What happens when a talented writer brings a great idea to a production company like PMI, throws in a reworked 80’s pop song and adds a splash of Pittsburgh’s ad community? A standing ovation-worthy Public Service category intro video for this year’s Pittsburgh Advertising Federation Addy Awards.
When Mike Giunta, of Garrison Hughes, came to us with a script based on “We Are the World” by the supergroup USA for Africa, we were hooked.
Kaylynn (second from the left) as part of the PMI crew for the Pittsburgh Film Office Shoot
Kaylynn Bossart is winding down an internship with us here at PMI as our first multidisciplinary intern. She comes to us with an Undergraduate degree in Telecommunications from Penn State University and is finishing up the Graduate program from the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe, Arizona
We’ve been fascinated by Kaylynn’s time and work as PMI’s first ever multidisciplinary intern, so recently Social Media’s Zach Simons sat down with her to talk about her experience.
Here is Princess (top left) with her children Willie (top right) and Aurora.
For the first part of my life, I got to ride around in my mother’s womb with my sister and my brother. Then, one day, we were all pushed out into the world…incidentally, I was first. Initially it seemed a little strange, because there we all were, with our eyes still closed and our mother was cleaning us up and feeding us…not a care in the world. A couple of weeks later, our eyes opened and we began to understand what a big world it really is, especially if you only weigh a few ounces.
Last week, we posted a call to the world to fill in the blanks on a Mad Lib! At the time we just gave parts of speech and kept the story hidden, but today we are proud to unveil the top three funniest submissions, as chosen by the Social Media Team here at PMI. Enjoy!
The title of “funniest” and “most creepily sensical result” goes to our own Jack Bailey, whose submission produced the following: Continue Reading
I remember as a kid, having loads of fun with Mad Libs. You know, that pad full of mini stories where you fill in the blanks with nouns, adjectives, body parts etc. Read it back and it creates a ridiculous new version of the original story.
I have rediscovered them now with my 6 and 9 year olds (who have even more laughs by adding descriptive words like “poopy” and “bum cheeks”.)
In an effort to try to bring everyone down to my level, I thought it would be fun to make an interactive version of the game, PMI style. Continue Reading
In addition to loving what I do here at PMI, my greatest pleasures are my family, woodworking and scuba diving—the latter of which allows me to enjoy some sunny locations, good food, good drink and warm water. Besides, no one can reach you on your cell when you are 100 feet under water, nor can they hear you scream. The reason why I share this with you is that my dive buddy of 20 years, Jim Harmon, who is in the same business as PMI in the Washington, D.C. area (www.Harmon-Edison.com), and I have been trying to develop a television program that involves diving. A concept where someone will actually pay us to shoot, edit and more importantly, dive in a sunny location! Whenever we take a dive trip, we drag camera stuff along in the event that we are presented with such an opportunity. Here’s what happened to us this past August in the Cayman Islands.
At this point it’s clear that social media is a valuable tool for businesses as well as individuals. . As new social media outlets arise and companies find new and creative ways to engage their audience in conversation, it becomes a question of where to best converse with your fans and where to invest your time. That is exactly the question that we at PMI have asked ourselves and the answer is different for every business.
We have decided that our social media reach will primarily be on four of the major sites: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and this very blog. We have chosen these four platforms for very specific reasons, each having a slightly different use and benefit to us.
Each year around the end of the summer, someone will ask what we’re planning on doing for the annual PMI Christmas Card. We discuss it for awhile, decide we’ll meet on that subject in the near future and then we forget about it until mid-November, when someone will remind us that we never decided anything. Then we panic. Early in our history (1987 through 1992) Tom Casey (today with Homerun Pictures) would use our Silicon Graphics computers running Alias software to create hi-resolution images from which we printed posters, rolled them up, placed in 2,000+ mailing tubes, added postage and labels, and sent to our clients and friends—what a thrash. In 1994, Ron Dylewski (now with WPGH) and Michael Killen (now with Animal) created an animation on the Paintbox which was mastered to 1-inch and sent out on VHS (tape formats that some of you may or may not remember). In 1997, Greg Shearer (now with Street Level Sound) composed and created a song in celebration of Christmas which was sent out on CD’s which, by the way, were much easier to handle than the posters. Sometimes, Christa Ross (now in the real estate business) would create something in print and send the card out just in time to get lost in the Christmas rush. Then other Christmases have seen everything from cookie tins to boxes filled with toys.
As the major sponsor of the Three Rivers Film Festival and the Cleveland International Film Festival for a number of years, Dollar Bank chose to create an animated sponsorship trailer to be shown at each festival.
The PMI team approached the project as if we were creating an opening title sequence for a movie. The inspiration came from one of the masters of this somewhat-underappreciated genre, Saul Bass. He brought the world of design to the film industry in the 1950’s by bringing movie poster designs to life in opening title sequences, and movie trailers. During his 40-year career, he worked with some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese. Continue Reading
When it was born, PMI was comprised of three original departments: Video Production (the shooters & directors), Video Post Production (the editors), and Audio Production (the sound geeks). [Actually, Audio had to wait a few months until its facility was completed – I remember that for my first session in PMI’s temporary space, Sue Hartford’s synthesizer was set on top of some cardboard delivery boxes.]
Being a part of a video/film production house required that the Audio facility be designed specifically for streamlined post production. In terms of hardware, that meant that we had to be able to synchronize our audio recorders to picture reference, which was a lot more complicated back in those analog reel-to-reel days, when video was committed to various linear tape formats. But it also meant that, as opposed to stand-alone recording studios, those of us in PMI’s Audio Services department had to become specialists in audio post. Sure, we’ve enjoyed doing a lot of “wild” recording too, creating original music, sound effects and voice-overs. But audio post engineers think a little differently from other engineers. We have over 25 years of experience coming up with just the right blend of ambiances, dialog placement, attention-grabbing (or subtle) sound effects, and precise music editing and mixing – all to enhance visual images, and tell the story that the director wants to tell.
That experience has paid off, and our reputation has spread. We do a lot of dialog replacement (ADR, or “looping”) with celebrities who are in town for film shoots, and we’ve also mixed the soundtracks for several local productions seen in film festivals across the country and around the world. Our “specialty” has become so pronounced, in fact, that PMI’s Audio Services department is thought by many professionals to be synonymous with “Audio Post Pittsburgh”… so we’ve acquired that URL. Check out http://audiopostpittsburgh.com, and please let us know what you think.
