But from a marketing perspective (which I, honestly, don’t think much about) I think it’s important to maintain this site to be somewhat up to date.  The stagnancy of my site could indicate to a potential client that I’m not doing much work.  I was pretty shocked recently to notice that on my Vimeo account (which basically serves as my online portfolio) I’ve only uploaded one new video ALL YEAR.  Now surely it’s not because I haven’t done any work this year, because on the contrary, I have been busier than I have ever been.  I think the reason that I haven’t updated Vimeo (or my blog site) much this year, is because of fears of seeming not “cool” enough.

For better or worse, I spend a good amount of time on Twitter and other video people’s blogs.  Those two forums, in my opinion, serve three functions: to be funny, to show people how cool you are, or to make people jealous.  (That pretty much sums up social media in general, I think.) And I think when I look at a lot of the work that’s kept me busy this year, I often think it’s not cool enough to share.  I don’t get paid to climb mountains with my camera or film hot girls at 1000fps, so in contrast, a lot of what I do could seem less cool.  So, with this attitude, my online persona on my website, which could be the make or break point for a potential client, basically looks like I don’t do anything anymore.  And that’s bad.

So I’m going to make a point to change that, and share more of what I’m doing.  Personally, I like to read to about all sorts of projects that people are working on and hopefully some people will here too (you still there, Mom?).

So with that, here’s a little recap (in frame grabs) of some of what I’ve been up to this year, cool or not cool:

I shot a video with a very inspiring group of people at a construction company in Poughkeepsie, NY.

I did a bizarre pro-bono job with Shotgun Media in Boston, which has led to a great relationship with a lot of continued (and paid!) work.

I shot a successful campaign video for Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

I shot a couple segments for the Today Show.

I shot my seventh 48 Hour Film Project.

I DPed some web videos for Home Goods.

I shot A LOT of interviews for a project for a private equity firm.

Nothing I’ve done this year will become the next viral video or get linked on Gizmodo, but I should get past that.  I do love what I do and feel very fortunate to make a living creating video.  So that’s worth something.

(Right, Mom?)

This is the third project I’ve done for Rosie’s Place, and this one was shown at a 1500-person fundraising event they had this week, where they raised over $400,000 (which exceeded their expectations by $100,000).  They are certainly an inspiring organization to work with, as they do a lot of good for the impoverished women in the community.  I often joke that my job is not curing cancer, but when I get to work with organizations that are doing work like this, I do feel like I am helping them achieve their goals.  (And actually, I recently did work for a company that IS working to cure cancer, so….)

There were some challenges on this project (as there are on most jobs).  First was the logistics of the schedule.  This all had to come together pretty quickly and our concept sort of came together as we were shooting.  That’s obviously not ideal, but was just the way it was this year.  It made for a few more editing challenges (as poor pre-production planning often does), but we made it work.  The past 2 projects I did for Rosie’s was largely interview based, but we decided to move away from that model this time.  We wanted to do something a little more like a PSA.  We also knew that we wanted to tie into the theme for their event this year, which was “The Power of Words”.  The framework that I used (which you’ll see in the video) sort of came together right before the second shoot and ultimately (I think) helped to hold the piece together, and just involved a last minute trip to Home Depot to get the necessary supplies.  The other big challenge of shooting at Rosie’s is that it is not the most photogenic facility, and also, a lot of the guests do not want to be photographed or filmed.  We are obviously very conscious and respectful of the latter issue, but it often created a shortage of people and activities to shoot.  On that note, shooting the video this year on the Canon 7D, did make things a little less cumbersome and I certainly felt (and looked) less intrusive.  I think that did make some of the women more comfortable, and worked to my advantage for the portrait shots I used at the end, because the women just assumed I was taking their photo.

Shooting with 7D, did allow me to work a little lighter and faster.  We had limited time and space (a lot of the rooms at Rosie’s are VERY small) to light much, so being on a smaller, faster camera worked out well.  We popped in a bounce card, or a small softbox if we needed to, but it was pretty run and gun for the most part.  Audio wise we recorded to a Tascam DR-100 with a Sanken CS-3e shotugn on a boom (for those curious).

The edit was a little more “effecty” than many of the projects I do, but I think it worked out well for this, and (hopefully) didn’t seem overdone.  Like most projects, there are certainly things I wish I had changed or done differently, but that’s always the case.  But the video went over very well at the event and the folks at Rosie’s Place were thrilled, so that’s really all that matters.

