August - September 2007

September 25, 2007 We've had a busy couple of weeks!  The shoot on Saturday for Pride Industries for a video for First 5 Sacramento went really well.  We worked with 10 extremely talented and well behaved children from the Galena Street East International Children's Chorus.  Plus, we had the pleasure of working with Emily Schlauch, a wonderful 16 year old young woman who led the children through various activities.  We've got a couple shoots here and there this week.  James has been busy with one of our newest clients, Jim Longacre, who is busy promoting his credit repair software, Recreditpair.  At the end of the week, we're heading down to San Diego for a shoot this weekend to support a WebStorytellers project. 

Keep your eye out for some new videos in the Portfolio coming soon.

September 16, 2007

SIMZ owners are back and working at the speed of light!  We have a ton of video projects going on right now - both upcoming and finishing up. James is just getting back from Cincinatti, Ohio, where he was doing a shoot for WebStorytellers.  Last week was full of miscellaneous shoots here and there, including a follow up shoot for American Scale Trader.  This week will be spent mostly on editing current projects.  The week will end, however, with a big production that we are doing for Pride Industries.  We'll be producing a 15-minute fitness/nutrition video for kids that will be used in the First 5 Sacramento parent kids that get sent home with the family of every newborn in Sacramento.  It's an exciting opportunity to produce a video that highlights kids and we're excited about the results.

The most exciting news is that SIMZ owner, Leslie Simmons, is completing her final week at Child Action, Inc. Leslie has worked at Child Action, Inc. for four years and is sad to go, but duty calls at SIMZ.  Leslie will be on board full time to play a project management role, as well as continue the many other things that she helps out with at SIMZ (video production, editing, producing, writing, bookkeeping, marketing....).  SIMZ really feels that with both owners committed fully to the business, we will really be able to provide better customer service, complete jobs faster, and have a more robust company. 

August 29, 2007

SIMZ Owners are treating ourselves to a little bit of R&R! We flew down to Zihuatanejo, Mexico for about 10 days on the beach. I am actually writing this little message as I have found some time to actually remember to write a news piece! We are taking the time to relax and enjoy our toes between the sand. We have a beautiful house with a view of the bay and the sound of waves crashing on the beach. It's wonderful! The technology of today's world allows us to stay in communication with current and future clients which means that we can "never really get away..." but as small business owners, so is life. We would much rather have to do a little work on our vacation than not take a vacation at all! We had a little trouble getting through "aduana," or customs. The huge hard-case that we brought (that usually contains a camera) had about nine hard drives, cables, USB, etc. in it. The customs officials were a little worried that we were going to sell our equipment. We insisted that the equipment we had would be of little use to anyone but us (and our precious clients), but we still had to drag our 7 bags aside, fill out some forms, and promise to return to customs when we leave the country to show that we leave with everything we came with.

James is currently going through our editing system and cleaning up all of the hard drives, deleting files that date back to LAST YEAR! We run around so much from project to project that it's sometimes difficult to find time to do "maintenance." This free time is precious and much appreciated!

August 24, 2007

SIMZ has a new, revamped website! Although our frequent visitors may not notice the difference, we have modified our Portfolio section to include Categories (Television, Corporate, etc.). This allows us more flexibility in showcasing additional projects so that we can demonstrate the broad away of services we offer.

In addition to the Portfolio modifications, we have also created an entirely new html-based site. If you're reading this page right now, you are on our html-based page! This site allows for those that do not have flash installed on their computers to view our site. Even more importantly, it enables the search engines to index our site and (hopefully) our site will gain more ground on the search rankings. If you're interested in checking out our flash site, you can click on the button at the bottom of the page.

August 9, 2007

James is heading down to Los Angeles tonight for a two-day shoot for Drum Corp, International, which is in the middle of their final qualifiying rounds.

August 7, 2007

SIMZ is excited to announce that we have our first video intern! Kira Takeshita recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in film studies and is ready to dive right in for some great experience in video production. Kira is most interested in learning more about editing and SIMZ will be working with her to train her on the basics of Avid Xpress Pro.

August 1, 2007

The SIMZ marketing crew - Laura and Elizabeth - have been working hard to line up presentations to real estate agents and associations in the area to introduce them to the idea of using video to showcase the homes they are selling. They have taken their show on the road and have presented at a number of association meetings. They're excited to be meeting more real estate agents and others that are in the real estate industry.

July 1, 2007

SIMZ is excited to announce that it has recently installed a full-service audio production isolation booth! We are now able to provide excellent sound and engineering services for radio commercials, video and more.