Working for clients is always fun and typically pays very well but some projects provide a level of satisfaction that exceed the wildest of incomes. In this case, I’m talking about a tribute DVD I cobbled together for relatives as part of a Christmas Holiday present.

In 1992, I borrowed a VHS camera from my girlfriend’s brother and filmed my grandfather. That girl is now my wife and her brother Don is my brother-in-law.

Almost 17 years later, I rediscovered my VHS recording, digitized it, then while the parents were away on vacation, I went through their house and collected all the photos of my grandfather, Charles Schwartz - my mom’s father.

I scanned in old pictures from the 1930s, wedding pictures from 1961, and even found my very first photos in old scrapbooks from 1970.

With pictures and video in hand, I then created a Vegas project and started assembling the story. This was not a video project that was going to have lots of cuts and fancy effects as the goal was really to capture the feel of the man and what it was like to visit my grandfather on a Sunday afternoon.

At the time I filmed Charles at his home at 518 Mile Square Road in Yonkers, New York, he was 84 years old. In the resulting hour long DVD we covered all the big topics - from sex, first dates, jobs, goals, dreams, education, global warming, crime, immigration, discrimination, World War 2, guns, capital punishment, prostitution, gangs, and many chapters about various relatives (e.g., my sister, my parents).

I was frustrated at first with the production quality of the video as the VHS is not what I’m now used to with my triple-chip high-end digital cameras. It was also the first time I really filmed a documentary (without knowing that was what I was doing) and made the mistake of shooting into the setting sun streaming through the window behind my grandfather. Yet on some creative level, this “technique” actually worked (”happy accident”) and there are parts in the tape that are very clear but I digress.

Below is the four minute intro of that DVD as I didn’t want to try and upload a 3 gig MPG2 file to Google Video - as it was, this 4 minute intro was a 450 meg WMV file that took four hours to upload.

Lastly I should mention the DVD Architect part of the project. This allowed me to create a series of menus for the DVD with 62 chapter points. This way, if a relative wants to jump to that section of the footage that pertains to them, they can scroll through the menus and quickly jump to that chapter. This was a lot of work to set up (the chapters) but I think in the end will make it all the more valuable to relatives - especially, down the road.

Funny how the Universe works in that right after I completed this tribute video, I got a couple more client gigs to do similar for their families - what fun!

The Rosary Videos are perhaps my best videos to date and also perhaps the most creatively challenging project as well ..??..

It started simple enough with the Pastor saying, “Chuck, I’d like to film my church at prayer.”

Knowing that the audio for this project would be the lead (vs the visuals), I hired an expert at on-location audio recording so we had three mics set up - two stereo mics to capture the congregation and one mic for the Pastor (i.e., my Audio Technica 4041) and brought all three audio tracks direct into a laptop computer running Sonar.

The audio had it’s own issues which I’ll get back to, but the video was the really big issue. None of us had either filmed a Rosary, which is long (i.e., four sections each of which is 20 minutes long and repetitive) and almost like a meditative chant.

Initially we thought we would film the people, their hands, and the Rosary beads. Thus produce more of a year-book-like video, but once the Pastor saw ten minutes of the first draft of the edited DVD footage, he was not 100% happy with the outcome.

“I know I said let’s film my congregation, but after seeing this video of these people, we’ve kind of been there done that visually speaking. So, is there any way we could apply the screen-saver approach and show my people at prayer mixed in with the spirit of the Rosary? You, know. Some of those really nice sunset pictures and other gentle ambient pics along with the congregation?”

And there-in started my extended creative journey and back to the edit bay.

The Rosary has four sections - The Joyful, The Sorrowful, The Glorious and The Luminous - each of which has five sub-sections, and many sections that repeat (e.g., the Hail Mary 10x).

Some of these sections were seemingly easier to visually score than others - e.g., how to show The Sorrowful Mysteries without defaulting to Gothic or traditional heavy imagery? Jesus dying on the Cross is not a pleasant sight or thought yet in this video, my job was to make it at least compelling enough to pull someone through the entire piece yet also be prayer-like, so using fast edit cuts like an MTV show (or other current TV shows like CSI) was out of the question.

Ultimately, the visual answers came from my extensive image library.

So in the case of the Sorrowful Mysteries, I used images from Native American burial sites, real slave cabins from a South Carolina plantation, Hawaiian burial grounds, various New England cemeteries, plus sprinkled in audio effects like rain, thunder, lightening, running water, etc. All of which are combined and interspersed with shots of the congregation, so the video pulls one through the Prayer without being in your face, yet also subtly reinforces the themes each of the Mysteries portrays.

