The holidays were madness again for me, so I feel lucky to have been able to find the energy to put together this piece for friends of the family.
A while back Jennifer and Anthony won my services via a silent auction for Hopper Creek Montessori (the preschool ours sons attended) and after some serious procrastination on my part, I hunkered down and put it together.
They made it easy on me by ruthlessly editing all of their video and photos down to the very best stuff. They even had a selection of music, which again made my life easier.
Ruthless editing…the key to at least a small portion of my sanity.
Before heading off on vacation earlier this month I finished up a short piece for Judd’s Hill Winery. They had everything shot and the voice over crafted for me ahead of time, making my job easier. After a couple of previews of what I came up with and some moving of the pieces, we had our finished product.
The other part that made my job easier was the music. Since Judd has a band with recorded music already (the Maikai Gents), they just put a few MP3s on a thumb drive and I picked the one I liked.
Oliver wanted to have a special Christmas present made for his wife Julia this year and came to me with the idea of a love letter of sorts, but made with photos, music and video.
He handed off a bunch of 4×6 pics from their time in Chicago, their wedding and their son Liam. He shot all of the video with his iPhone and gave me some music choices that might resonate.
Compared to a couple of other Christmas projects I was working on, this was relatively straightforward. Once I edited everything, I burned it onto a menu driven dvd, along with a few special features and hoped for the best.
Few days later, I get word that Christmas morning was rather emotional at their house. Tears of joy, as the saying goes.
I’ve had a few people mention that Linea Found would be good for small businesses looking to develop or enhance their web presence and they are 100% right. But until this project came along, I did not realize just how wide reaching the application of my mission here could go.
The St. Helena Public Library was recently asked to develop a video presentation highlighting their groundbreaking use of volunteers for a meeting of library directors on fellowship through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Titled after the California State Library initiative Transforming Life After 50, library leaders in the fellowship strive to better serve and work with midlife adults aged 50+.
The library director new exactly what she wanted, developing the core of the presentation with a script for interviews of volunteers. All the b-roll and interview video was self produced by the director and the volunteers and shot on a Flip type recorder. She also gathered photos, music, pdfs and even previously shot video from various sources; all to help illustrate the many programs the library puts on with the help of a posse of volunteers.
Video for use as a presentation tool never occurred to me, but I like it. So for all you business people looking to ditch the powerpoint (who would want to look at this anyway) and really make an impression, you know who to call.
The Joshua family had a great idea in terms of a theme for their project; time spent at Connolly Ranch. The ranch is a non-profit that provides hands-on education for kids and the community on farms, animals and nature. Once they started volunteering on the ranch, photos and videos began to accumulate.
The nice thing about this is there were lots of different subjects within the theme. Geese, goats, sheep, rabbits…everything offered a different view and in some cases different types of interacting between the kids and the animals.
And who can resist little Miles next to the big sheep?
We’ve known the Ramsey-Allen family since Kai was a baby in a family daycare with their son Liam. Over time we’ve done lots of stuff together and the boys are good friends now at preschool.
Julia had seen some of my multi-media work at the newspaper and after she got a new camera with hd video, she was ready to create something for her mom and grandmother in her hometown of Chicago. Problem is, she didn’t have the time to do it herself. So she hired me.
That got my mind turning on the potential for a side business creating little mini-documentaries for people, using their own footage and photos. After some thinking, a quick survey to a few people and a brainstorming session with Julia, Linea Found was born.
I actually owe her big because she not only helped come up with the name Linea Found, she did the logo as well. She is a fantastic graphic designer and I’m lucky to have her on board. Make sure to check out her work via her website Folia Design and her blog Gathering Inspiration.
Thanks again Julia and thanks to the whole family for being such good friends.
Three years ago, my wife and I took our eight month-old son to L.A. for a road trip. I had never shot video before, let alone edit any, but I knew with the changes happening in the newspaper business, that’s where things were headed.
So I shot with not only the video camera, but also with a polaroid, holga and digital camera. I had done audio editing for photo slideshows before, so I figured on doing an interview with Kai’s aunt over the phone after we got back.
Long story short, I was happy with the way everything came out, but I would do a few things differently if I had them to do over. Recording audio over the phone was probably not the smartest thing. I wanted to have that over the phone sound, but what I ended up with had just too much of that.
The look of the project and its length are geared for newspaper websites, since that was who I figured I should sharpen my skills for. If this were a project somebody came to me with, I would make it longer, use music and incorporate a different title treatment.
The most important aspect of this example in terms of Linea Found is the theme of vacation or road trip. If anybody is having trouble coming up with a theme, this would be a good one.
