By BizVid co-owner, Caz Taylor

Writing to you, as a business person, I suspect you have more question marks than exclamation marks in your plans for maintaining and growing your company in these “COVID-ified” times. In many ways, you may feel that the deck has been unfairly stacked against you and fellow small businesses. Perhaps it has been.

Please allow this brief blog entry to serve as an encouragement. An inspiration. A motivation for you and your organization’s enhanced success moving forward.

Sometimes, the best communications tool is to use examples and stories of others learning to survive and even thrive in antagonistic environments, as we are in. May I draw your attention to a beloved friend of my partner, Bill Gruber, and mine? This person and his “roaring twenties/mafia themed” restaurants, Notorious Burgers, are located in Carlsbad, California. His name is Brian Gruber.

You have likely observed that Brian’s last name is the same as my associate’s last name. Partner Bill is Brian’s father. This relationship puts us in a position to observe, provide video support and otherwise encourage, when possible and appropriate. This relationship gives us firsthand knowledge of the ebbs and flows in a promising business model and the threat of seeing a great idea snuffed out by a debilitating pandemic and less than compassionate regulations.

Bear with me as I present the story and provide a closing “moral to the story” to end this blog. If the “business closing” plague crippled commerce, the seemingly unfair local and state regulations nearly terminally strained the comeback of many businesses like yours and Brian’s.

Brian is one of the most creative and resilient business owners I have seen. As are you. To people like him and you, devastating challenges should really be taken as exhilarating opportunities to give you benefits and approaches which will separate you from the competition and enhance your success, rather than hamper it.

I will give you two examples born by Mr. Gruber and his restaurants. Government mandates to restrict inside dining afforded Brian the opportunity to expand his primary location by enhancing his tables and service to include an outside experience. This was presented to customers not as an inconvenience, rather a benefit of taking their dining experience “to the street,” almost literally.

His second location was within a “restaurant row” kind of a setting named the “Windmill Food Hall.” While the whole restauranteur clientele braced for the impact of COVID restrictions, and many closed down, Brian made lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. Instead of being “grilled” by restraints of COVID and government bureaucracy, Brian’s strategy turned to “barbeque.”

Discovering there were no longer any restaurants in the area offering barbeque, Mr. Gruber altered his menu to command the attention of hungry and cooped up diners. He revisited his menu and marketing approach when he realized he could tastefully corner the “barbeque” market. This decision and his flexibly creative strategy is being met with resounding success.

By BizVid Communications Partner Caz Taylor

Through the life of your business, you have likely experienced challenges which war against your greatest success. The Covid-19 issue is just another such combatant, how be it, more robust than many of the others.

Take heart. The values that have proven themselves successful in past combats will pay off in today’s battle for your company’s surviving and flourishing.  Here are a few top-of-mind traits employed by successful women and men, along with their businesses.

Keep in mind that these BizVid Communications viewpoints are from personal observations, and less from today’s bloviated and so-called facts. This point of view, however, comes from a faith and confidence that doing what is right within your business acumen will win over the elements that threaten your company’s failure.

We are reminded of ancient words of wisdom, the likes of which will be the springboard for this blog. Hopefully, they will be a springboard for your heightened success in contrary times. By paraphrasing, the saying goes: “Displaying the heart of godliness will produce fruitfulness in our lives (and businesses): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

The last sentence in these words of wisdom is most curious. Neither the constitutional laws within America, nor the greater, supernatural laws of the universe violate the aforementioned precepts.  This should present an added comfort as you decide your best ways of sustaining and even expanding your business within troubled times. Though nay-sayers may challenge your proactive business decisions, if the annotated precepts are followed, “there is no law against them.” Being bold and confident in these times will carry great promise of reward. Watch and see.

While the nine precepts mentioned carry great weight and promise of success for you and your business, this missive will focus on only two of them. This duo are perhaps the most difficult to achieve and maintain, which makes them all the more important to your success.

