CCFA Welcome Back Fall 2009

My wife Simone does PR for the College of Communication and Fine Arts here at the University of Memphis. She asks me for little video favors for the college now and then. How could I refuse? Here's one I had some fun with last week.

I Won a Zune! (tooting my own horn)

I never have given much thought to entering contests. Too much like tooting my own horn, you know? Actually it is something I probably should have done more often over the years considering that I am in (a sideshow of) showbiz after all.
Last year Bob Bradley, Tennessee State University's director of technology integration came by the Center for Multimedia Arts - where I work - and checked out our studio and design setup. He was researching the possibility of establishing a multimedia center at Tennessee State. He told us about a statewide pod-casting tournament for educational media that was happening through the Digital Media Sandbox Consortium (DSMC). I had to wait a year until they setup a faculty/pro division before I could get in. So this year I entered a video podcast called AutoTutor Lite, a video overview of a web-based e-learning software that was developed here at the FedEx Institue of Technology in the Institute for Intelligent Systems. AutoTutor Lite uses AI technology and avatars to respond to the student in natural (text) language. The CMA was contracted by the Office of Tech Transfer to produce the project. So...I won a Zune and a Targus backpack and maybe even a certificate. I am actually nerdily proud and mom and dad are thrilled!
Here is the writeup.

Francis Ford Coppola and The Dawn of DV

By 1996 I was seriously sick of working on features, but I took a job on the The Rainmaker just to have the chance to work for Coppola. I was probably broke anyway. I was not disappointed. He was a great guy who brought wine for the crew twice a week and was always glad to tell war stories about making Apocalypse Now and other films. One day he called everyone on the crew over to see his wife Eleanor's Sony VX-1000 dv camera. An Emmy Award winner herself for the film Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse , she was shooting behind-the-scenes documentary footage with the new Sony. Francis said "I want everyone to see this camera, because this is where the movie business is going. You can get one of these for a few thousand dollars and shoot great looking footage and edit it yourself on a personal computer. Someday this is going to replace film and I think you should think about getting something like this and doing your own productions." Good advice.

The best boy electric - a lifelong union guy - had admonished us that we all would end up working at Home Depot if we didn't get the town's production companies to go union. I figured he was probably right on some level. I told him if that was the case I was getting out as soon as possible. It's not a good idea to be at the mercy of someone else's ability to bring in work. Within 6 months David and I had our first dvcam. I figured the union racket was a bad path for a Birkenstock-wearing artsy type like me. I just didn't fit in with the bikers.

We are not Videographers

A Mediographer is a person who - not in any particular order - writes, shoots, edits, directs, produces, scouts, schmoozes, masters (whatever that means) records audio, teleprompts, compresses video, makes dvds, tosses in a little design, takes decents stills, steals some music - I mean learns how to use Soundtrack, interviews, redecorates, landscapes, troubleshoots the computer, sets lights and mics, powders the talent, does her own v.o. when there's no budget or it's 3 in the morning, maybe makes a gimpy website and then, hopefully, pulls in a 'median income' for himself. And that's just to start. "Videographer?" Give me a break. As if all we have to do is show and and push the button. ha.

From the time i was a grip/electric working on feature films, (The Rainmaker to be more specific) I wanted to be in charge of my own self. Yes. I would make my own videos - miserably small the budgets would be - but I would not have to hump electric cable and lights 20 hours a day for wretched Hollywood types. My friend David Leonard and I bought a Casablanca - the first self-contained and affordable non-linear edit system, and a Sony V5000 DVCam (hey maybe that one was Hi-8) in Memphis and set ourselves up in business. That was 1996 and the BetaCam guys thought we were crazy - but we didn't have $2000-a-month camera notes. That's my definition of crazy. Our first job was for "Woodhaven Funeral Home", conveniently located in in the rolling hills of rural northwest Shelby County." Hey I wrote that. The budget was $300. Don't ask about "Babyland." Maybe I can find that video somewhere....anybody got a 3/4 deck?