7/16/2008 Susannah
We submitted our entry in the first OpenCut.org editing contest. We sent them a hard drive and they sent it back with the raw shooting files for a short named "Susannah". It was shot using the new Red One camera so I couldn't wait to get my hands on that footage to discover it's magic.

All the participants' footage is hosted at Vuze.com. If you want to see them all, about fifty two, then go to http://vuse.com and search for "opencut" or "susannah". If you install their peer-to-peer player then you can download as many as you want and play them in full HD. You can go straight to my version here to watch it in HD or just watch the version below.

4/13/2008 The Light Travelers
The Light Travelers played a concert in my backyard. The venue they were booked into cancled three hours before the scheduled start time. But with a bit of last minute scrambling around, we got it done. As it turned out, Merry and I had another commitment so I just shot a bit of the rehearsal and one song at the start. I just wanted to see what I could put together from that.

11/7/2007 Sight.Sound.Soul
Here are five short event videos I edited for Knowbility. They, along with VSA arts of Texas put on the Sight.Sound.Soul event each year. The intention is to have an art-centric event that is accessible to everyone including folks who may have some kind of handicap.

This year they had three singers, John Pointer, Lavelle White and Malford Milligan. During each of the last two sets they also had two painters create two large paintings.
NOTE: John Pointer's video is off-line at his request. He'd like me to pick a different song so, as time alows, I'll edit a different John Pointer number from that night.

The whole event was recorded by PACT to be shown on the local cable access channel. I shot the two paintings then sped them up in post to be shown as time-lapsed video.

So I created one video for each performer, added an opening credit, titles and lyric captions. There is also a time-lapse video for each of the two paintings.

As you can see below, I uploaded the videos to a blip.tv account I created just for this project. The blip.tv Flash player will show all five videos in succession or you can click on the "Guide" link, then the "Episode" tab and select any one of the five videos.

Knowbility is all about enabling the web for people with handicaps. Since Flash isn't very "accessible", I've put five links below so that the videos can be played in the QuickTime player, which is accessible. The assumption here is that anyone who needs it will have QuickTime be the default player for any MP4 video. I hope this assumption it correct. I'm sure I'll hear about it if that's not true.

Lavelle White Performs At Sight.Sound.Soul
Malford Milligan Performs At Sight.Sound.Soul
Kevin Brown Performs At Sight.Sound.Soul
James Abbott Performs At Sight.Sound.Soul

9/1/2007 Rural Community Wind Power Documentary
Here's a teaser for a documentary I've been shooting with Tom Parish of Tom Parish, Inc. We shot interviews in Lubbock and in Bozeman, Montana. We're just starting to edit with an eye to submitting a short to South by Southwest.

Click To Play

6/9/2007 South Austin Pictures
These two short films are the result of my participation in Gary Chason's Create the Role workshop presented in May of 2007. We shot both of them on one day. (I did have to go back and do a two hour reshoot to correct a shooting error in Not My Son.)

Click To Play

Click To Play

5/21/2007 Mike Curtis Interview
Tom Parish and I shot an interview with Mike Curtis, the well known HD consultant and blogger; HDforIndies.com. It's up on Tom's Talking Portraites and I embedded a copy here as well.

Click To Play

5/13/2007 Steadicam Merlin Practice on my Kitchen
Tom Parish loaned me his Steadycam Merlin so I could get it set up and balanced with all our cameras. I got it set up with my Sony VX2000 using the Century Optics 16:9 Widescreen Adapter (sans lens cap), an NP-F750 battery and the view screen open. All of these things make a difference.

Once I got it setup and balanced, I wanted to practice and see the results. We had a bit of a flood in our kitchen which we came home to on July 4th, 2006, returning from a five day trip. Needless to say all the cabinets had to be replaced. We decided to upgrade the counter tops and lighting as well.
So, keeping Extreme Makeover, Home Edition in mind, I shoot a sweeping Steadicam shot coming in the front door, down the hall and around the kitchen. Some parts of the hall were too dark so I set up a couple of Lowell Totas to fill in and then let the camera fly through.

I've got a lot to learn as the video below shows. I did three full takes and then edited the best parts together, slapped some music from SonicFire Pro 4 on it and uploaded to YouTube.