No, I didn’t say Flashmob, I said Flashback. Remember when Shmuel won the Israel in a Minute video contest for Nefesh B’Nefesh? That was soooo long ago. One of our favorite comedians, Benji Lovitt, sent me this article that he found (from 2007 – you must have really been searching a long time to find this one, Benji!) announcing Shmuel as the winner:
Not sure why they didn’t embed the video – and the NBN video contest page can no longer be found – but here’s the video:
When I get an extremely rare free moment, I like to watch Shmuel’s older videos to see how far he’s come. While he’s advanced on all technical levels, and comes up with cool new ideas for visuals, sound, graphics, story, etc., I’ve found that one thing stays the same: the excitement. His videos just don’t get boring. Even though he’s basically dealing with the same topic every time, more or less.
Check out this other Nefesh B’Nefesh video he made back then:
He must have learned from his classical training in viola how to take a theme and find its millions of variations.
For those who have been watching Shmuel’s videos from the beginning, and have shared this evolution with us, I just want to give you a heartfelt thanks for your continued viewing and support. And to give you something nostalgic on this rainy day.
Here’s the original post I wrote back then for the Aliyah on Campus video, with a bit about how he made it:
There have been so many awesome Channukah videos this year. When Ohel’s Director of Marketing, Derek Saker, approached Shmuel about producing this video, they decided not to compete. What they came up with is a completely different take on the meaning of Channukah.
Sorry, I should have warned you to whip out the tissues beforehand.
But isn’t that what Chanukah’s all about? We can do anything! We can beat the Greeks, even when there are so many more of them than us, and they have all the military power.
This is what’s so inspiring about Ohel. When Shmuel made the Camp Kaylie video, it was so clear to me that what Ohel creates is a new, better world, even if it’s just on their campus. What I’ve learned from Ohel is that if I want to bring light to this world, I have to start small, with the people in my life. When you catch those pockets of ideality on video, the light spreads like wildfire to all who watch.
So here’s some light for you. Pass it on.
Happy Hannukah. And can someone tell me what the correct English spelling for Chanukah is, if there is one?
Michelle Hodkin, a new writer with an impressive Twitter presence, contacted me a few months ago about producing a book trailer ad for her new and first book The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.
Mara Dyer, as we affectionately call the project, was published by Simon & Schuster, and a few months before the release, Michelle came to me because she wanted something that would really stick out, something exceptional, something no other book would have for their advertising.
Usually book trailers are cheaply made, with photographs or simple footage and little graphics and that’s it. Here our goal was to make something truly cinematic. We wanted to give the impression that this was actually a trailer for a movie. Michelle came up with the scenes and the script that she pulled out of her book. Aaron Grant from Kelvin Productions was our producer and did a fabulous job of holding all the different aspects of this production together. I don’t know how but somehow Michelle got an amazing casting director, Daryl Eisenberg. She was responsible for casting for TV shows like “Gossip Girl” and musicals like Altar Boyz. She did such an amazing job for finding us the cast. The idea was to have a style like in the Twilight Saga movies. But I didn’t want to just copy it. We went ahead and thought how can we make this truly unique.
The Mara Dyer story (which my wife calls “a thrilling page-turner”) tells the story of a highschool girl who was involved in a tragic accident in an abandoned insane asylum with a lecherous boyfriend and Mara’s best friend. In order to help her recover, her family moves to a different state and helps her start a new life. But her conscience slowly reveals what actually happened that night, along with a weird superpower that she didn’t know she had. It’s essentially a murder mystery written for a teenage audience,.
The ending is particularly great – it reveals so much but sets the reader up nicely to want to buy a sequel, which we hope will be written soon. So if you buy the book – don’t peek at the ending before you get there!
Mara Dyer kind of lives two lives, one the unconscious one and the other a “real” one. I wanted to have this expressed in our style. That’s why I decided to go with black and white and using color to distort the reality. Michelle expressed that she wanted parts of it to look a bit like The Blair Witch Project. So we shot the asylum scenes on our phones and small cameras to have it look self-made and gritty. It was very important that we got a mixture of mystery and sexy across for the teenage audience.
