Equipment

Today's blog entry is about equipment choice.

Over the years I have used MANY types of analog and digital equipment.

There are some brands that seem to stand up against the test of time.

One of the best purchases I ever made was a General Electric air conditioner. I paid $111.00 for it back around 1980. On my last move about 5 years ago I gave it to the local Goodwill and was sorry to see it go. It still worked. At that time it did need a new belt for the fan and as such I let it go. I was sorry to see it go. It was EASILY some of the best money I ever spent.

Many years later Sony introduced a slogan, Sony No Baloney.

They weren't kidding. One of the camera crews I worked with had a very experienced camera operator go out on a boat to do a recording and he dropped a Sony Betacam into the water. Sony Betacams back then were hugely expensive. Like maybe 30 thousand dollars.

The crew brought it home to the TV station where the tech team basically dried it out for several days.

Then they turned it on. And it worked just fine.

It is no wonder why it became the "standard" equipment for the broadcast industry.

Over the years other brands have made their inroads and the Sony name has been somewhat diminished as the go-to brand. Panasonic cameras, for example, tend to have the most pleasing colors, imo.

But, try dropping one in the drink and then make it work later.

It reminds me of my Honda Interceptor. A friend once said you buy Hondas because they will start everytime. That is pretty much the truth. The time mine didn't start Honda paid for the repair, and I think it was off warranty at that point. The reason they took care of it they said: It was impossible for what happened to have happened. So they paid the bill.

It is important to buy good/great quality up front when choosing good equipment.

I have a friend that insists that Canon cameras are the choice of professional still photographers.

But I think my next camera is probably going to be a Sony.

Squirrels

This entry is titled squirrels.

When I came home to Corning, New York in 2009, I find myself out of work, unemployed, no vehicle, and with a lot of time on my hands.

During the Summer of 2010 I found work only occasionally. With some of the money I had on hand I would go buy large bags of peanuts and then walk down to Denison park, one of the local city parks here in town.

And I started to feed the squirrels.

It didn't take too long to gather around a group of squirrels. I was after all giving away free food.

It was interesting to see them "adjust" their normal foraging behavior to the new behavior I was presenting, which included handouts of free peanuts.

It started innocently enough but as more squirrels came around, and I started tossing more here and there I began to notice a change in behavior.

There were squirrels that would fight off the other squirrels. As if staking their claim to this free food.

It happened over and over again.

It made me think about social situations with human beings. Here in the United State have a similar system of giving away sustenance. It is called the unemployment system, and for those apparently unable to help themselves at all we have a system called Welfare.

I am not going to enter into a discussion on whether or not it is right to have such systems. It is beyond my knowledge and teaching to know positively what the correct thing to do is.

My point for this entry is I am giving away my science fiction story online for free.

And now, just today, have decided to publish the blog pages as a Kindle eBook.

It takes me back to an all important question, how do you make money on something you are giving away for free?

The question applies to my old website, videofeedback dot com, where I used to post videos for free. At one point in time I discussed it with my college professor of Radio and Television, and his reply was how do you monetize it? How do you make money from it?

What I am leading to is that converting my online story to an electronic eBook for sale is probably not going to work out. At least it isn't going to provide a decent income at this point in time.

People will not pay for what they have become accustom to getting for free. Not until they become very hungry for it. And since my book is not food, the need for it is not very great.

My story is presently receiving about 1000 hits per month. What I have noticed is readership drops off quickly if I don't post another entry soon after the last one. What this implies is that my story doesn't hold a great deal of interest for my net readers, and thus when I go to convert it to an eBook, I suspect readership will drop off entirely.

What I can hope for, is that somehow something else besides a modicum of interest will manifest itself in same unknown fashion I have yet to see, or understand.

I will let you know.

-CRB

Strategy

As I have been writing my science fiction story "The Diegisis Series by Nik Alinaru", I have come at it in a way that wouldn't meet with approval by most writers.

I have been writing out segments that have interest for me, and then I am going back and writing in the in-between parts to build the entire story.

This actually harkens back to my English Comp 1 and 2 professor, one Betsy Griffin, who I so enjoyed as a professor, and who laid it on me one day that I shouldn't change my writing style. She wanted to know how I learned my particular way of writing, and my reply was that I simply write the way I speak. She replied that writers spend years developing that ability, which comes to me naturally.

And so as I have dreams, I write them into the blogs, and thus into the story. I am sure I am driving my readers nuts as my tale isn't linear, anything but.

And my dreams...I had one last night that I have not written in as yet. But it is a continuation of the opening thoughts the main character, one Larry Devaryo, has in the story. What was different about last night's dream was the feeling of terror was still there, but the aliens didn't show up this time. Highly unusual. I generally awake right around the time the aliens appear in the skies and I then see them in the dream all about the area. These dreams of attacking aliens really scare the hell out of me. I used to wake up in a sweat from the fear.

