Setting up a second camera to capture the reverse angle as this window-cleaning technician pulled his van into the driveway and approached the residence, I thought, was a stroke of brilliance. Since we were shooting in early December, we went to great lengths to remove snow from the lawn and shrubbery and take down any Christmas decorations that might appear in the shot. Too bad we didn’t consider that our main shot would set up on the sidewalk, smack in the middle of the scene.

Reverse Angle - the crew stealing the scene from the sidewalk

For the final edit of this 2:00 video, we masked-out the crew on the sidewalk and creatively cut between camera angles, so that only one person appeared in the scene.

We’d rather have our pencils poised over a production schedule or an edit desk than tweaking and re-tweaking our website.

We’ll keep our recent work here, where it can be updated weekly with:

• a brief description of the project
• any special circumstances or challenges encountered
• anything of possible interest regarding the shoot
• a link to the video

Comments, encouraged.

Our HD point-of-view cam allowed us to not only follow him up the ladder for some over-the-shoulder closeups, but let us get some extreme footage of bed bugs caught in the act of biting.

The result was 13 short Web videos, ready for the firm’s YouTube channel.

Produced and directed by Trent Tomlinson (another MSU Grad), lots of the budget for this video went to the folks at Southfield’s Postique post-production studio.

Trent had a passion for special effects and I had a passion for Day-Glo spray paint. I guess the most polite thing you could say is that neither looked quite as good in the final product as they did in our imaginations. But, don’t bother being polite – enjoy it for what it is… my first real world video experience. It won an award – an “Addy” for Excellence in Video. It also got me hooked on video.

I followed the Circle of Friends team on their 150-mile Bike MS Mid Michigan Breakaway with a Sony HXR MC1 strapped to my helmet – looking forward on the way out and backward on the return. For this story of our fundraising ride, I locked into the concept of an “open letter to Amelia” – the two-week-old daughter of team captain and founding member, Tanya Nordhaus.

While the last Circle of Friends video featured footage accelerated to 1200%, this time I slowed down most of the shots to achieve a dreamlike sense of our vision of a future ride.

Again, the most critical ingredient: a call to action! Because you don’t think we’re out here doing this for our health, do you…? We’re doing it for the 18,000 people living with MS in Michigan.

And, speaking of action – take some yourself: DONATE HERE  or view all CIRCLE OF FRIENDS’ VIDEOS

Flip Video calls it the “Action Tripod,” but, once it was velcroed to my bike, it had a little more action than I would have liked. Every crack in the pavement seemed to morph into a serious speed bump and my nifty little HD Ultra jiggled like a Baywatch beach bunny. So much for a bike’s eye view of the training route that the Circle of Friends team follows as we prepare for the Bike MS Tour – a 150 mile ride to raise funds for the National MS Society.

Rather than simply delete mile after mile after endless mile of shaky footage, I accelerated the view by 1200%, applied a posterization effect and used it as a background motif for random scenes and interview soundbites from an original interview with Circle of Friends team captain, Tanya Nordhaus, conducted in 2008.

After adding heavy breathing and heartbeats to the soundtrack, I added the most critical ingredient: a call to action! Because you don’t think we’re out here doing this for our health, do you…? We’re doing it for the 18,000 people living with MS in Michigan.

And, speaking of action: DONATE HERE  or view all CIRCLE OF FRIENDS’ VIDEOS

Part of the package was a VNR – video news release – that would include soundbites from Dorothy, from her son and some of the Inn’s most devoted guests. We visited a couple days before our interview to shoot exteriors of the building; then, on the 20th, we followed Dorothy through the kitchen and into the Edelweiss room for a fascinating interview.

A VNR is typically made available to media outlets without a voiceover track, while this version includes a reading of the accompanying script. Charlotte Fisher - who recommended 248 pencils for this gig – was scheduled to record the voiceover. She had a head cold – so I filled in.

In this instance, Serials Solutions was announcing that Hathi Trust had chosen their Summon™ web-discovery service to enable students and faculty to search of a collection of more than 8.4 million volumes of digitized scholarly works. Hathi Trust’s executive director, John Wilkin, was to speak via Skype to an audience at a trade show reception in Philadelphia. Just in case, this pre-recorded version was on standby.

This was my backup plan: a few unscripted takes while we got the teleprompter up and running. John thought he was rehearsing – so did we. Ultimately, technology wasn’t on our side and we never got the prompter online, but we were able to edit John’s comments into a three-minute piece that could also serve as a freestanding video for Serials Solutions.

Jeff Borisen – a colleague at Gale (formerly known as: “My Day Job”) – asked if I was available Valentine’s Day weekend to document his participation in a makeover promotion in Macy’s cosmetic aisle.

Jeff’s a still photographer with an impressive and growing portfolio. Here’s his website: http://www.jeffborisen.com/

He was there to provide complimentary fashion photography to Macy’s customers who had their makeup done that day.

When I arrived, Jeff had already deployed his portable studio – lights, background, scrims – and was standing by as the first customers were getting their makeovers. I followed Jeff for the next few hours as he coaxed smiles from his beautiful subjects and helped them choose their favorite pose.

Afterward, I put together this minute-plus piece.

Sometimes it’s hard to know if a concept will be successful until all the elements are complete and combined – that can be especially labor-intensive. And nerve-wracking.

This video for an iPhone/iPad app aimed at college students included: an iPhone marching band, cheerleaders yelling the names of the ten most-used College team nicknames, search results and screen captures for each name, three voices [Stadium Announcer, College Orientation video voice, Coach] and some specifics on how a user can log-in to their university library.

The result was popular with attendees at the American Library Association and Association of College Reference Librarian conferences in January and March 2011.