The marketing video for Big Elk Resort was a major project for GX Media. The client needed to showcase the beauty of the Smoky Mountains, the attractions in and around Gatlinburg, a virtual tour of their still-in-progress real estate development, interviews with students at local schools, and an overall portrait of Southern hospitality… and it had to be done in Chinese.
The EB-5 program is designed to give Chinese citizens an opportunity to earn a green card in the United States through business investments. The video GX Media produced for Big Elk promotes not only the development and opportunity offered by the immigration program, but also the American lifestyle and the Southern way of life. The clients were very specific about what they wanted to feature in the presentation, and the finished product reflects those requests. The video was shown in China to potential investors with a Mandarin voice-over; the version embedded below contains an English voice-over by Todd Ethridge.
GX Media filmed high definition interview segments at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and King’s Academy in Seymour, Tennessee to supplement footage already supplied by the client, as well as b-roll footage from the Gatlinburg tourism office. Editor Brian Greer worked with hours of footage from a variety of different sources in many different formats. The process was very labor intensive and involved the following editing techniques:
- capturing footage from miniDV and BetaSP tapes
- extracting MPEG-2 data from master DVD-R discs
- converting all 4:3 clips to 16:9 (widescreen) ratio
- transferring PAL source footage to NTSC
- up-converting MPEG-4 iPod footage to DVD-compliant standards
- down-converting high definition (HD) to standard definition (SD)
- speeding up and slowing down shots to match cadence of narration
- digitally altering shots using Photoshop (see “clean table” example on right)
- digitally stabilizing “shaky” camera footage
- standard color correction and audio normalization
- procuring stock footage and images to enhance and extend specific sections of the video
- preparing multiple versions of final product for Mandarin voice-over and localization in both NTSC and PAL
- authoring final DVDs to play continuously in a loop
Cluttered Table - Raw Footage
Clean Table - Post Editing
For more information about the EB-5 Green Card program, and to view the client-approved English version of the Big Elk Video, please visit click here.
This video was produced for Internet Marketing Expert Group.
GX Media production credits: HD Videography, Editing, Post-production, NTSC to PAL Conversion and DVD Authoring by Brian Greer. Narration by Todd Ethridge.
Watch the Big Elk Resort Video in High Definition:
