Happy Valentine’s Day!

Or, I should say, happy LATE valentine’s day. Yesterday, we had a “cookie exchange.” A cookie exchange is when everyone brings different types of cookies, and then we share. That way, we could all taste a variety of cookies! And I have to say, they were delicious! We had cookies & brownies! Some were store bought, while others were homemade, but both were equally good! After about 20 minutes, we were dying from too much sugar.

Our cookie set up, with fall leaves as table cloth, with heart necklaces as decoration!

Cookies shaped like panda faces!

Do it yourself cookie designs!

 

I made a brownie with oreos & peanut butter inside. While I hate oreos, I know that many people do enjoy them. So, I made them anyways, and they were more popular than I expected. But, to be honest, I didn’t have particularly high expectations for them! But here’s the recipe in case you’d like to try them out yourselves! They’re easy to make and fast to whip up!

Well, we hope that you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day. Hopefully, it was fun & as “sugar high” as ours!

All About Action! (Jaimi)

Name: Jaimi

Job Position: Operations Manager

How long have you worked for Action?: 2 years

Interesting story from working at Action: One time we ordered a bunch of new equipment, and they all came in their own packaging boxes. They all came with long strips of air pillows. So we had a TON of them. So one morning, I knew it was just going to be Skip and me at work, so I laid out the strips of air pillows from the front all the way to the warehouse. When we got in the next day, the first thing we had was a popping race. We were both completely wiped out from racing. I’m pretty sure I won.

Hobbies/Interests: crafting, outdoorsing

Little known fact about you: I play World of Warcraft

If you could be anybody, who would you be & why?: Sabriel-I’d get to do magic, fight with swords, and have a musical knack too.

Who would play you in a movie about your life story & why?: Tina Fey, because I have a pretty goofy life.

What pet peeve drives you crazy?: People with square heads (lol)

Super Bowl Weekend

Yesterday was the Super Bowl game, and it was such a fun filled night. Some of us are slightly disappointed that the Patriots lost; others are ecstatic that the Giants won! But we understand. The fumbles were probably just from the nervousness of playing in the Super Bowl Game. There’s always next year. The halftime show also got mixed reviews, but we can’t believe that MIA flipped off the camera during the half-time show. The Super Bowl also means another thing: a ton of ads. One of the funniest ads was definitely the M&M one and the Honda commercial featuring Matthew Broderick, which got many people believing that there might be a sequel to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

 

Not only was this weekend a smashing success for the Giants, it was also for us! We rented out all of our plasma and LCD tv screens, as well as some projectors for the Super Bowl Game. Once we ran out of our biggest screens, “65 plasma, our customers started working their way down until we had no tv screens left. It was amazing. We definitely scored points all over Hollywood this weekend.

Share with us! What was your favorite Super Bowl commercial?

Story Time (from 2011)

Looking back at some of the things that we participated in, we wanted to share some of our fun stories. As a rental house for audio & visual equipment, we get some pretty cool and interesting jobs sometimes. And we just wanted to share some of those stories with you!

 

On November 22, 2011, we got a job at the Boys and Girls Club in Burbank. They had a special guest speaker, who you might have heard of. His name is Oscar De La Hoya. Yes! The amazing boxer! We set up our mics, and sat back and listened to him as he made an inspirational speech to the children. The appearance was sponsored by At&t, which involved them donating $5,000 to the Boys and Girls club. After the event was over, we even got to meet him! It was a fun experience!

 

 

On December 19th, we got probably the coolest job I’ve seen. We had to check that a building was sound proof so was blasted the building with 100 decibels of loud sounds and music. We brought 6 of our big speakers and had them lifted onto a crane and blasted the sounds as loud as they could go. Turns out, the building was sound proof! It was definitely the most interesting thing we’ve done in a while.

 

 

One of the last jobs that we got for 2011 was doing the sound for a Hungarian performance. We mic’d everybody up and did their audio using our speakers. The show was fun to watch and it was a 2 day-event. It was at a theater on the first day and a convalescent home on the second, both located in Hollywood. The show was 2 hours each day. We had a great time.

 

These were really fun experiences and we can’t wait for the jobs that we get that will be just as fun, if not more!