I am speaking of your application of “patience” and “self-control.” As the current threat abates, we are likely to see the landscape strewn with large numbers of businesses in ruins. Two of the most significant causes of this ruination deal with a lack of business patience and self-control of the leader(ship).

Patience. What is the most truncated version of your business which can survive? I am reminded that many of today’s great organizations began in someone’s garage. What is your equivalence of that garage? Is it a single room office? One-desk? One clipboard? One faithful vision? This may not be a time to fully abandon the ancillary elements of your earlier successes, rather prune them back for a season. A pruned tree will be more fruitful when the season changes. Keep your relationships with the people who helped you become successful in the first place. Though those relationships may need to be in storage for a season, as the promises of fruitfulness come back, so can the fullness of those relationships. Nature would suggest that this pruned tree will become even more fruitful. Patience, indeed, is a virtue.

Self-control. The operative word here is “self”. One rarely can command full control of others. You, however, carry the clear responsibility for controlling yourself. Your perseverance or lack thereof in light of YOUR company will either help relaunch your success or assure its failure. Winston Churchill was credited with saying “Never (never, never) give up.” We are reminded of a cartoon showing a troop of soldiers trudging over barren dunes and across the desert, with the leader saying, “I give up. Let’s go back.”  From the cartoonist’s vantage point, we see a beautiful oasis just on the other side of the knoll which inspired the troop’s retreat. This troop leader is you, my friend. Your reenergized success is much nearer that you can even imagine if you never give up.

In this brief BizVid Communications blog, we reveal a secret to success which we have observed in some of finest businesses and the most endearing people throughout this nation, and world.

Simply put: focus yourself and your communications based on what you would like to be, rather than what you are not. The following insights embrace our personal work ethic. We hope you find them helpful.

As the whole world tries to find its way in the midst of troubling, even contrary times, there are a few communication techniques that have proven to outlive the braggadocious, self-elevating, often demeaning babble that one hears (and sometimes self-professes) as businesses like yours strive to survive.

Over the decades, BizVid Communications has worked with a variety of people and organizations. Businesses whose actions exhibit a level of contrition, humility, and concern for others have enduring staying power. Businesses with more-critical and less-compassionate attitudes for others may find that their successful days numbered.

A prophet once said: “A word fitly spoken is as ‘apples of gold in pitchers of silver.’” 

Our present day interpretation: “Choose your words kindly and wisely when communicating with others.”

This also supports a well-known quote from Bambi’s friend Thumper who said, “If you can’t say nothin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

At BizVid Communications, we have dedicated our company’s principles to giving everyone with whom we work (staff, contractors, and clients) the benefit of the doubt.  We find grains of goodness within all aspects of our production crew, and we expand on those as we communicate to achieve a common goal.

Sometimes it may seem that the human psyche seems to relish hearing about only the bad stuff, it’s been our experience that positive and sustaining messages are tied to what is actually good and helpful for humanity.

Someone once said that when you point the finger at someone or something, the majority of your fingers are pointing back at you.  Perhaps the best recipe for finding the good in others is by taking a brutally honest look at ourselves.

Have we gone out of our way to serve and help others, even when this high ground is best attained from being on our knees? We have found that when one has the attitude of elevating others, we ourselves are elevated. 

This opens the door for examining the difference between true compassion and humility versus and acting with self-serving, false humility and insincere compassion. As we each look in our personal mirrors of self-reflection, we should let our unfiltered conscience have its say. From personal experiences, when one must weigh between “what is right” against “what is best” for one’s self and company, “what is right” should ultimately win out.  I know this may be hard when faced with some business decisions. 

Bottom line is this: your peers and clients are watching. When you and your organization personify grace, compassion, and honesty, the truth-seekers who really count will sustain you and your company in challenging times. 

Welcome to another video tutorial from BizVid Communications a leader in video production for businesses, industry and health.  Today I’m going to show you how to put a border around a video clip and make it whatever size and color you want. 

