Beginning with pre-production, when we budget, develop ideas, storyboard and schedule the shoot and editing time, we are always aiming for the highest quality product without making the crew too big or breaking the bank.

We have formed a strong relationship with a network of trustworthy and experienced producers and crew members.  They will treat your vision with passion and will help you deliver an effective message.

Following preproduction we are ready to start producing, shooting and editing.   We do things by the book and organized so permits, insurance certificates, and all required equipment and crew are always present so no time is wasted and we can do what we do best:  to tell stories that motivate and provoke action.

Just bring us your ideas and we will develop and drive them through completion.

Our aim is to deliver videos that are professional looking and effective.

“Mauricio is always a pleasure to work with. You can rely on him to get videos and edits done on time and looking great. I’d recommend him to work on any video project.” Marianne Magno (Fitness Magazine)

As we work to get your projects finished you are always kept updated through the use of Mediasilo which you can access directly from our site.   There you can review and make annotations on the footage and draft edits.   We will work with you until you are completely satisfied with the result.

You can also come to our place or we can go to yours and sit down together during the editing process.  We can get pizza and enjoy the collaboration.  When we need to record voice overs we set up a quiet environment with monitors and microphones.

We work on Apple computers and use legally licensed up to date software and hardware.  Until recently we edited on Final Cut Pro but now we are in the process of adapting our workflow to Avid and Premiere.  For Graphics we use After Effects, Photoshop and Motion.  For effects, we use the above mentioned softwares together with plugins from Boris FX (Continuum Complete 7), Digieffects (Delirium), Noise Industries (Fx Factory), Red Giant (Magic Bullet Suite, Trapcode Suite, and Keying Suite), and many more.  For color correction we had been using Apple’s Color and more recently started using DaVinci Resolve.   For encoding we use Sorenson’s Squeeze, Telestream’s Episode, Apple’s Compressor and we like to use Matrox Max to speed up processing time.

When we can not produce all the necessary components that make the video we go for micro stock resources online.  For stock photos, illustrations, video footage, sound effects and music we like using fotolia.com, stockphoto.com, pond5.com, revostock.com, audiomicro.com, and you license.com

We mix our  aesthetic sensibility and knowledge of technology to convey the messages in an artistic and effective way.  We work with our clients from production to create a feeling, mood and tone.  We always aim to achieve those goals in a practical, economical and safe way.

We try to keep it small and practical when possible and use our own equipment to minimize costs, however when the situation requires it, we will rent the necessary equipment and hire the necessary crew to operate it.  We are insured for rented equipment, making it possible to accommodate for extra equipment requirements.

The lighting kit that we own is small but flexible and portable. It fits in the back of a hatch-back car and can easily be rolled in to any location.  It includes everything that is necessary to capture small scenes, like interviews, product demonstrations, how-tos, fashion, beauty, fitness, and corporate videos. It is made up of power efficient Kino flo Divas, Dedolight fresnels and soft lights.  Also in the kit are not so efficient but low power Chimera lights and soft boxes, and Lowel floods and open faces that can safely be plugged into most house sockets.

Mauricio Soto has spend a great part of past 7 years working as a digital tech in many photo shoots in studio and location.  Before that Mauricio worked as a video engineer /video playback / video assist in feature films, most specifically facilitating and providing monitors to the director and crew.  Mauricio is accustomed to working with art directors, photo editors, photographers, directors and producers helping them achieve their creative visions.

Interactive media is the service in which we aim to encapsulate all our other services.  We know the future of media is interactivity, and envision the audience controlling the content to the point of being immerse in it and being creators of the content themselves.  Our goal at Above All Productions is to be part of this experience by providing the elements of story telling that need to be ready and at hand for the audience to unfold their own experience.

Interactive media is an ever-growing field in which we will be working hard to experiment and produce new ways of entertaining, educating, and communicating.  In the works are projects involving 360º video and photography, as well as apps for mobile devices.

We don’t pretend to be expert web designers or programmers, but we honestly make an effort to keep up with the times to be able to communicate with the experts.  We keep an interest for the technologies used in interactive platforms like websites, social media networks, apps, games and mobile devices.  Our goal is to keep learning these technologies while experimenting with them.

We want to get inspired and be ready to communicate with programmers, techs, and designers to produce interactive content and grow our business into the future of communication.

As a web designer, Mauricio Soto has designed simple but effective websites for photographers, restaurants, blogs and individuals.