LA Weddings

LA Weddings are truly something special. Just like filming in Southern California, there are a wide variety of locations that weddings can happen in. Every type of location is within a few hours drive. There are beaches, deserts, mountains, and plains that are all within a 2 hour drive or less from Los Angeles. There are also banquet halls and location specific favorites (ex. Disneyland, arboretum). LA weddings are like no other city’s weddings, because there is the opportunity to have any type of wedding that can be dreamed of! And with the weather always warm and sunny, it’s almost impossible to choose a date when the sun doesn’t shine.

In LA, wedding planning can be fairly easy in the sense that there is almost everything here. There are a lot of great venues, catering places, florists, photographers, bridal stores, and wedding planners. But it also makes it slightly hard in the sense that there are so many choices that it’s nearly impossible to decide what to do unless you have a very clear idea of what you want. While, there are a lot of wedding vendors in LA, Action Audio & Visual is proud to say that we are also a wedding vendor. We offer wedding videography along with a variety of packages that will cater to a wedding of any budget and any size. Please feel free look at our wedding and engagement packages that we offer at http://www.actionaudioandvisual.com/events/weddings/

Post Sound Production

While we are mostly known for our rental equipment, we also have quite a few tricks up our sleeves! While yesterday I posted about our wedding videography, we also have another trick up our sleeve! We also do post sound production. Our post sound production’s head engineer is led by James Barth, who has done dozens of jobs, including Soul Fire Rising, Consinsual, Live Evil, and much more. For a more comprehensive list of his works, please check out his IMDB.

 

Our sound supervisor is led by Richard Mercado, who has completed almost 100 different jobs. His most popular works include Cane, Lizzie McGuire, S Club 7, Summerland, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. For a more comprehensive list of his works, please check out his IMDB.

 

They have done numerous projects together and separately. Our most recent project that has been released was “The Man in the Maze”, which is about four college students doing research about an Indian burial mound, which causes them to mysteriously get trapped in a maze followed by an evil killing spirit. This movie most certainly sounds scary to me, as do all horror movies.  Another project that will be coming out with soon is called the “Telling of the Shoes,” which is about a Manhattan dinner party that takes a dramatic turn. We are so excited to have worked on these projects and we can’t wait for our future endeavors.

BrideWorld Expo March 11th

There are many upcoming BrideWorld Expos in February, but the one that we are most excited about is the one on March 11th. The BrideWorld Expo on March 11th will be at the Pasadena Convention Center. It will take place on a Sunday and have 125 exhibits. Among those exhibits, will be Action Audio & Visual!

Like other Expos that we’ve been too, there is always exhibitions that we look forward to. The BrideWorld Expo will include musical entertainers, wedding gown fashion shows, and much more. One of the more interesting shows they will be having is a Groom’s Contest, which to-be-grooms “strut their stuff” to compete for cash and prizes. This expo will also include many give-aways and  door prizes. That sounds fun doesn’t it? Who doesn’t love free stuff?!

At the expo, Action Audio & Visual will be showcasing our specialty in wedding videography. We have done videography for many weddings and offer amazing deals and a variety of packages for any type of wedding. Our cost friendliest package includes 1 cinematographer for the ceremony and another for the reception for up to 8 hours of service, which comes with 2 DVDs with a “lasting memories” feature documentary edit. While our diamond package includes 3 cinematographers for the ceremony, 2 for the pre-ceremony,  2 for the reception for up to 10 hours of service, 60 photo montage sequence, testimonials by family and friends, 10 DVDs,  and a variety of documentary edits. If you are in the midst of planning, please feel free to call us today at (888)406-8164 for a free consultation. Or you can click here for more information about our packages.

Check out our demo reel as well!

Action Updates! #1

Next weekend, Action Audio & Visual will be helping out with the National Association of Music Merchants, NAMM, show! It’ll be at the Anaheim Convention Center from January 19-22. We are very excited to be helping out with the NAMM show because we love helping out people in our industry while giving a competitive and low price. The NAMM show is free, but you do have to register first! It’ll include a bunch of exhibitors, performers, and educational exhibition. NAMM just seems like a really fun 4 day concert. They’re starting from 6 pm Wednesday night, stopping at midnight, and then starting again at 9 in the morning the next day! This continues all the way until Sunday when they finally stop at 4:30 pm! This sounds intense & we’re so glad that we will be able to help!

 

The NAMM show seems to have a great food line-up. They’re having a exhibition in the morning while serving breakfast. They have also added a great new addition to their food line-up. An In N Out truck!! Doesn’t that make you hungry just thinking about it? They’re calling it the California Cookout featuring In N Out Burger!