I mentioned that the audio was an issue - this was unforeseen in that the beads hitting the pews created huge audio spikes that had to be edited out and tamed otherwise the crystal clear audio captured would have been unpleasant to listen to.

My first introduction with computers was circa 1975 with mainframes, punch cards and programming simplistic slot machines with random fruits - e.g., cherries, lemons, oranges, and dollar signs - any combination of which would spin and land in three-pane lucky display screen.

It was also a time when I started to begin the journey through boyhood puberty and migrate into the ongoing evolution of manhood, personhood, humanhood, et al.

It was during this boyhood time while programming random numbers that I was first exposed to some fundamental concepts for achieving ongoing success with computers (e.g., managing the three levels of inputs, processing, and outputs). Thus part of my early picture included computer teachers and experts beating into my growing computer-awareness, “Garbage-in is Garbage-out.”
This became obvious, tactical, hand-felt wisdom with the early punch cards as those cards that were less than perfectly punched or less than perfectly flat were promptly spit out and rejected as unusable. Thus no amount of nifty logic or elegant programming referencing random fruits, berries, and/or dollar signs would ever see the light of day, but I digress.

Moving forward and years later - circa 2001 during days of explosive growth with DAWS (Digital Audio Workstations), project studios and technical advances across the digital audio spectrum, I enjoyed a conversation with an audio engineering expert and friend who candidly stated, “You know Chuck, in my business they call it turd polishing - if the client gives you inputs that are turds, no matter how much audio polishing you do, it’s still a turd.”

Yikes - new multimedia information and different take on conventional wisdom of garbage-in and turd-polished outs.

However, I was recently reminded that we can work with less than perfect inputs on creative level through some “happy accidents” and turn out good stuff.

Below is my point - visually. One of my clients handed me material that was 5-Diamond in spirit, nature of story, and content level, but it was a lot less radiant in the areas of digital resolution and digital quality.

This is a sensitive area and let me state that I honor all those on the digital paths. We all start somewhere and the spirit of this piece is to highlight how we can work creatively with things we think might not work, yet continue to work with what we have and move forward in getting better in using what we have to accomplish our mission at hand.

In this case, the client handed me 18 minutes of video footage from single-chip camera that was hand-shot (e.g., no tripods, no external mics, no lighting, no script - more akin to documentary style shooting), highly compressed as mpeg1 320×240, along with a handful of stills that were 1-2meg jpegs each.

Mission from client was, “Here is our story - how best can it be told effectively online?”

The answer is in the proof below with the ending video result.

Knowing neither the video or stills were commanding (digital resolution wise that is), we decided best to split the screen and use both videos and pics at the same time to tell the story, thus in part distract you from overly focusing in on either one at a time and seeing the granular pixations or other blemishes.

In the finished clip below, on one side you see pictures with the Ken Burns effect with panning and cropping. On the other side of the screen you see the video that corresponds to the story in the pics moving along.

Whenever either the stills or the video gets weird (e.g., quality of color, lighting, shakiness, etc) we then dropped an effect on that clip and voila - all of a sudden, things that seemed like mistakes (e.g., pictures out of focus) became awesome transitions that moved the story along with added effects and emotional dimensions.

But happy accidents with effects and visual polishing was only part of it.

The other part was how to sonically pull the viewer thru the story and hence the need to find some fun, offbeat music that could drive yet fit with the various live recordings of volunteers, pastor, and background beats -> Enter the soundtrack, “Gobble Gobble Funk” by you know who!

In the end, I think this piece works really, really well in telling the client’s story.

The last thing I will mention is the title, “Feeding the Angels Among Us.”

This was perhaps the hardest part about scripting and editing this piece. My customer who pays the bills is obvious, but his stakeholders and the constituents they dance with is something that is multilateral, highly diverse and commands respect from all levels.

Some how to say, “feeding the needy” seemed untruthful to those pictured here in this video. After all, these “stars” played a part in the role of life’s give-in-take and somehow there seemed to be a higher truth in naming the title, one that those standing in line, when viewing this clip, would also be proud of.

Which leads me to concept of - is it more blessed to receive or to give?

I don’t know but it seems like sometimes those of us who give can feel entitled to a little moment of self righteous - e.g., “Hey, I just did something for somebody - doesn’t that count for something, somewhere, on somekind of karmic scorecard?” - and I often wonder if the other person who receives isn’t really an Angel in disguise who isn’t silently saying, “Dude, if only you really knew - it is I who is willing to serve as your reminder that God gives us each different talents and skills. Thanks for sharing and best of success with your unfolding generosity of time, gifts, talents, investment in Highest Good, et al.”