When I was in high school my room mate woke me one night, he and another school mate were drinking beers in our dorm room. A no-no. But apparently I had been talking in my sleep as he asked me, who's coming Chuck?

I asked him what he meant through sleepy eyes. He said you were talking in your sleep saying they're coming, they're coming.

My brothers used to tell me they held long conversations with me when I was asleep.

I can't say what any of it means, but hopefully writing all of this out will help.

Additionally I have decided to start adding graphics to the story. I am going to use Norman Rockwell's method, which is kind of a cheat, and actually means I will be doing things backwards to achieve the results I am looking for, for the time being. Maybe down the road I can improve on this approach. I do this because my freehand sketches aren't, imho, very good.

The Norman Rockwell approach is to stage the moment, photograph it, then project the photo, and then draw and sketch and paint in the image from the projection.

I won't have the luxury of a Saturday Evening Post paycheck, and so no models other than those I ask who are willing, will be in any of my illustrations.

Oh yes, something to add to the above, I will also be going back and removing the bulk of the blogs of this story. As I turn them into graphic novellas. The idea being to then post a link to either a kindle version, or the graphic illustrated "comic book" version, which I will load someplace like Blurb, except Google (Blurb) already has my business, and I believe I'd like to take the graphic novels somewhere else, like lulu dot com, for publication.

And continuing in that same thinking, what Dr. Bernard and Empire State refers to as depth and breadth, I will record MP3s of the story, and then CDs for sale, and then a board game, and then continue, hopefully, building out this story more and more.

Here is a link to some sites one can do all of this with:
http://mashable.com/2009/09/05/sell-products-online/

Having posted all of that I want to add an interesting post I found the other day about the best way to make money and have to mention then that all of us apparently are being duped:
What is the best way to make money?

Wish me luck,

-Charles

Blogging with Blogger

It might seem trivial but for certain types of storytelling one medium may be better than another.

For example I have several blogs I post to on Google's Blogger. This is one of them. What bothers me about Blogger is the way it inverts posts, so the oldest posts are at the back of the blog. Why is this an issue?

For me its an issue as I am writing a science fiction story and post new sections to it as I write them. So what happens is you get the latest written section, but you then have to go to the trouble of navigating all the way back to the first post if you want to know the whole story. I think this affects new viewers of the blog regularly. The find the most recent page, and then stop there. So today I have "gathered" all of the posts for my science fiction story, the first part of which is called Enter the Mass Cancelled Square Dance, by Nik Alinaru (me).

So you can go to the old version:

 http://videofeedback4.blogspot.com/2012/02/enter-mass-cancelled-square-dance.html

And find your way back and forth through the posts to gather the whole story, or you can go here:

http://videofeedback4.blogspot.com/

And get the whole story on one page.

Since this part of the story is essentially finished ( I will be adding some graphics later), you get it all in a nice "package" from the link above.

This goes to the concepts outlined in my Information Design blog here:
http://videofeedback1.blogspot.com/

Which is another back to front blog, which I will make a one page blog, later.

In closing, how could Blogger better avail itself for my purposes? It'd be nice if I could simply click a button and have the entire set of posts re-format into the story with the beginning posts at the beginning of the blog.

-CB

The Walden Pond Theory

I read somewhere that Thoreau believed the 20 square miles around your home is enough territory to explore to last a lifetime.

I have also read a book that states anywhere in the United States, you are never further than 20 miles from the nearest road.

And the Boyscouts handbook, and other trailblazers state if you are ever lost head downhill until you find a stream or river or other body of water and follow it, as this will eventually lead you back to civilization.

I am finding as I drive around the local countryside that we have an amazing amount of resources, and stories right here, right in my own backyard.

If you look to see the signs you find these resources.

Signs are an interesting thing. They come in many forms, and can be viewed from many directions, some of which make the sign invisible, and some of which make it hard to read, and if you see the sign hopefully it makes you think about what it means, and what it is trying to tell you.

Some signs, like a path into the woods, or down an alley, are not so obvious about their meaning. This is the problem with signs. What does it mean? And then what is it NOT telling you?

These thoughts came to me because I recently saw a sign that only stated that a festival was going to happen on a given date. It did say where it is, but you have to know where that location is. It didn't give much direction on where it really is, it does not tell you what state the village is in, and it doesn't state how to get there, and if it costs anything once you are there. Nor any times. Only the date, the village, the name, and the picture of the event. The rest is up to you to figure out.

So I've been on the internet to try and find out the where. And now I am going there to make sure I am right.

Which means I am going for a drive today with a destination and purpose in mind. To answer the questions above.

Which begs the following question, what am I going to learn today?

Would you like to know?