 

We will specifically be helping NAMM in a very interesting way. They’ll be having a demo for a drumset, but it would be very difficult for the crowd to understand what the drummer was saying while he was doing the demo since there will be a ton of people there! So, the drummer will be equipped with a Comtek M-216 and the audience will be listening to him using individual Comtek PR-216. That’s such a cool way to do a demonstration while in a large room. It makes it so much easier for the demonstrator to insure that no information goes unheard!

 

Comtek M-216: click here for more information!

 

Comtek PR-216: click here for more information!

Action Goes to the Movies!

2011 was a great year for sequels. Eight of the ten top grossing movies worldwide were sequels or part of a series.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2 ($1,328,111,219)
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($1,123,746,996)
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($1,043,871,802)
4. Kung Fu Panda 2 ($665,692,281)
5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1 ($659,444,000)
6. Fast Five ($626,137,675)
7. The Hangover Part II ($581,464,305)
8. The Smurfs ($562,547,576)
9. Cars 2 ($559,852,396)
10. Rio ($484,635,760)

The only movies on that list which are not sequels or part of a series are The Smurfs & Rio. But after amazing box office reception, The Smurfs have begun talks of a sequel as well. This was most certainly the best year for sequels in the history of movies. But of course, there was an unfair advantage to all of those movies being amazing as well as their previous installations.

But 2012 shows no signs of slowing down as well. After reviewing the movies set to come out in 2012, it is very apparent that this is the year for the geeks and nerds.

For the geeks:
Underworld: Awakening (Jan. 20th)
The Avengers (May 4)
Battleship (May 18)
Men in Black 3 (May 25)
Prometheus (June 8)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (June 29)
The Amazing Spider Man (July 3)
The Dark Knight Rises (July 20)

Now for the nerds. Of course, this is only for avid book readers:
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (March 2)
The Hunger Games (March 23)
The Lucky One (April 20)
Life of Pi (Dec. 21)
World War Z (Dec. 21)
The Great Gatsby (Dec. 25)

There are many other movies that will be coming out this year that we suspect will be amazing. There is no doubt that this year will be filled with interesting movies. We are excited for the premieres, and are more than willing to offer our services to anyone in the Southern California area. We do camera and audio equipment rentals and post production.

Happy 2012!

Happy 2012 everybody! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday & New Years! We took last week off for vacation, but we’re back in the office now! We had a great New Years celebration & hopefully you did too! I’ve already made my New Years resolution; have you?

It’s amazing how fast the year flies by. 2011 was a great year for us. We got to meet new people and keep in touch with our old friends. This past year also showed us what the people wanted! We had two products that really seemed to stand out above the rest, and they were both cameras! Our most popular products were the Panasonic AG-AF100 and Sony PMW-F3. Let’s take a look at these all-stars!

 

Panasonic AG-AF100: This camera represents an enormous leap forward into affordable, cinema-quality video imaging. Providing all the professional features that videographers expect in an interchangeable-lens camcorder-manual video and audio control, variable frame rates, HD-SDI and HDMI output, and much more. The AG-AF100 not only delivers the image quality, versatility, and control that professional shooters have been clamoring for, but at a price well within most pro-level budgets. Click here to see more about the Panasonic AG-AF100.

 

Sony PMW-F3: Ths Sony PMW-F3 was 20 years in the making. It is part of the CineAlta 24P family of digital cinematography products and can support multiple frame rates, including 23.98P as well as S-Log workflows. It brings a true “film look” and superior image quality into reach for independent movies, pop promos, commercials and other applications. Click here to see more about the Sony PMW-F3.

 

 

So that rounds up our top super stars of 2011. We appreciate all of our customers & supporters and we hope that we can continue to build our relationships. But in case you are new to our business, let us also take this time to tell you about our services.

What makes us stand above everyone else is that customer service is one of our top priorities. We deliver and pick-up from anywhere in Southern California. We can canvas your site to help you decide what would make your event perfect. We can send people for any needs you may require. If you need a DJ, we’ll send you a DJ. If you need someone to set-up, we will send people to set-up. We are here for you step by step in your planning process.

Another special fact: we’re open on Saturdays!

So please call us today to speak to a rental specialist who can help you @ (323)461-4290 or toll free @ (888)406-8164