Kevin Johnson

“File Stories”. We’ve all been there, but if you haven’t, congratulations on your graduation and first job in broadcasting.

Being the nature of news, we bring viewers the latest on that unusual court case or “remember the snow totals last year?” or that one business man that got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “didn’t he do an interview about regional marketing strategies last July?” File has done everything from supplementing a story to completely driving one. As stations are moving to HD, often there’s a few 4:3 shots that need to be in your 16:9 package. Hello sidebars. Not my favorite look but usually seen by management as free advertising space.

Even with little time there are things that I have done to minimize the back and forth of 4:3 to 16:9 to 4:3 to 16:9….. It almost gives me a headache. And of course don’t forget that old 4:3 footage is SD. Watching must be what it’s like for someone that wears contacts and one won’t stay in place.

At my old station, our first dabble into HD was airing once a week HD stories, as you can imagine they were promoted pretty heavily. I had done several already and I was again called upon. It was nice that I still got to use my own camera (admittingly I’m a little over protective of my gear, I was the one guy that could walk into engineering and their first thought wasn’t that I broke something) I used a AJ-HP2000 HD P2 so switching between SD and HD was not a problem. It was also no problem using one of our laptops that was dedicated to HD editing. Doing a heavily promoted HD story using 4:3 SD file…. Problem. Okay, not so much a problem as in my opinion it just wouldn’t look good.

Me and my reporter Karina went out and got our MOS’s, a little b-roll and back pretty quick to the station. Shot b-roll of the state budget, computer, borrowed some cash from accounting, and the basis of our story, “The Washington State Piglet Book”. Then came the chore of finding all the file. I challenge you, in a timely manor, to find video of a dog getting a massage. Between our file tapes, NewsOne and the “Internets” (thanks Bush) I came up with enough to work. Now it was time to go pillaging. I scoured the station for TV’s of various sizes. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard being it’s a TV STATION!! After almost having to perpetrate armed robbery (or get them unstuck, newsrooms in general are filthy places) I came up with just enough to satisfy my vision. Stole a Beta deck and cables from ENG and off to studio “B” to set everything up. I supplied power to all the tv’s but just moved the deck around and connected it to which ever tv I was shooting.

In the end I was happy with how it turned out (revisiting it I see things I never did like or would do different, but I always do that) It was extra effort, but I feel effort well spent. If not for my own satisfaction (which is always my driving force) I couldn’t help but think that with all the promotion, even if only one more person than usual tuned in to see the story then it was doubly worth it, and if that person had a Nielsen Book……..

http://vimeo.com/21542840

I Want one

“The footage in this production was used in a promo video for a newly produced Italian made quarry truck. 99.8% of this production was captured with a compact, hand-launched aerial camera platform equipped with a ‘Flight Head’ style 3-axis stabilized camera gimbal fitted with a Canon 5D Mark II HD-DSLR camera.

This production clearly demonstrates the unlimited possibilities of this compact tool. Where cranes are limited in range, our tool has the same extremely smooth dynamic crane gimbal head pan/tilt movement with the added ability to capture footage from 2 feet up to 300 feet in a single shot with untethered movement around an object…an impossible task for cranes. The stress, hassle and high cost associated with big heavy production equipment were eliminated on this production.

As demonstrated in this video, a separate camera gimbal operator was used to track shots by viewing (in real-time) a wireless video feed while remotely controlling the camera gimbal’s 360-degrees of rotation and 180-degrees of tilt.”

http://vimeo.com/21145605

http://www.perspectiveaerials.com/