Post pre-amble to a rockumentary music video.

In an interesting way some of the energy I am up against in wanting to produce this "rockumentary" music video is starting to dispel.

In the earlier post on this topic I had two concerns. One of needing a second video camera. Hopefully, it looks like that issue has fallen to the wayside as I have found an online rental store that carries exactly what I am looking for. I like this site because I searched for what I wanted and the user interface returned pricing, insurance, and told me other technical details I need to know, plus it states it is currently in stock, which brightens my hopes to have it for my desired dates. And... the pricing is reasonable. All that remains is to secure the rental for the desired length of time.

Additionally this brings back to mind what my college professor of Radio and Television Arts once told me, use other peoples money to create projects, if you use your own you really are an artist, (and) never buy the equipment if you don't have to (again if you do you are an artist and feel the need outweighs the business aspect).

For myself what this does for me is buy me time. I do want one of these cameras for myself because I have started to enjoy photography, and these are top flight cameras, that generate wonderful results. But the important aspect is that they are capable of acquiring motion video at film quality. It really is a wonderful time to be a producer, if you have a decent story to tell. More on this at the end of this post.

Before that can happen though another issue has crept into the creation of this video. The band that will be the subject matter is being asked as of this writing if they'd like to do this. So I put the horse before the cart on this point. It wasn't my idea to "bloom" this into a music rockumentary, it was the idea of the lead singer of the band, whom I have contact with via Facebook.

And my production assistant has gotten back to me at least once via email that he is interested.

On both of these points I now have some other thoughts. One is that the price of the rental is reasonable enough that I may in fact rent two units. This will allow me to lock down a single video camera, and then have two people on the move with these other two rentals. This is known as triple camera format, you can see this on display in many sit-coms. A camera left, right and center. In the case of this live event the two non-center cameras will be able to be on the move. 

Additionally what is desirable about these two cameras is that they have amazing zoom. The advantage here is the two camera ops won't have to encroach on the scene in order to shoot close-ups. It does mean limiting certain artistic aspects, like maybe a shot down the length of a guitar neck, but in my humble opinion, we aren't shooting a million dollar video, although my hope is by the end of the production line, it may end up looking like one.

And as an aside it has occurred to me that the tools for the creation of art have become plentiful and reasonably priced. And concurrently it does seem like industry may be stepping back and re-evaluating the de-valuing of the impact art and artistic design can have on product. More on this later.

-CRB

Postscript:

I mentioned above I'd have more to say about having a story to tell and the end of this post. I have over the last few years been struggling with trying to find a story to tell in video, and one that is worth telling. There have been a lot of wannabees but I think my search is finally over.

I have found two, one by accident, one by asking around and having been in the right place at the right time. 

A few years ago I spent time making rounds with one of our church members who runs a thing called the Mattress Ministry. He essentially carries mattresses he finds at Salvation Army or Goodwill and takes them to the needy out the rural areas around town. He started to bore me to tears after a while because he kept telling old stories about wars, and then repeated the telling of them. But out of this came a story about a man that was on the run to save his own life here in the Steuben County area. Wrongly accused and taking place over 4 years, he was eventually hunted down and hanged. The first man hanged in Steuben County. A story that took place I believe over 2 hundred years ago. I hope to be able to properly present it in video.

The other story has come about only because I have kept a somewhat dormant connection alive. I did a doc video a few years ago for an independent film producer about the making of one of her films. I've kept in touch with her via Facebook and email. She has recently announced a call for entries for a show about what animals face from the encroachment of humans on the animal kingdom.

I suggested that I shoot stills of all the roadkill I see as I drive. And perhaps will title this group of images as "Prints of Death".

Wish me luck. Thanks.

-CRB

Pre-amble to a music video documentary.

In some ways I am a little reluctant to write this because I am always sketchy about video projects. If you miss a classic shot there is a producer around who will probably wish that you'd never been born.

I have volunteered to shoot a local live music coming up in about 3 weeks and am up against some interesting odds. The first thing is, I am not going to make any money off this, I am doing it because I love the particular band that will be the main draw to this event and I also have a serious love of doing music justice in video.

Ultimately what will happen is I will shoot a lot of video. In nearly any video project more is best, so long as it is good footage, because then you have lots to choose from, and it makes it possible to cover up mistakes along the way by having available "cut away" footage to use as a kind of band aid over any bad video.

I have some issues though, I am alone in this endeavor at the moment, and I only have one video camera to work with.

I have however addressed both issues. I possibly have found someone to be a production assistant, PA, and the need for the PA is so I can man two cameras.

The other issue is coming up with a second video camera. I am hoping I can rent one for the needed time frame, if not I hope I can find some way to find a HiDEF camera that will serve the purpose.

More on all of this as it progresses.

Stay tuned...

-CB