Back to his roots

Entrepreneur and seasoned storyteller Michael Kolowich returns to video filmmaking with renewed innovation and quality, with help from Adobe Production Studio software

Kolowich is a seasoned storyteller who knows how to persuade people and evoke emotions. He uses Adobe Production Studio to get his stories across in ways that move people and get results for clients.

When DigiNovations Founder and CEO Michael Kolowich creates a video program, it has a documentary feel, a classic style, and strong, persuasive appeal. Perhaps this is because he began his career working as a broadcast reporter whose job it was to tell compelling stories. Or perhaps it is because of his strong business and marketing skills and executive background, which includes stints in high-tech, publishing, and strategy consulting. As a seasoned businessman and storyteller, Kolowich knows what it takes to succeed at video, and he notes that one of the key elements to keeping his operation booming is an all-digital studio, equipped with Adobe Production Studio software.

"Each product in Adobe Production Studio is an exceptional product in its own right," says Kolowich. "But the integration of these products into a powerful suite gives me incomparable new power and lends greater efficiency to my business."

"Each product in Adobe Production Studio is an exceptional product in its own right. But the integration of these products into a powerful suite gives me incomparable new power and lends greater efficiency to my business."

—Michael Kolowich,
founder, DigiNovations

Kolowich’s style and business acumen are paying off. His video production studio is less than five years old, but he has already produced projects for high-profile clients such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston’s Museum of Science, Microsoft, eBay, AOL, Genzyme, Trinity Church Boston, and Massachusetts Medical Society. "We set out to tell the stories of New England’s great institutions, innovators, and educators," Kolowich recounts. "And Adobe is helping us achieve that goal."

Taking projects from start to finish

Kolowich and his team members start projects by shooting almost entirely in high-definition video (HDV) format and do all their own editing on networked Microsoft® Windows® workstations using Adobe Production Studio. Kolowich splits script writing responsibilities with his partner Paul Dewey, a network news veteran.

The company’s projects fall into two categories: Most of the company’s work is in business-to-business projects, where DigiNovations provides broadcast-quality digital video production, largely in the areas of technology marketing, corporate image, admissions and recruitment, capital fundraising, and training. On the other side of the company, a consumer operating unit called MemoryWorks Studios provides services such as family memory preservation, tributes and biographies, cinematic wedding films, and other family-oriented services.

Raising the bar

The recent Museum of Science project exemplifies the caliber of the work created at DigiNovations. The video is a fundraising and showcase piece for the museum—the second most popular tourist attraction in all of New England surpassed only by Red Sox games. The video explores the idea of what a science center needs to be in the 21st century and is being used to communicate the museum’s vision to help secure major donations.

The Museum of Science in Boston asked DigiNovations to help drive donations and explore what today’s science centers need to be. Using Adobe Production Studio, DigiNovations created a video presentation that inspired visitors and potential donors.

Kolowich and his team leaned heavily on Adobe Production Studio to create the project. They shot the entire piece in HDV and edited it in Adobe Premiere® Pro 2.0. The team then drew heavily on Adobe After Effects® to create animated diagrams and lower-third titles directly from the timeline using Dynamic Link. "We were able to see our After Effects work directly in the context of the final project before rendering it," reports Kolowich. "This enabled us to make smarter and faster creative decisions."

To present the film to audiences, DigiNovations designed a single DVD with a modular structure that could be played in a customized way for different types of audiences. The DigiNovations team created individual elements such as eye-catching, animated titles using After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro and then stitched them all together in Adobe Encore® DVD. The Chapter Playlist feature in Adobe Encore DVD enabled the team to create multiple play orders for the content, providing a customized experience without having to repeat content on the disc. The visual flowcharts in Adobe Encore DVD helped manage this complex authoring structure.

"Right from the start, Adobe Encore DVD together with After Effects helped us win awards for our DVD designs and made our clients’ work look tremendous," says Kolowich. "Adobe Encore DVD 2.0 is helping us take our work to a whole new level of richness and interactivity."

Integration for improved efficiency

Throughout the project, the team used Adobe Photoshop® CS2 software to prepare scientific and other photos for incorporation into videos and to easily manage assets using Adobe Bridge, the file browser that’s now part of Adobe Production Studio.

DigiNovations provides a wide array of services. Here, the DigiNovations team captured a surgical technique on video that was subsequently used to train other medical professionals.

"Adobe Bridge provides a handy way of managing assets across all the tools needed for a complex project," says Kolowich. "In addition to this major enhancement, there are other, subtler levels of integration, such as the consistent user interface across all the components of Adobe Production Studio, that really streamline our workflow."

Streamlining client reviews

During the production process for the Museum of Science project, Kolowich and the team used the Adobe Clip Notes feature in Adobe Premiere Pro to streamline client reviews. Using this feature, Kolowich can embed video into a file, e-mail the file to the client to review with timecode-specific comments, and then view comments mapped to the timeline. Because comments show up directly in the Adobe Premiere Pro timeline, it is easy to see exactly which frame of video the client is referring to.

"Adobe continues to bring world-class video-editing capabilities to the Windows operating environment, and that gives us a significant advantage, especially with many corporate clients."

—Michael Kolowich,
founder, DigiNovations

"In minutes, we can use Adobe Clip Notes to produce review copies of our in-process productions to share with clients, dramatically shortening the review cycle, increasing the opportunity for client input, and helping to ensure more accurate revisions," says Kolowich.

Mixing and matching

Regardless of the project, Kolowich appreciates the fact that he can use Adobe Premiere Pro to work in almost any format. For instance, for Microwave Radio Communications (MRC), the DigiNovations team created a four-minute video loop for MRC’s 2006 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) trade show booth that was shown on a large HD plasma screen. The team used Adobe Premiere Pro to convert footage in a variety of different formats, such as DVCPro HD and HDCAM, to a common HDV format for editing.

"Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 provides a major leap forward to the productivity and creativity of our post-production editing suites," says Kolowich. "For the first time, editing in HDV is almost as easy as standard definition video, plus we can mix multiple formats and output them all into a consistent format using Adobe Premiere Pro—an essential capability on the bulk of our projects."

Technology + business acumen = success

Although DigiNovations is only five years old, Kolowich and his team boast a wealth of high-end clients; a shelf full of regional, national, and international creativity awards; and no shortage of work. So often is he sought out for advice that Kolowich has created Video AdVisory, a blog for professionals in video marketing The company credits a portion of its success to its all-digital workflow using Adobe Production Studio to increase productivity and enhance the quality of final projects.

"Adobe continues to bring world-class video-editing capabilities to the Windows operating environment, and that gives us a significant advantage, especially with many corporate clients," says Kolowich. "By using the same operating systems, graphics, and file formats as most of our corporate clients, we eliminate the time-consuming challenges of standards conversion and compatibility troubleshooting. Kudos to Adobe for creating such a strong environment for corporate video production."