We had only two days of shooting booked and it was a challenge to shoot all the different scenes under the time constraint. But proper planning can make it happen. We shot in Central Park, in a NYC hotel and in a NYC studio. Thanks to Aaron’s planning, we got everything done in time. This would not have been possible without my great assistant Josh Fleisher who helped me throughout the shoot. Not only was he very forward-thinking but he helped me to clarify some ideas and contributed creatively to the shoot.
We shot everything on the Canon 7D and some scenes on the Panasonic Lumix LX5. We used gliders and steadicam for certain scenes. The thunderstorm scenes where done in Pennsylvania when I came across a fantastic rain-free thunderstorm. It was magic.
Gi Orman of BiG Productions came to me and asked me if I would like to become a part of a super exciting project: Encouraging people to get off their mobile phones and other electronic devices for at least an hour in order to connect to family and friends without any internet and email interuption.
I couldn’t be more thrilled about such a project as you can imagine. Especially since I’m such a BEFUERWORTER for using email and phone responsibly and getting rid of our internet at home as you can read about HERE.
Here’s the video:
Gi Orman showed me a commercial from Asia that inspired him and the whole DaytoDisconnect team and asked me to be responsible for the visual look and feel as a cinematographer and colorist. We sat together and carved out the scenes first, discussed locations and actors. One important part was that we wanted some special effects that show the absence of the people in various scenes. The idea was to show that when you are emailing in the middle of a date with your spouse its as if your spouse is not there anymore. Or if you are playing with your children and texting at the same time, the children miss the presence of their father.
I think there couldn’t be a better time to produce such a video. We live in a time when everybody is on email, on Facebook, on the web. I think our real life human interactions have dramatically decreased. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology and embrace it. I just stand up for using it responsibly and I make sure that my wife and my children are always first before an email or another tweet ; )
Back to the production. In order to show the absence of people we wanted to have book pages turning, shopping carts being pushed, cups being held without the actual people present doing this in order to symbolize the loneliness. Many of you have asked how you guys did it and honestly I can’t take credit for it. It’s the genius of Elliot Christ who is the editor and graphics artist at BiG Productions and he and Gi are making all that magic happen. We basically put all the ‘flying’ parts on fishwires and filmed it with a lock down camera, then we took it out of the frame and filmed it again without the props. In post production Elliot merged the two images together and cut out with a mask the fishwires for a realistic effect.
Now, the shopping carts were a bit more down to earth done. We just had two guys on the floor moving the shopping carts and I chose a framing of the image so that you couldn’ts see them.
Early in the production process the Disconnect team brought Charlie Harary in for co – directing together with Gi Orman. I know Charlie for a while and it was so much fun to work with both together. Believe me, we made a lot of jokes going on and got the whole team cracking up ; )
Editing, special effects and graphics were done by BiG Productions. I was responsible for the color grading, one of my favorite specilties.
In terms of the look I wanted a highly stylized look. As you can see when the people were playing with their iPhones and Blackberry’s I color graded it in mute colors to emphesize the loneliness they are creating. When they realize the absence of their families and friends and turn off their phones I oversaturated the colors and shifted them towards the color spectrum of the sun light in order to give it a more vivid and happy feeling because they are now connecting with each other. Its important for me to express emotions through colors and amplify a certain feeling that I want my audience to experience.
It was a great campaign that in the end had hundreds of thousands of hours of disconnection pledged. Thanks to Ohr Naava for bringing this awareness to the forefront.
I’m a gusher – emotional, excited. People will tell you how easily I cry.
And also how enthusiastic I am. I’ve written before about how I just love Shmuel’s film work and how I just love Tzipora Harris’s Clarity class (formerly the 40-day prayer class).
Well. Now, for the first time, here they are. Combined.
I just love the starkness. It gives you that feeling that you have when you’re alone with Gd. In a big, dark place, but also warm and held.
Okay, I’m sappy. Here’s how Shmuel improvised the set and lighting.
What do you think of the video? Let us know in the comments below. :-)
Jooz TV Commercial in HD here
Its been a long time, I know. We finally arrived safely in America and are very happy so far to be here.
With three children it was easier then we thought. All five of us are living in one room together, no joke. On top of all that my office is in the same space as well. But we manage. That reminds me of one story:
Once a man came to a Rabbi and asked what he should do in order to have peace with his wife. The Rabbi answered: ‘Move with your family into one room for three months and then move back’.