So check it out.  Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was hired as DP on this job, produced by Bill Parker of Hindsight Media. We made a 10-minute video for URWA (the Upper Raritan Watershed Association) and this is a 90 second “teaser” that we cut for them. URWA’s mission is to ensure the protection of the natural resources of the Upper Raritan Watershed through education, advocacy, land preservation and stewardship.  Check out more about this job on my blog.

We hired a guy from NYC who had a remote camera copter for a day to film some aerial footage of the area.  He pulled up in a small-ish hatchback and pulled out this pretty amazing rig.  It was basically a custom fitted remote control helicopter, with maybe a 5-foot wingspan, that had a camera mount that held a small Sony HDV camera.  He had a small monitor that was being fed a wireless video feed from the camera that he could watch on the ground, as he operated the copter and camera remotely.  It seemed to take quite a bit of concentration (in fact he made it clear that we were to keep our chit-chat to a minimum while he was flying), especially since he had two things to control at once.  It was a pretty cool thing to watch, but in the end I found the footage somewhat unremarkable.  Part of it was that the copter was made for a small camera, much smaller and lighter than our Sony EX-1s that we were shooting the rest of the project on.  The interlaced HDV footage from a single chip camera just did not seem to look nearly as sharp or vivid as the progressive XDCAM footage we were getting.  (He has since built a larger copter rig to work with an EX-1, so that would certainly be nicer).  The camera moves WERE pretty cool though and he did get some stuff that we used in the longer video, but in the end, I am not sure if it was totally worth it.  Our clients were happy with it, though, so that is what matters.

The only really big issue we had was that we shot a lot of our interviews outside and had to contend with god-awful cicadas.  They would come and go, and sounded like a 747 flying by at times.  We remarkably were able to clear up quite a bit of it with some noise reduction plug-ins in Pro Tools, but it was definitely a challenge.

Bill cut a 10-minute video for URWA that was used for an event that they had in the spring, and it was a huge success, and helped them to reach their fundraising goals.  Last month I helped Bill cut together a little 90-second teaser that they could use for their website.  You can check it out here:

Our first big challenge, though, was the location, in that the room we had to work with for the first two days was tiny.  Like, really small.  We had to fit two cameras (with operators), three actors, and Charlie directing, with his monitor setup.  The clients were in an adjacent office, watching on a second set of monitors, and we had a script supervisor (to make sure the HIGHLY technical script was stuck to), and a teleprompter operator.  We used the teleprompter off the camera, which fed an LCD screen on a stand that we could move into the eyeline of the actors.  The script was so long and technical that the actors HAD to to stay on script, so having the prompter was essential (as memorizing would have been out of the question).  Fortunately lighting was supposed to look like an office (which we were in), so we could supplement the existing fluorescent lighting with two Kino-Flos mounted to the ceiling.  These work great, as they are smaller and much cooler than typical fresnel lighting (which would have turned the tiny room into a sauna).  Between the two Kinos and a large piece of foamcore for bounce, that was all we needed.

On the third day we were in a much larger conference room, and this is when we took advantage of all the props and furniture Charlie had brought.  We lit this space with a mixture of Kinos, Arri fresnels, and China balls (again, to supplement the existing overhead lighting).  We had two setups in this room, but the bulk of the shooting on this day was the on-camera narrator/host.  This could have been our second challenge.  There was A LOT of script for him.  And it was very technical, but thank god we had a fantastic actor who blew threw this stuff, and was very good at reading off the prompter.  Regis suggested a technique I had never done, which saved us a lot of time.  We setup the second camera right next to the main camera (which now had the prompter mounted ON it) to film the wider shot, and keep the main camera as the tighter shot.  Even though the actor was not looking right down the lens of the wide shot, because it was wider, you couldn’t tell, and it gave us two angles at once, which saved us at least a couple hours.  Great thinking, Regis.

The videos that Charlie produces for this client are primarily for an international market (often getting subtitled in dozens of different languages), so the output is Standard-Definition PAL format DVD.  For this use, the client prefers 4:3 (instead of letterboxed or widescreen SD) so while we were shooting in 16:9 HD PAL format, we output 4:3 to the preview monitors.  After offloading all of the footage and archiving it in it’s HD original format, we downconverted all the footage to PAL SD (DV) for editing.  Even with the format conversion, it was still faster than capturing tapes in real time, so working with the EX-1 made sense (plus the image quality is so nice).

Overall it was an enjoyable shoot to work on.  I really appreciate working with someone like Charlie who puts an emphasis on quality production values for ALL of his clients, no matter who the client is.