Okay - here is a video clip that I did everything on - filmed, edited, recorded audio, photographed, special effects, compression, etc …

I had been working with my client earlier that day doing an audio meditation and had my camera in the car when Father Chip said, “Hey - lets go look at the church and I’ll show you some of the water damage we are working on” and so I gave him a mic with DAT recorder, grabbed the camera and voila - the resulting video.

I should also mention that I shot this during the summer of 2007 not knowing what I now know about setting up shots, using tripods, etc. (and it was the last time I would use a DAT recorder and went out and promptly replaced it with a new direct-to-smartcard portable disk recorder).

Thus it was really difficult in post to tell this story since a lot of the footage had camera shake from me walking around the grounds and in the church doing free-form shooting.

Thus my wife, Katie, created a little sign that hung on my desk during the editing process that said,

Wobbly = Still!!!

Which was my reminder to keep stripping out any shaky footage and replace with stills and then use keyframes with the pan-and-crop features to make the story move along.

Here is the lead copy on their site that sets up the clip -

“Take a tour of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral with Father Chip and Colleen … Filmed during the summer of 2007 and published in Feb 2008, this 13 minute clip takes you on a journey of the elusive source of the water damage that was being addressed during the recent renovations - enjoy!”

The video clip below is a project I participated with in early January 2008. I did the filming for the opening company (RAM) and the last company (RealTraps) but did not do the other companies inbetween (e.g., Painting, Fiberglass) but my camera was used for all the shooting.

Ethan Winer did the editing, music, narration, etc and he is the co-founder of RealTraps - the company featured here in this video.

Along the way, Mark Weiss provided some technical consulting and I learned several things from Mark including: a) don’t shoot interviews from low angle up (as I did with the RAM tour) as it creates an authority “top down” kind of interview energy; b) always use a tripod for shooting long form shots (e.g., when panning a 20,000 sq foot facility); c) keep tromboning to a minimum (this is the zooming in and out with the lens); d) when assembling clips in post, after a shot zooms in, then make a quick clean cut to another shot; plus several other tips on balancing audio, colors, and slides (stills) - enjoy!

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to do an industrial video shoot - a documentary style video that shows a Connecticut metal fabrication company (50 people on shop floor; 25,000 sq foot facility) plus some really cool footage of the robotic welder I caught from dangling atop a 15 foot ladder overlooking the UV curtains.

As an added fyi, this is one of the first industrial films I’ve done outside of filming my own printing plant back in the late 1980s and early 1990s with VHS and Hi-8 cameras. In this case, I shot just under an hour of footage, and Ethan Winer edited it down to the 10 minute clip you see here on Youtube. Thus I plan to release some of the really cool machine and laser cutting clips as stock footage but to be continued in this dept …

One of the interesting things about this on location recording was that we did not use lav mics on the people speaking nor mics on overhead booms. Instead we used a hand-held direct to smartcard recorder to capture brilliantly clear sound - sound that dominantly captured the voice of people speaking yet also captured the background of their environment with a balance that sounds pleasing.

Note the robotic welder appears around 8 minutes 30 seconds into clip - it is akin to Terminator but better because you can make money with this robot!

Happy New Year Everybody!

Below is email thread forwarded from friend of friend … Accordingly, those doing instructional training videos might want to jump on this opportunity - I know I have! Cheers - cs

=== Email Forwarded From Friends ===
Hey guys - Sorry if this sounds like a commercial - it’s not, but it is such a great deal I wanted to pass it on.

If you have ever needed to make an instructional video by recording the action on your computer screen while you are talking, then you should check this out.

I use a program from the called Camtasia to help friends understand some of the less obvious features in Finale. Even more impressive, I recorded a visual scrolling score while playing the music.

The program I used, Camtasia Studio, normally goes for $299 US. The first time I saw it in action I was absolutely amazed at how cool it was. I’ve been using version 2.0 for awhile now. Right now, the publisher is offering a promo.

They encourage you to download a fully working, unrestricted copy of version 3.13 - in the hopes that you will want to upgrade to their newly released version 5. The publisher (Techsmith) is now promoting their “upgrade”, but version 3 works just fine and really does everything I need.

(Mac Users: This is a .exe file so I believe it will only work on PC.)

To get Camtasia Studio 3, follow these steps:

Download the free trial version of Camtasia Studio 3

Click here to go to a promotion page -> Complete your name, country and e-mail address … Techsmith will send you the software key to unlock the program …

Click here to see the company demo of the program made by Techsmith

There are so many uses for this software, I figured you had to at least know about this.

Saved you $299 too!.

Think of it as a Christmas gift from a frugal buddy …..

- fin -

Do you know somebody who would love to learn the principles of mixing audio and video on a computer and produce Hollywood-like films from the comforts of home?

