Clear-Stache

Clear-Media announces Echograph, continues focus on innovation at Macworld

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:57:00 -0800

This year, the entire Clear-Media team traveled to Macworld in San Francisco. Having all hands on deck, we had the opportunity to show off some of our most exciting projects: Appetites, Easy as Pie, and our newest app, Echograph.

Before heading to Macworld, we offered some of our beloved Appetites fans a chance to attend Macworld and meet the team. It was so rewarding to meet the Appetites users and make new friends. Since its debut at Macworld in 2011, Appetites has expanded to the iPhone and iPod Touch. We also added a special pie edition to the Appetites family, Easy as Pie, featuring KCRW radio host and cookbook author Evan Kleiman. Who doesn’t love pies?

We were also excited to give the attendees of Macworld a sneak peak at Echograph, our newest revolutionary app that blurs the line between photography and video. Clear-Media took another Best of Show nod with Echograph. Attendees stopped by the Echograph booth out of curiosity, but as the demo progressed, they became more and more engrossed. The best part of our demonstration was their reaction to the app’s final feature. Often, they’d give us a look that went from disbelief to delight as they saw how it works. We think Echograph has a little bit of magic to it, and it was so gratifying to see the attendees concur.

Stay tuned for future announcements from Clear-Media and our imminent release of Echograph. This promises to be an exciting year of innovation at Clear-Media.

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:44:00 -0800

3 Telly Awards Go to Clear-Media

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:32:00 -0800

We are pleased to announce Clear-Media is the recent recipient of not one, but three Telly Awards! We won for work with Estee Lauder/Macy’s, Hampton Inn & Suites and Mattel. Check out the projects that won below. Be sure to have us show you the shiny statues the next time you’re at our LA office studio.

Winner of the Training category, featuring ConciseClick(make sure to roll over and click on items in the video):

Winner of the How-To Instructional category, featuring ConciseClick®:

Winner of the Public Relations category:

Fashion Director - Behind the Scenes

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:34:00 -0700

We’re in the midst of releasing 8 webisodes of a series called “Fashion Director” we created with Macy’s starring Clinton Kelly from TLC’s “What Not To Wear”. These videos follow the stories of eight different women in need of new outfits. Their style issues range from dressing age appropriately to going to dinner at The White House. Several are already live online, and you can watch them here.

The LA CM team arrived in New York on a Sunday evening to meet up with the NY CM team for the 12 day adventure. We prepped, shot, and posted episodes while we were in the city. The shoot took place in Brooklyn. Right near Cafe Grumpy.

We went back and forth shooting on the large loft-style set and the white cyc. Every episode was shot on the RED Mysterium camera. It’s a really stunning camera, if only slightly temperamental. But aren’t we all a bit temperamental?

The rest of the webisodes will be released over the next few weeks. We’re very proud of what we’ve created and wanted to share a little of what was taking place behind the scenes. First we thought we’d share with you what took place while we were working with Sasha. She was our guinea pig essentially, and a really lovely young woman to work with.

All of the dresses looked great on her, but it was up to Clinton to decide which dress was most appropriate to wear to a wedding. Sasha was a great sport, and we hope she had fun wearing her new outfit to the wedding. Watch the final video below to see what dress she ended up choosing.

We’ll continue to post more behind the scenes photos and maybe some videos in the next coming weeks. We shot the eight episodes over 4 rainy crazy days in Brooklyn, and we have the behind the scenes videos to prove it. There are a few surprising elements to each episode, which we can’t reveal just yet. You’ll have to watch the episodes every week to see just what antics take place.

Just to prove to all of you that we were in New York, here is a photo of Nick and Rachelle in Times Square. No photoshopping necessary!

CM - Currently

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:33:00 -0700

The first time you visit our office we will give you a tour. Well, we might offer you water or a soda first*. While you enjoy your cool beverage we will lead you through the offices; onto the green screen stage.

Quick peak into the recording room and through the post-production edit bays.

That’s it, tour’s over! Before we moved in we did extensive work to the building to get it exactly how we wanted it. (See previous posts) The previous occupants installed custom audio/video packages into homes. Sick homes. Definitely not my home. To put it into perspective, our entire post-production area fits into what was previously their sample home theater.

We have two editing bays, a recording room, voice over room, green screen stage, green room, two traditional offices, a conference room, and an area we call “the Big Circle”.

We all choose to sit out at the Big Circle from time to time to escape the confines of our enclosed offices. We also just like each other, so it’s nice to sit at the communal computers and get work done together every once in a while.

Below you will find some before and after photos of the work done at Clear-Media. It took a little over two months in the summer of 2009 to knock-down walls, drywall, paint, build the stage and finally move in. Once we were moved in it took more time to get everything in it’s right place. We still move things around from time to time, but we quite enjoy our little corner of El Segundo.

Once you’ve taken a look at the photos feel free to stop by for a visit and take a look in person. We’re very proud of our office, and the work that we do while we’re in it. We’d love to take you for a real tour and give you that soda* that I was talking about.

And because we spend a good deal of time creating videos here, we documented some of the construction/moving process in a quick two minute video. Complete with Nick busting some dry-wall.

*some people call this pop, not in Southern California, so please refer to it as soda before you visit.

Construction at 315

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:00:00 -0700

Before we moved to our current location we wanted to outfit it exactly to our specifications. So we had to Heidi Montag it a little bit. For those of you under the age of 35 who don’t get that reference, we had to do a little bit of work on the building to get it up to a size “H”.

Quite a bit of the place was demo’d, walls busted down, new framing, dry-wall, sliding glass doors, green screen stage… ok you get the idea. Not only are we fortunate enough to be sharing a building with Rockefeller Partners Architects, they also designed the major changes to our new space. RPA drafted blueprints and helped us find the right vendors to get the building exactly how we wanted it.

We [@nickalt, @aligross and @brianduffield] documented by taking photos throughout the process.

All these photos were taken before we officially moved in in July of 2009. We moved in while the stage was being built, paint was going up on the walls… generally it was a disaster area. But all the paint fumes we inhaled were worth it. Check out more of the construction photos. Coming soon; The video where Nick moves drywall.

135 Main Street

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:47:00 -0700

We’ve been in our current office for almost a year now. I want to take you through the evolution of our office(s). Clear-Media has been based in El Segundo since 2007. We were previously at 135 Main Street. Right next to a bar. In the afternoons we could watch the beer truck deliver kegs, and if we were working late enough in the evening we could hear music through the wall.

It was an escrow office before we moved in, hence the partitions and permanent desks. I can’t tell you how many times people came in asking for escrow advice.

For the amount of time we were there it was a great space for us. But whenever anyone had to edit or record music, which was a lot, it could get extremely annoying. Thankfully we have a sweet post-production set-up now with two separate editing bays, VO booth and recording studio, far from the other offices! Take a walk down memory lane with me and check out the original Clear-Media El Segundo office.

What is Clear-Stache?

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:08:21 -0700

Clear-Stash – verb – a collection of thoughts, opinions and advice from the Team at Clear-Media, stored in safe and public place (the internet) for future use, education and amusement.

Clear-Stache – noun – an invisible mustache most commonly found on females, men with regular shaving habits, and pre-pubescent males. Derived from the words clear (transparent, free of color) and mustache (hair growing on the upper of males and women who haven’t found a good esthetician).