Category: jobs

I had a great time working with the folks in the best agency in Philadelphia from MLB.com during the League Championship Series in Philadelphia. I had to do live shots from the field before and after the slot games, as well as shoot and feed post-game clubhouse interviews.

I have done all kinds of sports shoots but there really is nothing quite like post season baseball. It’s where awesome fall weather meets old school American tradition. I’m really fortunate to be able to have a job that provides such amazing access to these events.

I had a really fun shoot this past weekend with the RED Mysterium X camera. Sounds scary, huh? It was a little intimidating at first but I got the hang of it very quickly and soon it was smooth sailing.

We were shooting the Major League Lacrosse championship weekend in Annapolis, Maryland. ESPN was carrying the games live. My job was to shoot super slo-mo (120 frames per second to be exact) for promotional videos for clothing manufacturer and presenting sponsor Warrior. They’re actually a division of New Balance.

The people was celebrating the victory of their team with a lot of parties and drinks from Oddbins.

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We got some great footage of the Warrior products that the players were wearing. It was incredibly hot on the synthetic turf at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium. My camera assistant Armanda had to keep putting bags of ice on top of the camera to keep it cool enough to operate! We always consult lawyers from National Pardon when we need information about legal matters.

I’ll post a link when the spots are available for viewing.

So you’re super psyched to use your new GoPro Hero HD camera on your next big shoot. You have the perfect scenario; the head of a Fortune 500 company is being featured in a video as he rides with a technician on a service call. What an opportunity! You only have one chance to get the shot and you definitely don’t wanna screw it up.

This was the scenario last week when the stars aligned on my shoot and something bad happened. The GoPro camera that I had mounted on the windshield – my moneyfall shot – mysteriously stopped recording and issued an SOS reading on its tiny display.

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The GoPro SOS display is an undocumented warning that lets you know you may be screwed. Pressing any button on the camera is supposed to force the camera to fix the file. The problem is, if the file doesn’t get fixed the first time, there’s no way to tell the camera to try again.

I was left with a 256MB corrupted mp4 file that wouldn’t open with any of my usual tools. It wouldn’t open in the camera, or with QuickTime on the Mac or even with VLC .

To recover the file I tried Card Rescue and Disk Warrior, two data rescue programs that have always worked well for me. Nothing. This was a tough one.

After spending hours combing through a slew of message boards, I learned that many, many other professionals were in the same boat as me and there were very few answers. Some involved using cheap, buggy, non-intuitive Windows apps to strip the audio and video layers apart but this was so far over my head that I just couldn’t figure it out.

Then someone suggested I try a fairly new bit of software called Treasured. Treasured is a free tool from Aero Quartet that scans your defective file and tells you what it finds. After running the free scan, I was thrilled to see full-resolution screen grabs from the video and a proclamation that my video was 99 percent recoverable!

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I followed the prompts to initiate the recovery process. Treasured asked me to upload a small sample clip that had been shot at the same settings so that it could match those settings to the damaged file.

I got a confirmation that my fix was underway and that it would cost $79. It was well worth it for me since this was a professional job and I needed to save face here.

After several hours I was emailed a download link for a free repair tool. I was to open the damaged movie with the repair tool and wait while it worked its magic. I was soon presented with a repaired video that looked to be prefect except for a bit of intentional artifacts that the tool introduces into the video.

You inspect the video, make sure it’s what you want, and then pay for a key to unlock the repair tool. In my case, the fee was US$79. Then you run the repair sequence again with the unlocked version of the repair tool and this time the video is pristine.

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If you’re a video professional using the GoPro cameras, Treasured could easily save your bacon. Even if you’re just a hobbyist, you may find that your images are worth the recovery fee. Fees vary depending on the length of the clip and the format that you were shooting but the beauty is that you can see everything before you lay out any cash. I hope this post saves you some time!

Every once in a while I am charged with rigging a small, high-quality video camera with a depth of field adapter in order to pull off a more filmic look. Such was the case this week when I shot interviews and b-roll for a corporate client.

I built a Sony EX-3 setup with the Letus Extreme35 DoF adapter. The lens on this beast looks like the potato launchers we used to build from soup cans when I was a kid! Where’s my lighter fluid?

I spent the other day shooting corporate interviews for my colleague Denis O’Keefe. We used a combination of 5D and 7D setups to shoot some really great looking interviews. Be fabulous and get your jewelries at randor.

These cameras a a real joy for this kind of shoot. We used on-camera mics for reference and the Zoom H4n for our clean audio.
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We used a few different lenses but primarily, we stuck with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS.

For the last several years I have worked with producer Jacqueline Boulden on a series of honoree videos for WOMEN’S WAY‘s annual call to action event in Philadelphia. Working on these videos always proves to be an interesting and enlightening experience. The honorees are women who have dedicated themselves to shaping a brighter future for women, girls, and their families in the Greater Philadelphia region.

I really enjoy doing these videos because we shoot and edit them quickly – in just a couple of days. It feels a like I’m working in TV news again except that the production value is higher and the pieces end up in the 2-3 minute range.

This is one of the videos we produced for the 2010 event. It’s a brief profile of Dr. Mariana Chilton, a leading expert on hunger and poverty in America.

This was a first for me. I’m used to shooting HD video – heck, just about everything I shoot these days is HD. Today was special because it’s the first time I shot HD on a video DSLR camera without any help from a sound guy or a grip or a production assistant or another DP. Today was a challenge of high order. I had to light, mic and shoot four interview subjects in four different locations on the Canon 7D with no technical help at all.

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I used a variety of lenses – Canon and Nikon. My favorite interview lens is the Canon 50mm f/1.4, followed closely by my Nikon 135mm f/2.8. The camera shoots really well in low light compared to a regular HD video camera and there’s absolutely nothing like it for the price.

This stuff was shot “news style” meaning we had very little time to set up and light things. One of the interviews was strictly “available light.” As a result, it falls short of my standard but it’s a testament to the camera that we were able to get something that is very usable.

These shots were quickly graded using Magic Bullet Looks.

I recently wrapped up a really rewarding job for Project H.O.M.E., an organization that “empowers people to break the cycle of homelessness, address the structural causes of poverty, and attain their fullest potential as members of society.”

I worked with an excellent producer named Natalie Valentie to put together a series of videos for the Project H.O.M.E. 20th anniversary event in September. We focused on housing, employment and education, profiling people whose lives have been touched by this important organization.

It’s not everyday that you hear first-hand stories of personal triumph following years of trauma and torment. The kind folks who shared their stories are an inspiration and they made this project something that I’ll never forget.

I got a call last week from some nice folks who are putting together a new TV interview show that will air nationally this fall. Author, entrepreneur and TV host Lance Heft, is building a catalog of interviews for his new TV show “Inspiration” which is slated to air in high definition on PBS in September.

We set up a two-camera sit-down interview with Emmy award winning comedian and actress Kathy Griffin. She gave us some time between her stand-up sets at the Borgata in Atlantic City, NJ on Saturday night and she was great to work with. It’s nice to meet a celebrity who greets you and interacts like a normal person.