It was friend and client Barrett Prelogar, CEO and founder of Winntech. Winntech was building a huge, interactive video display for the H&R Block flagship office in Times Square and they wanted August Hour to help produce the video content.

photo from NY Daily News, Gabel

Now, Winntech produces the most sophisticated and thoughtful interactive experiences I’ve ever seen.  I like this because it challenges August Hour to produce compelling video content that matches that level of quality and meet the reputation of a top-notch company like H&R Block.  At the time we partnered with Winntech, we didn’t realize what a massive undertaking this would be. At the end of the project August Hour – with Winntech’s creative guidance – produced over 850 separate High Definition videos in under two months; 543 of which were produced in 16 days for the H&R Block grand opening on December 7th, 2009.

Photo courtesy H&R Block

Working with Winntech required August Hour to pull together all of our core capabilities including: casting, pre-production, chroma key and digital animation, live-action HD shoots, music composition, digital photography and editing, sound design, and audio recording and mastering.

In Kansas City we shot five days of live-action video to produce eight different interactive host segments (H&R Block employees). After shooting wrapped this footage was edited into 331 chroma-keyed videos combined with digital interactive animation that guide the viewer through the interactive process.

Next we spent two days filming on location in New York to produce 20 short biopics about each of the Tax Professionals who work in the flagship office on Times Square (my personal favorite part of the project).

Finally, the project involved producing the content for the huge video walls and tickers that are displayed on 7th Avenue. This meant August Hour had to help conceptualize, produce, direct, render and output a dozen videos that were over twice the resolution of HD video, all in under two weeks.

We’re proud to say the work was completed on time, on budget and the flagship office is open on Times Square.

These projects are successful because of clients and project partners like Winntech and H&R Block who bring creativity, expertise and experience to the process. We owe a debt of gratitude to everyone from H&R Block, Winntech, DDB, and all the folks who worked long hours to pull this project together.

Just some of the client feedback on the project:

WOW…I am speechless!!!!! Seriously – you guys rock, and you just made my weekend and my whole week next week. What talent! Thank you so much for all your hard work and everything to come. Please have several drinks to celebrate – you deserve it.

Sarah Nichols
Marketing Manager, Retail and Digital Experience
H&R Block

If you’re interested in seeing images of the work first-hand, we suggest a little trip to New York; the flagship office is located at 555 7th Ave. If you would like to see some images of the video work we did for the project please contact us.

Read an article on the H&R Block Times Square flagship location here: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/01/11/2010-01-11_hr_block_adds_razzledazzle_to_tax_prep_in_times_square.html

Food Power by John Evans is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at augusthour.com.

Friend and songwriter, Matt Wilson (a Minneapolis treasure) once wrote “the sun is coming to cold places.”

I love that phrase. It holds hope in a time of cold and desperation. It reassures. Perfectly suited to a kind man from the cold confines of the northern tier. But they can get you through a cold mid-western winter too.

In trying to bring musical and visual reference to Matt’s words I wrote “tenzing”.

In addition to the joy, hope and giving, there’s a lot of despair around the holidays. It’s the beginning of the winter solstice – an unsettling time for many. It’s also a time of great, and often self-induced, stress about the holidays. This one seems all the more desperate given all our current socio-political tumult. Oh, and let’s not forget the war; no, not the one in Iraq, but the one that’s supposedly being waged against Christmas (do we REALLY need people to invent another war around this time of year?).

The point of tenzing is not just to build a song around a guitar riff, but to bring Matt’s sense of hope to what is starting out to be a very cold and solemn winter; especially considering it’s still fall.

Anyway, without giving it all away. Just enjoy the music and images. It’s a gift, and remember the sun is coming to cold places.

So far there are only a few MP3 samples, but we’ll keep uploading songs as we dig them out and get them formatted into MP3.

So far the page features music from The Silver Shore, The Daybirds and myself. It’s mostly there to give you an idea of our music production chops and to introduce you to some music you might not have heard before.