Thats exactly what we are doing right now.
Thanks to my in-laws who took us into there not very big house we were able to put everything together in order to start a life here.
In the meantime I have worked on a couple of projects right now. One of them is a image film about Chai Lifeline, an organization that takes care about cancer children. We worked in conjunction with the NY based company Big Productions, founded by Gidon Orman. It was challenging since we had a very limited amount of time for filming the scenes. In the end it all worked out. I will post the video soon here.
In the meantime my Tokina 11-16 f2.8 lens arrived and I promised you to give you an update. I waited for this piece of gear for over two months. Its sold out everywhere and I’m lucky that I got one.
This 30s commercial you see above was done after a request from Ami Tamir, the founder of Jooz TV. He wanted to have something super short to tease people to go to his site and check out the other movies. Here is his site.
Jerusalem’s People
A propos site. I have redone my site. Here it is: www.ShmuelHoffman.com
Have a look. I changed the design and the UI quite a bit. I hope its easier and even more exciting to browse through our video clips.
This video holds a special place in my heart. As I wrote in my post for last year’s Aish Center NY video, the Aish Center in NY played a big role in my becoming religious and moving to Israel. It’s always exciting for me to hear of the amazing people who have changed their lives for the better thanks to Aish, and the awesome things they are doing with the newfound sense of purpose that some of the classes give them. Aren’t these class titles so compelling?
-RQ: Relationship Quotient
-JSAP: the Jewish Social Action Project
-Inner Paradise Workshop
Just to name a few.
I actually wrote a script for this video before we began production. As my father always says, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” But of course, the reality of filming a documentary promotional video is that you cannot script it. One thing I admire about Shmuel is that he’s not sentimental about anything in the process, so if the script isn’t working, he tosses it, or if a great shot just doesn’t fit the edit, he cuts it. He has perfected the art of trimming the fat.
And I absolutely love the time-lapse shots. They really capture the feeling of New York and its daily cycles. When I see that train shot and the chugging music comes in, I’m reminded of when I first moved to NY, and I went to a party. I was worried about leaving on time to catch the last train. “You’re not in Boston anymore, honey,” said a friend of mine. “This city never sleeps, and neither does the subway.”
I mentioned to Shmuel when I saw the footage that he should film a cooking show–don’t the cooking scenes just make you hungry?
See if you can catch Shmuel’s cameo appearance in this one.
Midreshet Moriah is a post-high-school, modern Orthodox seminary for girls in Jerusalem. Shmuel’s made promo videos for seminaries before, but none like this. He wanted to create a new, modern visual association to accompany such an ancient topic as Torah learning. The result is an exciting, fresh approach that I think you’ll just love–because I do!
With each new production, Shmuel teaches himself more, pushes his limits, and brings it to the next level. This time he took his inspiration from fashion advertising, which is always on the cutting edge, because you can’t be 5 minutes ago in fashion. Giving a nod to the online world that most high school students – frum or otherwise – are familiar with, the concept for Shmuel’s animation in this video is appropriate for how so many of us get our Torah fix these days: on the internet.
But, our oral tradition is just that – oral – and despite getting great inspiration from online Torah sources, there’s no replacement for the sem/yeshiva experience, as Shmuel and I can attest. That’s what I love about being Jewish: being part of an ancient nation in modern times gives us access to the best of the old world and of the new.
Working with Rachel Slovin, the Berglases and Rabbi Mayer was a pleasure, and Evyatar Katz kept our Hebrew on its toes with his quick sense of humor! We had such a good experience with Midreshet Moriah; we hope this video brings them much success!
Now, after almost two months of production I’m posting this commercial. Ami Tamir, the founder of Jooz.Tv was impressed by my work and wanted something different then he would usually get from others. So he browsed through our work and asked for a commercial that has a look and feel like ‘NY’s People‘ but with a website animation like in the Moriah promo we did a year ago.
So we shot the thing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem asking people in the street what they think for them is love, spirituality, friendship etc. It was very interesting how differently people responded so differently. I wanted to capture their faces and their immediate surrounding that we would find them in. A face speaks so many languages. That was one reason I didn’t want to show the people actually talking. It would have taking away from the magic of this facial language. Humans focus very much on human faces and eyes and what they express. The goal was to attract secular people to Jooz.Tv in order to have them brows through dozens of videos that bring up discussion and ask questions about what spirituality is and why we are here.