For less than twenty bucks, you can own (or gift) Ethan Winer’s Tele-Vision DVD which is packed with over three hours of audio/video educational content.

Below is a seven-minute promotional trailer on Youtube that Ethan recently created to augment the DVD description on his site and clarify the educational values packed into his DVD.

Essentially the DVD contains two music videos, plus three hours of additional content showing in detail how the videos were made.

The educational content on the DVD ranges from intermediate to advanced, split between on-camera technical explanations and screen-cap videos showing details of EQ, compression, reverb, etc. and other mixing decisions.

The tutorials cover both the audio and video aspects of production including video editing, green screens, lighting, using multiple cameras, and much more.

It’s not a beginner’s how-to guide for connecting a microphone to a sound card, but it will be useful to anyone who wants to see how a sophisticated video production is put together.

Click here to buy your copy today!

I’m thrilled to announce that my good friend Ethan Winer has just gone live with his latest video and DVD release.

Tele-Vision is an orchestral rock video by Ethan Winer that follows on the heels of his wildly acclaimed, “A Cello Rondo” - a video that has received critical acclaim and has exceeded over half-a-million downloads.

Tele-Vision is dedicated to the electric guitar and features original music written and produced by Ethan. His exciting soundtrack is mixed visually with an array of over 40 different Ethan’s on stage (via green screen technology) performing each of the instruments used in the score, timed exactly to the beat.

And would you like to take a guess at who did all the filming - yes, homeboy - some of you might even recognize some of my CoolTea event wardrobe being repurposed, like the multi-colored jacket, hats, glasses, etc.

This was a great summer filming and working with Ethan on his latest release. At 4:30AM this morning we went live with the CoolTea shopping cart, and by 11AM we had already sold several orders from around the country.

Not only is this a very entertaining DVD, but it is also jam-packed with hours of behind the scenes and making of sections that cover the principles behind audio and video editing on today’s PCs, plus interviews with guest performers like Ed Dzubak, three-time Emmy winning composer, who sat in on drums for this production.

Follow these links to Watch Tele-Vision on YouTube or click on flash clip below, Buy the DVD, and/or learn more about Ethan and Tele-Vision.

Below is a ten minute video clip I produced for Saint Patrick’s Church that features their Bible Camp 2007 - A Quest for Truth. The clip is currently hosted at YouTube and originally I wanted to share this as a heart-warming, intimate look of the children and families who participated with this year’s camp.

It is truly an Americana inspiration and gives hope to the soul - especially when we are bombarded with negative news from so many corners of the globe, this humble clip shows youth from all walks of life singing, playing, building, learning, and sharing in manner that gives me hope for the upcoming generation - a generation I’ve heard referenced as “The Rainbow Generation.”

It is also a great example of Church Marketing and the power of today’s multimedia technology. The Pastor shot the footage with a simple, handheld video camera - nothing fancy - no lighting, no staging, no separate sound team, etc. He handed me approx 6 or 7 mpeg-1 clips, each of which varied in length from 5 minutes to 15 minutes.

The hardest part for me was finding “The Arch of the Story” and how best to present these clips. Knowing I was limited to 100 meg file and 10 minutes max per YouTube, I started with the end in mind. Showing a strong finish, with professionally recorded patriotic music - Thank You Katie - timed to a slide show of higher resolution pictures taken from one of the Religious Ed leaders per the Pastor’s permission, I then worked backwards.

I also knew that the kids signing the Americana medley was also a strong start, even though that section occurred toward the end of the bible camp week, I put it upfront to give a sense of the “stars of the show.” With beginning and ending in place, I then edited the clips for those scenes that reflected the week’s activities - including making their Resurrection Butterflies, FBI Badges (firm believers in Christ), plus sundry other crafts.

Once I had a story board in mind, the next issue was of Sonic Branding - e.g., what kind of opening sound and visual theme could we create to help brand the church and use as opener for the other videos in development? Thus I found some funkee orchestral flute-guitar rock clip that was in my sound library that I had created over seven years ago with Acid Loops, and put this sonic bed to a beat with the lead images from their web site and voila - opening sonic / visual branding bug :>)

Lastly, I had to decide on project settings with Vegas. I started with Square Pixel 640×480 1.0 PAR (pixel aspect ratio) thinking we were just going to distribute the finished clip on the web, but as I got into it, I realized that some of the families might want a VideoCD or DVD version for their family archives, thus backed up and created the Rectangular Pixel (720×480 .909 PAR) version required for TV sets. In the end, I created two versions so that no black bars would appear in either version and both would display correctly - e.g., TV version on TVs and the squared computer version on monitors.

Enjoy!