Well screw me silly, a “media” company in the ‘burg doing some pretty good work. CMR Studios is a video production company that’s been around for 22 years and I recently got a press release saying they had done some work for Hillsborough Kids Inc. (HKI) out of Tampa. HKI is a pretty rad organization that provides lots of great services for children, so being my normal asshole self I was convinced this CMR outfit probably screwed HKI into some cheesy video project that cost a bunch of money.

Wrong! This comes from the press release:

Studio president and creative director Mike Weber presented HKI with the concept of writing a script that was the blending of several true cases into the story of one child. The treatment would be done in a form parents can relate to: a storybook. More specifically, a pop-up storybook that would become a virtual set for the six-minute video. The live action actors would be inserted into the pages using green screen compositing. Every page turn reveals one of eleven scenes depicting: the Tampa skyline, the University of Tampa, a house, various interior settings, Busch Gardens and Lowry Park Zoo.

Well, that sounds like a cool idea, but certainly someone will screw it up. Wrong! In a totally un-Florida turn of events the video is actually pretty damn well done. Check it out here. There’s a cool little behind the scenes thing as well, check that here. Bravo to CMR, granted this isn’t some groundbreaking, super kickass, Academy Award stuff, but for the ‘burg I’m pretty impressed. And dammit, I think we need to congratulate people around here when they manage to avoid sucking.