From the moment we chose Media Circus.TV to edit our video, we knew that we had made the right decision. We had been left in a bind and Media Circus.TV stepped right in to assure us that they could meet our budget and deadline. As we were a bit nervous due to our last fiasco, we were pleased that Media Circus.TV kept us up to date on progress and were very willing to make the changes we requested.

Oonaugh and I have no hesitation in recommending Media Circus.TV for your video needs.

Greg & Oonaugh Wood
Speakers, Comedians, & Magicians
www.comedyillusions.com

Thank Greg, it was great to work with you!

Greg Wood is a veteran magician based in Winnipeg that I have known for a few years through my involvement in the Magic Club of Winnipeg. He is a regular house magician at Toad Hall Toys which is where you can buy magic supplies in town.  I went by “Toad” one day to pick up a few supplies and Greg and I started chatting about a media project he was having done.

He had a one hour show taped at Calvary Temple in front of a live audience that he wanted to have edited together and packaged, he asked if I could put it together for him. Yes we can!

We did 2 versions of his DVD; one version with a Gospel message included and another without the Gospel message that ended up being a bit shorter. In addition to the DVD’s we did :30 and :90 promos that he’s using on his website, FaceBook and YouTube.

A few months ago I got a phone message from the good folks over at New Media Manitoba about a group that contacted them looking for some video production, “are you interested”? You bet!

The organization was the Rainbow Harmony Project, a GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Trans-gendered) choir based in Winnipeg. When I first talked to the director, Vic Hooper, he explained to me the nature of the project. The Unison Festival is a gathering of GLBT choruses from all over Canada that come together for workshops, performances and socializing over the course of 5 days. This year there were over 500 participants that came to Winnipeg for the Unison Festival.

What we were asked to do was create four videos that would play at the opening night celebrations. They were going to be interviews with pioneers in the GLBT movement that made their mark in Manitoba; Chris Vogel & Richard North, Heather Bishop, Ruth Krindle and Glen Murray.

All of the interviews other than Glen’s took place in Winnipeg in early May. Glen, the former mayor of Winnipeg, is now an MP with an office in Toronto, so for his interview the questions were sent to his assistants and the taping was done in a shared studio that the MP’s use for media projects like this.

With the other interviews we had plenty of lead-up time to get them together and to the client for revisions and approval; that was not going to be the case with Glen Murray’s footage.

The day of the Festival opening, at which the videos were going to be played, was the day that I received the tape of Glen’s interview from his staff in Toronto. This was the quickest turnaround on a project I think that I have ever done! Here are my Facebook updates from that day, May 21.

10:23AM Purolator just showed up with the tape I need to edit the video that is playing tonight! OK, time to edit, fast….
12:523Pm Editing a somewhat emotional interview with former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray about his experiences in the GLBT community. This will play tonight the Unison Festival.
2:30PM Finished the rough cut, did a transcription and e-mailed it off to the translator. While that is being worked on I am going in and refining the edits, adding the music and gfx and getting ready to put in the French subtitles.
5:06PM Just got the last section translation in 5 minutes ago, copy-pasta into the Avid subcap effect to put in the French subtitles and now rendering an H.264 version for play tonight off of a laptop. Wow, we’re JUST going to make it.
6:08PM Video finished encoding, watched it all the way through to make sure it’s good, finished 10 minutes before I need to leave for the venue. Wowza

Yes, I was editing I was also transcribing the finished portions, e-mailing them off to our translator, who would translate sections and send back to me as they were done and I would add in the French subtitles. It was a busy, crazy day, but we made it!

The videos played that night and the crowd really enjoyed them. I don’t know if there is a greater satisfaction than seeing your hard work appreciated by a live audience.

Over the course of the rest of the weekend I taped all of the choir performances which I ended up putting onto DVD for the Unison Festival archives and for each individual choir.

Here are the videos we created for the Festival Opening Ceremonies, enjoy and thanks to everyone that participated!

There were stacks and stacks of applications, wowza. Competition is good of course, makes us work harder to make a better product. If we don’t make it in this time we will refine our submission and try again next year.

NSI is a great organization that I’ve done work for once in a while, mainly for helping them prepare videos for their on-line short film festival.

The biggest challenge I had in preparing this application was nailing down the vision for the creative; the show pitch is part live-action and part animation.  We put together synopsis’s for 3 episodes which turned out to be one of the most interesting parts of the process to me; the story is the meat of the application.

