Green-screen dreams: New West Media produces custom videos for company websites.

• Author: Cote, Mike

Actress Alisa Vasquez looks into the camera and makes the pitch: vNews can help your company get its message out through custom-designed videos produced for the Web.

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In the short promotional spot, you might see Alisa walking by a spiral staircase, breezing through a spacious office or even floating inside a computer.

But she's really just standing in Jim McConnell's basement at New West Media.

Thanks to a revolution in "green-screen" technology, those once flat-looking backgrounds have been replaced with realistic three-dimensional settings that open endless possibilities for video production. Forget that fake cityscape behind David Letterman's desk on "The Late Show." Think the kind of computer-generated effects that fuel blockbuster films like "Spider-Man 3" or "300," meshing live actors with virtual worlds.

McConnell aims to help companies take advantage of those capabilities by delivering an easy and inexpensive way for them to embrace video and adapt it for marketing via the Web through streaming video, podcasts and e-mail bulletins, and for use at trade shows.

In the summer of 2005, McConnell, president of New West Media, began thinking of a way to offer companies the chance to create videos without the need for a producer or a fancy studio. He started refining the concept once he discovered Serious Magic, a California company now owned by Adobe that updated a technology a couple of decades old.

"The key part was that they combined the concept of green screen with 3-D animation," Mc-Connell said recently while he demonstrated the technology in his home studio in Golden.

McConnell envisions a business model that would have his company focusing mainly on post-production--the editing and packaging work that would transform raw footage into a finished one- or two-minute clip complete with graphics and music. New West provides the tools for companies to do much of the other work themselves.

And instead of paying $12,000 to $15,000 to commission a video, New West can help companies get the job done for $2,000 to $4,500.

Clients visiting McConnell's website, newwestv.com, can choose from among more than two dozen professional spokespeople--a talent roster that includes such local icons as newscaster Ed Sardella and Rocky's Auto commercial actress Audra Winn--and then choose the setting, graphics and music. McConnell contacts clients once they place their order via the website.

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"A lot of my...