She is no push over

This is a video promoting our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu teams Mixed Martial Arts program for kids. My daughter Logan is being put through the paces by our coach Marcelo.

Notice how I use a shooting technique called WALLDO. Wide shot, Angle shot, Low shot, Linking shot, Depth of Field Shot and Opposite. It is a great acronym to remember for shooting video or photography. The wide shot can be used to establish the scene. An angled shot is more interesting than a straight forward view. Low shot gives a unique perspective while the linking shots establish your local and prevents jump cuts during editing. Depth of field is shooting with an opject in the foreground such as the fence in this video. Opposite would be used to provide the subjects point of view. Example, while shooting a concert that focuses on the stage, also grab shots from the bands perspective looking into the audience.

Back From Hiatus

It has been awhile since I last posted here. I recently terminated my website where I hosted my blog. I decided to keep the url and use this blog as my new vehicle to discuss all things video related. New content is coming and I hope to cross promote my families Brazilian Jiu Jitsu blog and how our BJJ school has used video to help market our team. I also plan to make more tutorials to help you create your own video productions for fun and profit.

Thanks for visiting,

Tom

The Real Batman

Today I attended a Get Motivated Seminar in Fort Lauderdale. The speakers were Rudy Giuliani, Zig Ziglar, Gen. Colin Powell, DR. Robert Schuller, Dwyane Wade, Dan Marino and John Walsh. They were all great motivators but the one who I connected with the best was John Walsh from the TV show “America’s Most Wanted”. John has always been a personal hero of mine. I always tell my kids that he is the real life version of Batman. In 1981, John’s six year old son was abducted and murdered by a drifter in Hollywood, Florida. His son Adam was in the Sear’s toy department watching some older boys play Colecovision and Atari video games. A teenage security guard kicked the rowdy boys out of the store along the six year old Adam who was waiting for his mom while she picked out a lamp. That was the moment that serial killer Ottis Toole capitalized on. No one knew that Adam was thrown out of the store. That was information that was just released last year by the Hollywood Police Dept. At the time there was no system in place to help locate missing children. No tracking system of known pedophiles or communications between police organizations and morgues. John and his wife Reve fought to change that. They helped bring about the Missing Children’s Assistance Act and help form the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. John was approached by the newly created Fox Network to host a reality show AMW that would track down criminals. He reluctantly agreed to host the Pilot since it’s focus was a child serial killer.

I have always felt a connection to this case. As a twelve year old boy, I played the video games daily at the Sears Mall where Adam was abducted. Except that day. I was even on the local News playing the very same games the next day. I thought that carrying a pocket knife would protect me from any one who would want to harm me. I remember the posters for Adam all over Hollywood. The freedom to go out and play was lost. Parents were terrified that their kids would be next. How a once vibrant neighborhood became almost vacant around Halloween. Everyone was scared, it took awhile before the murderer was caught. John is one guy who turned a horrible situation into an opportunity to make the world a better place to live. He has helped capture over 1000 fugitives…and that was done with video.



Reenactments to tell a story, that is how America’s Most Wanted is able to relay the information in a gripping format that requires a call to action from it’s viewers. You too can use reenactments in your own video biographies to tell a visual story. Stock footage is readily available on the Internet and entire low cost libraries can be purchased off websites like www.digitaljuice.com. Old historical film can be downloaded for free from www.archive.org. These clips can help move along a narration and help illustrate the subjects recollections of their lives.

Social Networking Hero

Faster than a speeding…facebook? On February 27, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile. Amy Morgan, a 23 year old American was visiting Santiago and on her way to see friends in Concepcion. Amy is my wife’s, cousin’s daughter. Her parents feared the worst, they could not get in touch with her for days and she was smack in the middle of the area of the earthquake. They registered her name with the Red Cross and the State department but the time started to pass with out any indication that she was ok. My Brother in Law started contacting Rotary Clubs in Chile and digging up information on the web. He emailed all of her facebook friends her picture and asked if they knew any information. Within a few hours, they received this:
Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

Paulina sent you a message.

Re: Amy Morgan & Jose Mario Basulto Coll

“They are all fine in Concepcion, without water and electricity but they are ok!”

Imagine the relief her parents must have had when they got the news. My Brother in Law David Erickson said it best “Social networking is the bomb. I am hooked on it. Especially when you can use it for something meaningful.”

How does this relate to video? It is all about the power of networking. I attended the South Florida Videographers Association meeting last week, which was on Social Networking. Some of the older guys scoffed at the idea of using facebook, twitter, linked in and YouTube to drum up business. They could not grasp the power of these sites to reach potential customers. Say you are a wedding videographer and you post a clip of a recent wedding you shot on your facebook. You share the link with the bride who in turns posts it on her page. Her friends and family share the link with others. Now a lot of potential customers get to see your work without ever stepping foot in the studio. There is a good chance the bride’s friends will be shopping for their own wedding videographer soon. She will remember seeing the clip of her friends wedding on her facebook, hopefully, she will inquire about your services.

Quality or convenience

Today my family and friends went on a bike tour of Shark Valley in the Everglades. The seven and half mile paved trail runs alongside a canal littered with alligators. I really wanted to take my professional video camera and gather some footage of the gators, but I opted for the small consumer video camera called the flip. The flip can fit in my back pocket and I would not have to worry about protecting it from the elements if a thunderstorm occurred (South Florida is known for sudden down pours).

Unfortunately, the trade off resulted in some ugly video. The flip is an auto focus fixed lens camera with digital zoom. The flip is great for close static shots with out a lot of movement. Once you add distance and movement, the video get very pixilated. The reason is a combination of auto focus and the digital zoom. First, the auto focus gets confused in an environment that has a lot of movement. I was trying to shoot video of a swimming alligator while saw grass and tree braches in the foreground and the background blew in the wind. The autofocus does not know on which subject it should focus, therefore, the camera attempts to focus on all of these moving elements resulting in blurry video. The second factor that can ruin good video shots is digital zoom. Let me explain the difference between optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom uses the lens to bring the subject closer without a loss in quality, digital zoom simulates optical zoom by cropping the image and enlarging it electronically. This is just like zooming in on a picture in an image-editing program; the image gets pixilated the larger you make it.


The solution is to use a camera that has manual focus and optical zoom. Most consumer DV cameras allow you to focus manually. Here is how to focus correctly, first get as close as you can to your subject without losing the composition of your shot. Next zoom into the subject and adjust the lens until the object is in focus. Then zoom back out to where you framed your shot. I also could have moved closer to my subject, but alligators can run very fast for a short distance. In one of the shots, you can clearly hear my wife shouting at me as the alligator swam directly towards me only a few feet away.

Making a Difference

When our six year old son Hunter heard about the earthquake in Haiti he wanted to help. Hunter asked if we could set up a lemonade stand to raise for the people of Haiti. My wife Jennifer and I wanted to encourage this compassionate behavior and planned a yard sale with a lemonade and cookie booth with all the proceeds going to Haiti. Like most parents, I shoot alot of video of the kids. The problem is, most of the video tapes end up in a drawer and we never look at them. This was a defining moment in my son’s life and I was not about to let it slip away with out documenting the day. I encourage you to dust off your collection of tapes and suprise your family with a short video of a special occasion. I will give you one editing tip since this blog is about documenting your life with video. Pick one scene and let the second scenes audio be heard over the video from scene one before you cut to scene number two. You can see an example of it in this video as the scene of Jon hanging the sign transitions to the customers from the yard sale. This technique helps bring together a cut that would otherwise be too abrupt. Most nonlinear editors can perform this by unlinking the audio and video tracks which allows you to trim them individually.