The decisions will be made by the end of June, here’s hoping.

This past Sunday we did interviews with 4 people who are considered pioneers in the GBLT right movement.

So, onto the presentation.

Now I’m not saying this to win friends; this was one of the best-prepared and entertaining presentations I’d ever been to at NMM. Sure, it was “just” a Keynote show, but the amount of relevant images, information, organization and video really told the story James wanted to get across. It was very well organized and entertaining. 

He talked about the pro’s (which are many) and the cons (which are many) to using DSLR’s for video production.  I admit that I’ve been sold on DSLR’s for a few months since taking a look at them and the quality of picture that they produce. Even with the cons it’s the final product that matters and the picture and sound are still superior to most camcorders out there as far as achieving a cinematic look. 

He started with the pros  (going from memory here) which are the shallow depth of field, the price point, the lens selection available, the compact nature of the cameras (no more wrecking your shoulder holding a BetaCam on it) and how well they shoot in low light conditions.  Some of the cons are the way they handle audio (back to separate audio recording if you want good audio, which you should ) the tendency for image problems like aliasing and skew, the limit on recording time and  the position of the viewfinder.

After the presentation James took questions from the crowd for about 15 minutes. I asked about external monitoring on location, he mentioned that he didn’t use any. Mid-Canwas there with their set-up which had an external HD (I think 8″) monitor plugged into the HDMI port of the camera so it is possible, though not as handy as a flip out LCD if you’re doing hand held work.

The main challenge I still see with this camera set-up are some of those camcorder pluses like timecode, carry handles, direct XLR inputs, etc. The “dream” now is to have the DSLR sensors and lenses available on camcorder bodies, which James showed an example of; a camera that looked a bit like Frankenstein. These are no doubt to be the next generation since consumer demand seems to be pretty high, but the advantages that regular DSLR’s will still have over these camcorder style ones will be their light weight and compact nature. So buy 2! A DSRL and one of the new camcorders that will be out with the sensors and lenses.

When I first saw some of the material from Blink Works about a year ago I remember thinking “how are they creating those images”? I knew right away that they weren’t using a regular HDV or HD camcorder, it had a depth of field and image quality that I hadn’t seen out of those cameras before.  So now I have my answer.

A suggestion made was to take a traditional photography class to learn how to really control the depth of field and option with these cameras since they are so different than the video cameras many of us have been using in our careers. A good suggestion that I am going to follow.

Thanks to James and New Media Manitoba for a great presentation and nice chance to do some networking with other people in the media industry; it got me pumped up to get out there are create some great images in my productions.

On the way to Brandon I was texting people trying to set-up some meetings and visits while I would be there. One of the folks I was in touch with is Greg Sherris, who is an instructor at Assinboine Community College, my Alma Matter, with whom I try to visit when I am in town. He also works at the Keystone Centre in their video production department doing live production of events going on in the arena such as Brandon Wheat Kings games. It happens that they needed one more body for that nights production so he asked me if I was in. Hmmm, do I want to get paid for doing what I love? Sure!  So I ended up spending the night operating a camera “at ice level” close to the action for some horse jumping competitions, a super dogs show and some other horse related events. Those horses kick up a lot of dust! The gear was pretty covered by the end of the night, and so was I.

It was nice to run into some former co-workers and classmates at the show, both working on the video production and just walking around the concourse to watch the show.

One of the other things I wanted to get done while I was there was to meet with the folks over at iTVBrandon. After CKX closed their doors about 6 months ago it left open a huge market; people that wanted local news coverage and businesses that still wanted to advertise and reach customers, and iTVBrandon launched a few months ago to fill that gap. 

It’s run by some former CKX employees who saw the need and made it happen, launching a new business. They are small for now and I see a lot of room for growth as their business model is refined and developed. I met with Nate and Shaun over nachos (I may have been the only one eating the nachos)  to introduce myself and see if we can do some business together. There aren’t a lot of companies doing video production in Brandon and the iTVbrandon team will likely have some projects come their way because of their profile in the What City. We talked about the possibility of doing some business together and partnering on some projects should the workload suit it. I lived in Brandon for a long time and look forward to doing some more work out there.

In all a pretty productive weekend, got to shoot some footage, meet some new people and hopefully plant the seeds for some future work.