a soccer tournament.  We were on-site at the soccer fields taking orders from coaches and parents and then our videographers would capture the games for digital and disc delivery.

But soccer isn’t our only sport.  We started the summer riding along with a car club’s East Texas Road Rally.  Our videographer set up in the backseat of a convertible and captured the excitement as the cars sped down the winding roads of the Piney Woods.  Occasionally the caravan  would pull into a small town and the proud owners would open up their hoods to show off their muscle.  At the end of the day everyone gathered for an exciting awards event.

Our founder was particularly glad when he discovered we’d booked a track event.  It’s a sport he participated in during his school days.  He was determined to be the videographer for the event and our associate producer had to juggle a lot of schedules to make that happen, but we made it happen.

This is just sampling of the type of sports events we frequently capture.  Whatever the game from football and baseball, to fencing and golf, we’re the guys and gals you want to call.

Dance

Have you ever been to an arangetram?  We’ve developed a real specialty for these wonderful celebrations of traditional Indian dance.  In fact, every day of the weekends in June, we had videographers filming at the Eisemann Center, where these events are often held.

We help commemorate many kinds of dance.  LeniCam frequently works with local dance studios to capture everything from formal ballet recitals to exciting talent shows.  We can even help with the distribution and sales of these events through our website.

Special Events and Corporate Videos

If an event is special to you, it’s special to us.  We share happy celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries, but we also produce videos of funerals.  We all so produce many kinds of video for business and commerce, from training films to promotional materials.  All events share certain requirements, but each type of event has its own demands.  Even more important to you is that no two events is exactly alike, so we take time to understand what you expect in your video and that’s what we do.

Contact us today to discuss your project at 972-378-0446 or info@lenicam.com.

Our Partners for the Website

LeniCam had a partner in this exciting project, Osky Blue in Frisco.  We can’t say enough good stuff about these guys.  If you’re looking for a new website and/or to improve your SEO these guys are the bomb.  Now that the new website is up, Osky Blue will guide us to the top of Google rankings.

Who We Are

In case you didn’t know, LeniCam is a Dallas Video Production Company covering special events throughout the Metroplex and all of North Texas.  We have over a decade of experience in wedding, sports, event and corporate video production.  We combine this experience with the best audio and visual technology available to produce videos our clients love to share.

We also get the shots that other’s can’t.  Our founder, John Lenihan, not only loves videography, he’s an engineer with several patents to his name.  He’s applied his ingenuity to several video challenges and developed proprietary equipment that helps us get shots other videographers miss.  One of our favorite pieces of equipment is a remote control camera that can peek between floral arrangements and candelabra to get beautiful closeups of a bride, without a videographer  being anywhere in sight.  Another camera let’s us video a game and record over the heads of the moms and dads populating the sidelines.

  Let’s Connect

Come on over to our new site, click around and watch some videos.  We’d like to know what you think!  Or, give us a call at 972-378-0446.  We could start planning for your special event immediately.  Or, subscribe to our blog and you’ll be notified whenever we post new videos.

dallas video production
LeniCam Video Productions
5808 Furneaux Dr
Plano, Texas 75093
972-378-0446