I used for this production my Canon 7D camera and a 50mm 1.4 lens in order to get a shallow depth of field. I think its important that the viewer is able to focus entirely on the face with as little distraction as possible from the background. The timelaps shots were done with a zoom lens and my favorite compact camera the Panasonic Lumix LX3.
I was looking actually for some music but returned to a piece of music from my beloved band Sigur Ros from Iceland. I edited the music so it would fit the climatic feeling that it builds towards the end. I think I used four different songs throughout the clip and cut them together. As you know music for me is very important and I think I benefited very much from my former classical music education.
If you like Sigur Ros’ music you can get it here.
Shtar Music Video by Shmuel Hoffman. Watch it in full HD here
Life has been very crazy. Moving to the US and planing everything related to it, finishing up other projects, planing the new ones here and in the US and finally Pesach preparation.
But finally we got the music video done. Here it is. My very first one and I’m a bit proud of it because I didn’t know how it would come out. I admit its a bit simple but I wanted to test the waters. Now I feel much more confident to do more and crazier ones.
I shot this entirely on the Canon 7D in a little self made studio. About the post production process I wrote here.
Selfmade studio in the town hall of Beit Shemesh
It was amazing to work with the Shtars. Thanks guys again for having had so much trust in my abilities to do this. It was amazing how much Brad, Ori and I were on the same page when we edited the final together. What a fun experience. Thanks guys again that you were so patient with me.
I filmed 3 years ago in Mea Shearim, in the most religious neighborhood in Jerusalem for nearly 6 months for my own project. I have been always fascinated by this neighborhood not only because the people over there preserve a lifestyle that is hundreds of years old but also because of its controversy that it generates in Israeli society in particular and in the worldwide media in general. I was always curious who are these people over there behind their ‘black & white’ lifestyle.
One thing that was very surprising to me is when I heard how many filmmakers and TV crews tried actually to film in this neighborhood and were thrown out and sometimes severely hurt by the people because the people in Mea Shearim don’t like film crews to come into their neighborhood.
I don’t know why, but I was very well accepted overthere with my little Panasonic DVX 102 camera. They kind of saw me as their own and therefore I had a tremendous access into that world. I followed along with a Rabbi who showed me around in the neighborhood and gave me deep access to dozens of people and families. The plan was to make a full feature documentary. I funded this project so far on my own but unfortunately I was not able to continue with this project because of lack of funds. I approached several producers and people in the industry but I guess its something challenging to excite other producers about this topic.
Its a shame because its a very rare and unique situation that I have this access and trust of these people to get close to them and to be able to film them.
Gidon Orman from Big Productions NY, one of the most successful video production companies in the US for Jewish videos came half a year ago to me and asked me if I would be interested in working with him on a couple projects together. Of course I was interested and one project was a video for the fundraising dinner of the One Israel Fund.
We toured for three days throughout the country and interviewed different people and how The One Israel Fund effected their lives. It was amazing to see and experience how many people are actually devoting their time, their efforts and lives to live in the periphery so that we can have a homeland: Eretz Israel. The One Israel Fund is helping out with security equipment like cameras, night vision glasses, financial aid for security and first-response equipment to just mention a few of the manyfold things The One Israel Fund is doing.
For this particular project I worked as a DP and I used my Canon 7D. The post production was done by Big Productions in NY. The final cut includes the majority of what we have filmed together in these three days but Gidon also used shots from previous footage and news material.
I love working with Gidon. Its always fun and we really inspire each other with ideas and methods, we meet new people and have a lot of fun together.
I think this experience was also the kick-off for a longer working relationship to produce and create more videos together.
When we’ll move to NY we will work on a couple of other projects and I’m really looking forward.
It has been a while since I wrote here. Many things in my life changed since then. We got together with the major film and video people here in Jerusalem and we had an amazing meet up. David Komer created a little google group where we share our movies, critique them, inspire and helpeach other. Thats so much fun. Thats how I see how ‘competitors’ are suppose to work.
