IMAGE MANAGEMENT
following images below represent a small sample of some of the video projects I worked on while serving as Director of Video Production at Image Management. Click on the images to watch the accompanying video presentation, and don’t forget to read the captions below each video.
Capital Homes, a real estate development outside of Columbia. Maryland. Produced and directed by Marc Finkel for Image Management.
The Crown Plaza video was produced for the Rockville, MD Crown Plaza hotel located adjacent to the Rockville Mall . The piece was meant to show meeting planners and travel agents the full complement of amenities available at the hotel. The video was produced, directed and written by Marc Finkel. Principal photography was completed in 3 days with crew remaining on site at the hotel. One of the rooms was turned into a makeshift screening room for reviewing dailies and assembling short rough cuts of the video for management.
Smith Braedon, at the time was one of the leading commercial real estate brokers and managers of office buildings in the metropolitan D.C. area. This video was sent out to prospects looking for new office space and was also used at Smithy Braedon's main headquarters as a display loop in the waiting room. The video was produced, written and directed by Marc Finkel, principal photography and edit rough cuts were assembled by David Kaplan. Final post was complete at Atlantic Video.
This 10 second spot, created with various versions was finished at Broadway Video in New York city. Dave and I had several other effects we wanted to incorporate but they didn't work within the ten second limitation for the spots. Today, all of these effects are easily created within Premier or Final Cut Pro. The facility was really cool but there was no food service on-site when we arrived at night for our session (something we had become accustomed to in D.C.), so our sales rep sent out for some food. When they gave us the final bill for posting the spots, we were amazed at what two sandwiches and two cokes ended up costing us.
The Wellington Hotel wanted to promote their fine dining and our mission was to get locals to try the food. So a very suggestive concept was created by our team that relied on the chemistry between a beautiful woman and handsome man, meeting at The Wellington on Date Night (also the name of the spot). We spent weeks surveying the restaurant, locating the best places for the main shots, where to place microphones for the intimate dialogue, how dim we could light the place and still have sufficient depth of field for a variety of shots, etc. Naturally, we looked over hundreds of head shots and did many auditions until we found the pair that could pull of the concept. The client agreed to allow us to shoot in 35mm which increased the budget by 2X. Everything was set and the restaurant would close for 3 hours on a Sunday evening so our crew and some of their staff could convert the main dining room into a makeshift film studio. Everything went as planned, lights, camera, sound and extras were completed in two hours. The female talent arrived and was ready with her lines, wardrobe and make-up. The only problem we had was the male was a complete no show. Calls were made, production assistants went looking for him to no avail. The situation was looking pretty dire and we were about to loose thousands of dollars. While my staff and I were huddling to review our options, a courier shows up with a delivery for one of the hotel's managers. He wasn't a bad looking guy and he had an abundance of good energy and charisma so I asked him if had ever acted before. He said he hadn't but he was up for anything. I knew the script would be easy for anyone to learn and we could always cut around him. So this personable courier became our male lead and the shoot was salvaged. The spot went on to air for four weeks and while not the spot that I envisioned, it managed to get bodies into the restaurant and turn the hotel's restaurant into a big success.
The Discovery Channel was the brainchild of John Hendricks, who founded the cable channel in Bethesda, Maryland in the year 1985. Image Management created the very first set of on-air graphics for the new channel using elements created with the Bosch FGS-4000 graphics computer (same system used on the Dire Straights video, Money for Nothing) and edited with a dual channel ADO (Ampex Digital Optics) graphics DVE. The storyboards were created by Marc Finkel and Steve Jeweler and final post was performed at Modern Video in Philadelphia, PA. Marc Finkel was Producer and Director of the package.