Videocracy Blog

Last night we had a special guest in the studio, we invited Blues Guitarist and Harmonica player Steve Cohen to be in Episode #10 of our Wisconsin Business Owner Interview series…it was a lot of fun, We started with the interview portion, it was a pretty interesting interview because he wasn’t a business owner primarily, primarily he is a musician….although I find the business owner interviews to be interesting, I find this one to be particularly interesting, hearing the life of a musician was a pretty interesting thing…and the life of a pretty well known one too…

After we were finished with the interview, Steve did a live set for us…pretty basic set up, just an amp and a mic…and I had the opportunity to practice recording live music…I listened to it this morning, and I have to say the audio quality was pretty good…of course with the sound board it records onto two tracks, so when I work with it, I will be able to mix the audio a little more.

It was a great time, and a great interview…next week some time I will get a chance to begin editing it…it will be interesting.

Oh, and also we used the black backdrop for the first time…and I think it turned out well.

Keith and I just shot our 8th Wisconsin Business Owner Interview…This was probably one of our better shoots, at least for me personally on the technical end.  I thought our Audio was really good, slight hum has per normal with the DVC-60 Panasonic, but besides that, it is loud and audible.  Our guest Patricia Clason, kept that microphone fairly close, picking up a loud clear vocal pattern.

I set up three cameras, and I adjusted everything manually in our small panasonic cameras…usually I allow them to do the adjusting automatically…but this time I decided I was in charge of all the cameras, and I wanted the best possible look out of all of them.  And that’s exactly what I got.  These small Panasonic cameras are great on a consumer level, there is a definite difference between those and the large DVC-60, of course that has everything to do with the 1 CCD chip in the small cameras and the 3 CCD chip in the big camera.  But what I like is that it is obviously a different camera, with a different quality to it.  In some three camera shoots, especially with shoots related to bands, I like to keep one as a hand held camera…further emphasizing that this is a different look and feel.  The DVC-60 is a very pristine camera, it is what it was designed for…and some people would only rather have that look and nothing else, but in most circumstances I like the look of using both.  In some cases though I only want that pristine camera quality of the DVC-60…it is what it is.

I really feel that from a technical point of view each one of these videos is getting better and better…and now that I am doing these by myself, I have to get stronger at them.  I am a rebel without a crew…and I can blame no body but myself for anything that goes wrong…that’s why I gotta make sure 100% that nothing does go wrong.  That’s why this shoot was one of my best…because everything went smoothly…I hope it goes this smoothly in Post production also.

The runtime on the shoot was a little less then 57 minutes…with all the unusable footage that won’t be used it might bring the total runtime to around 45 minutes.  Which next to the Al Gaudynski interview, this may be the longest one we have done yet.

I look forward to the next Wisconsin Business Owner Interview…number 9..