My wife and I came to a very hard decision to make last week. You know how much I love New York.
New York’s People
We were debating for quite a while to move to another country and to further my career. One of them that always poped up for discussion was NY. Last week me made the announcement that we’ll move to my beloved city. You might ask, why do you want to leave Israel? And I think the only answer that justifies a move is ‘parnassa’.
I got two offers that I was not able to refuse. I also looked over our clients list and many of our beloved clients are actually either in the US or in NY. So, I put one and one together and decided to be where the majority of them are.
We had such a wonderful time here and I was able to learn this new craft of video production here in Israel and I’m very thankful to each and every client to be patient with me because in the end you guys were my teachers. I started my career here in Israel, educated myself in the field of video production and on top of it I also could support my family. So a big big thank you to all of you and I’m sorry when I sometimes did drive you nuts because I was still figuring out how to built and maintain a business.
The good thing is that a career move like this doesn’t have the same implications anymore like, lets say 10 years ago. Through the internet we are all well connected and I want to continue to serve my clients here in Israel.
Yesterday I had the privilege to drive up to Beit Shemesh in order to shoot for a music video. Actually my first one. Shtar Music approached me a couple weeks ago. They wanted a music video featuring their song ‘Modeh’ in order to introduce themselves to labels and a wider audience. They said they are looking for quite a gritty look and something similar to their graphics and pictures that they already had promoted themselves with. I researched dozens of music videos and came up with an idea of shooting the whole thing in B&W with very harsh lights on location in order to achieve the look they were looking for. We shot the whole thing on the Canon 7D with my 50mm f1.4. This is my favorite lens because it blurs the background in a very soft and pleasing way. I’m also experimenting how I want to use shallow focus as a style element like painters are using it in their art. Its not just separating the important from the unimportant or guiding the eye to the wanted image part you want your audience to focus on, its also an expression, a feeling, a mood.
Brad and Dan
When we were in pre production I didn’t have much an idea except the look and feel of the song and the images. My friend Daniel Kaufman, a Hollywood commercial director said I should have a concept or better three. So we were thinking about this but not much appeared in our heads & hearts. I new I was relatively good in improvisation. I love it. I don’t own backdrops not only because they cost money and I have to schlepp them around, rather I love working with what I find on location. That takes care that my stuff doesn’t look always the same and that I’m always seeing the place that I’m shooting in anew. This is challenging and maybe for some folks quite dangerous since you can’t really predict what happens and how all comes together. I have been quite successful with this approach, thank G-d.
With this video I continued this process of improvisation though I had a visual concept in mind before hand. When we arrived on location I wasn’t surprised that everything would work out differently. Originally we wanted to shoot on white background. The room had only black painted walls.
So I put a Kino Flo behind the drummer, full power, and two construction lights on each side. Usually I don’t like them much because they are very harsh and direct lights. Even softened they are not really beautiful because the color temperature is awful. In this case they did very well. I shot everything in B&W in camera. So I wasn’t concerned about the color temperature. The harshness gave me a contrasty look that I was looking for.
I had so much fun working with Brad, Ori, Dan, Alex and David. They are just amazing guys. They gave me a lot of inspiration they are very dedicated Jews that follow not just the way of H’S but they implement it into their passion. Rap Music. Thank you guys for being a part of your band, at least for these couple of hours.
When Nefesh B’Nefesh made the call for Jewish videos to compete in the Israel in a Minute Video Competition, I told Shmuel to grab his camera and come out on the street with me to make this movie. He was worried that we would spend the month without an income, and I said, “Just do it. I know you’ll win.”
And he did. He told me his idea for the animation one night as we walked along Emek Refaim pushing Moishe in his stroller. He said, “It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it.” Indeed it was. He had to teach himself After Effects for this project, and since then, one of his favorite parts of a production is the graphics animation.
Since winning this contest, we have made more videos for Nefesh B’Nefesh and seen tons of Jews move to Israel. We are so grateful for the privilege of working with Rabbi Fass, Benzi Kluwgant, and Renana Levine, just to name a few of the dedicated people at NBN. They really are at the forefront of making aliyah a success for so many Jews worldwide, myself included. We would not be here if it was not for them. Keep up the great work guys!
And to all of you readers not in Israel—I want to see you here soon!
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