First, scale the clip to 75%. Look for the “rectangle tool”, which is found in the dropdown box of the “pen tool”.  Next, click and drag to make a box around the clip that is larger than the clip itself.  This creates a graphic similar to text a graphic. 

Then, extend it to the length of the video clip.  Now, drag the video clip above the graphic and here’s the border… but we’re not done.  Next, select the video clip, then go to the motion controls “position” numbers to center the clip on the graphic.  This still needs work. 

For this I will use “scale” but must uncheck the “uniform scale” box.  Now I can manipulate the height and width independently.  First, be sure that the graphics clip is selected then; begin to adjust the scale and height settings to your preference.  To finesse, select the video clip and move to your desired position.

I will show you how to lock the two together but first, I want to change the color of the border.  Select the border, double click the “fill” box and change the color. To nest, select both clips, right-click, then “nest.”  It is now one clip and can be manipulated any way you want.  

And there you have it…simple and effective.  

Welcome to another BizVid Communications video tutorial.  The title of today’s Vlog is “How to Blur a Moving Subject in Premiere Pro.”  This video is an update to one I produced a few years ago called “How to Blur Faces in Premiere Pro.”  

The two ways I use to blur a subject are “Gausian Blur” or “Mosaic.”  Today, I will show you both because the process is different for each.  Let’s get started.  I placed in the timeline a proud US Marine walking to meet another person but I’d like to blur her face.  First I will use the “Gaussian Blur” method. 

 In the Effects Panel I’ll type in the word “Blur” and Premiere will reveal all of the blur options available.  To be clear, you can use any of the “Blur’s” listed as they all look a little different.   But today, I’ll start with “Gaussian Blur”  then show you, “Mosaic.”   Next, I’ll place the“Gaussian” effect onto the video clip.  I can do this by double clicking the effect or, dragging it onto the clip.  

 Next, I need to select the mask tool that will be used to highlight the specific area to blur.  The’re three options:  “Elipse,” “4 Point Polygram,” or the “Pen.”   But, because I want to track and blur a face, I will use the “Elipse” mask.  As soon as I click on it, it appears in the program window.  Be sure that your play head is at the point where you want the blur to begin.  At this point you don’t see any blurring and won’t until I add it.  If I were to add it now, it would be difficult for me to precisely form the ellipse around the face.  

To form the ellipse, I will use these little square handles.  Once formed the way I want it, I will add the blur by increasing this number to about the 50 mark. Obviously you can choose whatever degree of blurriness  you want.  I’ll also add a slight “feather” so that there are no hard edges. 

Next I’ll begin the mask tracking process.  I can do that one frame at a time like this….or, by letting Premiere do it automatically like this.  The program is pretty good about keeping a precise track.  If it does start to go awry, you can stop the progress and manually adjust, then start again. One the tracking finishes, give your video a watch and see how it your “Gausian Blur” turned out. 

 The other method I talked about was using a mosaic to blur the subject.  So, I’ll type in “Mosaic” then double click to add it to the clip.  As you can see, unlike the “Gaussian Blur,” the “Mosaic” applies the effect to everything and  It’ll stay that way until I select a masking tool.  Again, I’ll use the “Ellipse” mask.  Next, I’ll reduce the mosaic effect to a point where I can more easily shape the ellipse around the face.  I’ll do that right here at “Horizontal” and “Vertical” blocks.  

Next, I’ll use the same procedure to form the ellipse as shown earlier in this tutorial.  Now that I’m done forming, I will add the mosaic effect.  Next, I’ll start the mask tracking…….and here’s the finished result.  As with “Gaussian Blur,”  If you have several points on a clip that need blurring, simply keep applying the “Ellipse” or any of the three masks as many times as necessary like this.  So, I hope this tutorial has been helpful.  Be sure to subscribe and also visit the BizVid Communications website to see the type of work we produce.  Thanks again and happy editing.