Testimonial:

Pinnacle Real User: Frank Hooper

Frank Hooper's video editing experience came reluctantly; initiated more from necessity than a true desire to make movies. But when a business partnership to create "walk-through" videos of brokered yachts with a former national broadcast television cameraman failed, Frank soon found himself with thousands of dollars in video equipment, a list of impatient clients and no filming or editing experience.

"Here I am, I have a video business with nobody that knows how to make a video," recalled Frank. "So I went out and purchased maybe five books on video recording; I took the camera and I taught myself how to shoot."

Frank's prior video editing experience was limited to a single occasion when he made a VHS copy of a home movie by transferring the content straight from his old Hitachi camera. The final "edited" video included all the mistakes, the spans of time with the camera pointing nowhere, and other typical novice home movie flaws.

"I did have one other experience with video, when I was with my last company as vice president of sales and marketing," said Frank. "We created a DVD that went out to distributor locations on a product, a $200 wholesale test device. That's where I first got the idea that we could take a product, create a 2-minute video for no more than $2 per for the media and enclosure, and we could send it out to about 1000 locations. With that, we were able to garner about $2.6 million in sales in a 10-month period. When I got back into the marine industry, it seemed like a natural way to market. That's why we decided to make videos of the yachts."

Shaking hands in August of 2003, the video business was a seemingly ideal blend of his partner's camera and editing skills and Frank's sales and marketing background.

"At the time, no one in the marine business had ever seen this (using video to sell a product) done," said Frank. "I see a little bit of this beginning to come up now with products that allow you to pan a single slide in a series of slide shows, but compared to streaming video, it's worthless. A video tour of a boat, or any other product for that matter, lets you see all the areas you couldn't ordinarily see in a photo… unless you take gobs of photos; but then you can hardly put them all up on the Internet. Streaming video draws the viewer into an experience that can be paused, allowing the person to look more closely at a specific area on the yacht, or any other product."

However, this doesn't mean Frank is against incorporating photos into his final video production. Adding an occasional photograph into his productions enables Frank to highlight areas of the yacht that the potential buyer may not otherwise be able to carefully examine.

"Sometimes we shoot the boat in its slip," Frank explained, "but maybe I want a shot of the boat in open water. If I have a still or a manufacturer's picture of the boat on the water, I use Pinnacle Studio software to put that in the video as the lead photograph, extend the length of time on the timeline that it's displayed, and pan it. Another thing I like about Pinnacle is that I can take a shot that's a normal sequence, say going into the boat, and I can reverse that to appear to come out of the boat the same way for the closing shot. The result is a more natural timeline: this is the tour, you're walking into the boat, looking at the bridge, the cockpit, the aft area, then you go into the salon, now into the cabins, the head, and finally into the engine room and off the boat again. Just as if you were physically there, walking through for yourself."

For Frank, the key to creating videos quickly, easily and with the professional polish he was looking for was in the editing software. As an ex-programmer, computers and the software applications themselves weren't intimidating.

"A computer is just another tool for me," admitted Frank. "It is easy for me to implement a program and navigate around. But the whole video thing had been a new experience for me. However, I was able to pretty much delve into it after reading the book. And thank goodness for Pinnacle, because with Studio, I was able to teach myself editing quite rapidly. I didn't even take the tutorial, I just explored and if I had a problem, I just picked up the phone and called tech support at Pinnacle and got marvelous assistance from them. If I were a computer novice, I would probably use the Smart features that Pinnacle has to automatically make the film for you, and then grow from there."

Although the business partnership dissolved, giving Frank the opportunity to test other software editing tools, he kept going back to Pinnacle's Studio because of its ease-of-use and clean, simple layout.

"I did look at some other software, but after looking at a few I thought Pinnacle was the easiest to use," said Frank. "They make it so easy to capture the video off the camera and move it onto the PC, easy to edit it, and it's easy to produce a movie. They offer a broad selection of drag and drop transitions, and Pinnacle even gives you the option to have a timeline like the high-end, more professional editing tools. But I think the biggest improvement they've made, is the almost full screen review, so you can add a transition or make a cut, then quickly see what the final piece will really look like."

For Frank, it's that flexibility, the quality of production, and Pinnacle Studio's overall ease-of-use that have made his yacht video business so successful and helped him improve his own success in selling the boats he brokers.

"By creating the virtual tours, I've been able to sell boats to people in Canada and Mexico that I've never seen," explained Frank. "I've had people shoot mini cartridges of film and send them to me and I've been able to edit it enough to get descent videos that have also resulted in sales. So this a tool that has created results in a number of ways:

a) its been able to present the boat as a product,
b) its enabled us to get that presentation out to multiple potential buyers and
c) its enable us to consummate more sales."

These days, Frank is running Studio 10 and using a Cannon G2 camcorder. He has also invested in most of Pinnacle's ancillary software for music, titling and transitions to help him effectively and creatively tell his stories. Frank also plans to purchase a new hi-definition camera and has already purchased Pinnacle Studio 11 to take advantage of the latest technologies to enhance his videos.

"For me, the greatest satisfaction from editing and creating these movies is seeing the end result and having that video help generate a sale for me or the other brokers that I'm working with," said Frank. "One of the best videos I've shot and edited is of a boat called the High Star, which is a big trawler we shot from our photo boat while underway. The other was a Valliant 42 sailboat, called Stargazer (mms://69.93.51.164/yachttours/BBYB42valiantstargazer.wmv), which was in front of the San Francisco waterfront. Those were the two best that we've done so far, and they've gotten the best results. Pinnacle has been a great product and they make it so easy; your home videos don't have to look homespun."