We spend a lot of time writing about our individual levels and areas of expertise, but this time, I wanted Carter Harkins to express himself through a series of questions and answers. He has a pretty varied background, and it was a lot of fun to pick his brain. Here is part 1 of my interview with him.

Jonathan Sanders: How did you get started providing Audio/Video services for the web?

Carter Harkins: I am a musician from way back, and I play keyboard/synthesizer, so I have always been pretty connected to the technical side of the arts. When the world wide web came along in the 90’s, I immediately got interested in how computers could be used to musically collaborate across distances. These days, it’s no big deal for a bass player to lay down his part in Chicago one day, and put it on the web for the saxophone player in London to add his part. But back then it was The Holy Grail.

Video came later as I started experimenting with digital imagery as part of marketing musicians I worked with.  And at some point, I realized that I had the skills to be able to handle the audiovisual web for clients, so I just hung out my shingle and opened for business. It’s been a lot of fun, from the early days until now, growing into a full-service marketing firm people are taking seriously.

JS: Are there any common misconceptions about how audio/video works online?

CH: There are a LOT of small technical things that, if not understood properly, can add up to something that sounds or looks awful.  I’ve done a lot of podcasting for clients, and the number one misconception is that the audiences are all listening on iPods. They aren’t. They listen in front of their computers on those dinky little monitor-mounted speakers. So engineering the sound for that environment means that my recordings always sound better to people.

In video there are still way too many codecs and formats for the web, and people tend to only publish their video for the platform they own (PC or MAC), ignoring the other platform entirely. If the video is going to be seen on the web, I go with Flash video, because it is completely cross-platform, and the only format that in natively installed on about 98% of all computers worldwide.  Mobile content is another story these days, so lately we are encoding videos in multiple formats, aimed at and optimized for the devices that are popular today.

But perhaps the biggest misconception about a/v content on the web is that you can do whatever you want to with it. Copyright laws have NOT kept up with the internet explosion, and technology makes it super-easy to rip music and download videos, but just because you can do those things so easily doesn’t mean that it’s legal.

JS: There are a lot of web video standards now, with H.264 being a particularly strong competitor to Flash. Nonetheless, Flash is still the most used format for video on the web. Where do you see Adobe taking it?

CH: Flash now utilizes the “H-dot” standard natively, so there’s no real competition there any longer.  What has always made the Flash environment more interesting to me than other ways of doing video is how it can use video in a rich, data-driven way to deliver user experiences that are built around visual content.  In these applications, video is just the content that fuels other interactions.  HTML5 is starting to touch on these tools now as well, but Flash has been doing it for years.

We have begun to see the full version of Flash supported on phones, tablets and handheld devices this year. That opens up an entirely new playground of fun to be had. Even with Apple and the Flashless iPad and iPhone exploding in popularity, and HTML5 standards making many of the features of Flash less attractive in the browser, Adobe doesn’t seem to be resting on the fact that it has always had market dominance. Things change fast in the online space, so Adobe is still pushing the envelope. It’s still a strong contender for multimedia applications.

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Stay tuned for more of this interview.

I have been using a Nokia N93 phone for the past 18 months, and I have loved every minute of it. The phone is wi-fi enabled, and has a simply amazing video camera built into it (640X480 VGA video at 30fps, 3X optical zoom, Carl Zeiss optics). I have loved being able to record little moments in my son’s life, and without a thought or a care, to be able to send them from my phone to blip.tv, which transcodes it into flash and cross-posts it to our son’s blog. Done.. No editing video, no transferring it to a computer and manually uploading it somewhere. It has made videoblogging a pure joy.

My phone is starting to show it’s age, and I’m actively looking around to see if there is a suitable replacement, since they aren’t selling the N93 anymore. I cannot imagine being unable to videoblog as I have been.

Mobile video production is also an effective and convenient way to post new and engaging material for customers and clients to see. Examples would be:

• trade show coverage
• community events
• project progress reports
• interviews
• property tours

I put together the music clip for this, and also decided to present the video with a little more flair than a typical demo reel, so it coul serve a bigger purpose, namely that of a marketing video, which, due to so much recent work, I have put off repeatedly. No complaints. I hope we all get too busy to tend to our own gardens now and then. Enjoy!

The Market
It really goes without saying, but the appropriateness of a video is largely dictated by the market for which it is created. Financial institutions are no more likely to get value from a viral prank video than a high-caffeine energy drink is likely to get traction with a “Hallmark Moment” style video production. The market dictates the type of video that is likely to make an impact, and any consultant, director or producer worth his/her salt has a highly developed intuition about such things. Often, the really good ones choose to specialize in certain markets, because their understanding of the nuances of, say, panty hose keeps their work sharp and tuned, while delivering a visual message with conviction and authenticity (two words I’ll likely unpack in a separate post soon). Web video, of necessity, should employ a slightly more informal tone than other visual mass mediums, and only recently has the video production industry begun to figure this out. Still, it’s all a matter of degrees, and any giant departures from established norms had better be able to stand up to the scrutiny of honest web-surfers who rarely hesitate to provide raw feedback.

The Purpose
I’m amazed at how many times this crucial element is left out of the early discussions about video production. “We know we need a video. Everyone has video on their web site. Can you do something for us?” But video on the web without a clear purpose is a certain failure. Web-based video is a weapon that can take down a variety of game, but not unless it is loaded correctly and aimed properly. Knowing what savage beast you are hunting will help you choose the weapon and the ammunition you need to take with you out into the web-wilderness. A few good questions to help you clarify your purpose: What information does my customer need to know before making a purchase? Can I answer the five most frequently asked questions in a quick video tutorial? What three things distinguish me, my product or my service from the rest of the pack? What information do people come to my web site to obtain?

The Audience
Would you take a three-year-old to a gruesome slasher movie? Hopefully not. But why do businesses think that it’s acceptable to offer their customers under-thirty a video with a hip-quotient equal to CSPAN? Match the video production values with the intended audience. Think about it: You have slaved over making sure that your product is exactly what your target consumer wants and is willing to pay you for. But if you tell them about your product in a video message that isn’t speaking to them in a tone or a style they understand, you might as well have saved all the trouble in developing anything at all. When blowing through an ad budget for mediums such as television, video production is scrutinized under the demographic and psychographic microscopes, and much care and attention is given to crafting visual content that hits its mark with audiences. The same cannot be said with regard to web video. The vagaries of broadcast successes don’t always transfer to the online medium, for one, but even more horrendous is the fact that online audiences aren’t even attempted to be understood, even though the argument can be made that we have the potential for vastly more specific and valuable information about behavior online.

A video production begun by examining these three fundamental areas will be much more likely to achieve realistic goals and return on investment.

The client’s video needs were simple: Create a 5-minute DVD that can be looped continuously on a TV at a trade show booth. They supplied all the images of their work, and wanted me to assemble a slide show, with some cool transitional graphics, if the budget would allow. It was only after I quizzed them a bit more that I learned that their web site had no video yet, and while they had talked about doing something, it wasn’t as important as the trade show. I also was able to discover that television advertising was something they hoped to be doing next year.

A little knowledge in the beginning of a project can really help the creative direction of things, as well as save thousands of dollars for a client, and in this case, I suggested that this video could be repurposed very easily for any or all of those other video needs, if we planned it smart.

The rest of this post could get really technical really fast, but in a nutshell, I was able to develop a visual concept that would work in all of the scenarios this client was likely to come across where video would make sense, and by planning smart from the beginning and asking some questions the client had not considered, I’m quite confident I saved them a good deal of money as well. I’m proud of this one. It represents the technical skill and the value I strive to provide to everyone I work with.