It’s always nice to revisit your first love — and music is definitely mine. Being a recording engineer/producer is a lot like being something between a midwife and a high-school guidance counselor. Midwifery is the term commonly used to describe the art of helping a woman give birth. And a high-school guidance counselor is there to help kids turn into adults. As a parent you do the best job you can at strengthening and perfecting your kids and then you release them into the world where you know others will project themselves onto them. For any real songwriter or composer songs are children and music production and engineering is all about helping the songwriter parent their babies. Because sometimes people can be unfair in their projections — or downright rude — you hope you’ve done the best job possible of preparing the songs for this state of vitality and exposure.

So yeah, it’s fulfilling work. And it can be rewarding. Sometimes I hear songs I’ve worked on and think “you know, there’s some real genius in there” and I am just thankful to have had the chance to help with them.

It all sounds good anyway.

enjoy.

We lost a valued member of the August Hour team today. Our friend and trusted confidante, Whitman.

In the spring of 1993, I brought home this amazing Golden Retriever puppy I called Whitman. Over the last 14 years, Whit’s been my constant friend and a huge part of my life; I find it impossible to describe. He’s been with me through the best and worst time of my life.

While he loved fetch, walks, steak and grass, what really made Whitty happy was being around all of his people.

Whit has been a part of every project August Hour has turned out. He’s been a part of every design, heard every note and yawned at every sogn before anyone else had a chance to. Ten years ago, he comforted my friend Jim when he lost his dog, Keaton. Later, he comforted me when I lost my friend Jim. When I would tour, he was there when we’d pull the van into the driveway in the wee hours of the morning at the end of a long tour. And he was perfectly content to sleep in with me until late that afternoon when I needed to catch up on missed sleep.

For many of you who are reading this, Whit heard your work before anyone else did. He’d lay his head in your lap when it was good and lay his head in your lap when it wasn’t so good. As long as you petted him, you were the best band on earth.

When it all came to pass, Whit chose his own end. Over the last few weeks he basically stopped eating. I took him to the vet last week and she found nothing wrong with him. His exam and tests were all normal and except for losing almost twenty pounds he was actually very healthy — especially that heart of his. After several days of confusion and frustration, I finally shut up and listened to what he was trying to tell me; he was done eating, he was done drinking, he was ready to go.

So, this morning the girls and I took Whitman to the vet’s office. She administered the injection and as his last breaths hung, I whispered in his ear that I remember everything, thanked him, and told him that he’s beautiful. After just a few seconds, Doctor Kelly tearfully told us he was gone. Whitty left us exactly the way he wanted; in the arms of his family.

So, what do I take from all of this, from these fourteen beautiful years I’ve been honored to share with my dog? On the way to the vet’s office, Whit and I listened to Alejandro’s record in the car. During Al’s song, Died a Little Today, Whit started yelping. He was singing along to Al, just like he’d done so many times before on the floor of our living room. I listened more closely to Al’s words in this song, and I heard the line that describes what Whit has been trying for fourteen years to teach me:

Gonna learn how to give
Not to simply get by
Or to barely hang on
For the sake of goodbye
Baby maybe you’ll know
We died a little today

If there’s anything to take from the last fourteen years, anything I draw comfort from, it’s from maybe, hopefully finally learning what Whit spent his life trying to teach me: ours is not to simply get by, but to learn how to give. If you’ve ever had a dog, you know what I mean.

Thanks everyone. And thanks Whit, I remember everything.

John

Another Man’s Done Gone
by Billy Bragg

Sometimes i think i’m gonna lose my mind
But it don’t look like i ever do
I loved so many people everywhere i went
Some too much, others not enough

I don’t know, i may go down or up or anywhere
But i feel like this scribbling might stay

Maybe if i hadn’t of seen so much hard feelings
I might not could have felt other people’s
So when you think of me, if and when you do,
Just say, well, another man’s done gone
Well, another man’s done gone

When you watch and listen to someone like Mike work you realize what nearly 50 years in the business means. As Copywriter Steve Jackson put it, “Mike is a Copywriters dream.” And he’s a producers dream too; hit record and go.

We’ll do more work with Mike in the coming months so check back for pictures and samples of his ads.

The news:

Right now it’s 70 degrees and sunny at 9:10AM on Saturday.

We’re working on a few projects right now.

For Wellspring Resources/MTTI we’re working on a graduation video projection for their graduation ceremony.
For Dry Basement & Foundation Systems we’re preparing some podcasts and radio ads for their foundaiton repair services.

We just uploaded our new demo reel.