There have been a bunch. At GM they got a kick out of hiring Hollywood actors to appear in their corporate videos. That gave me a chance to direct a multi-camera scene with Morgan Fairchild. She was a trooper. She just came back from Europe and was pretty sick from a stomach flu and went to the hospital the night before our first day of shooting. When the cameras were rolling, she was perfect. I was aware that her sister would be traveling with her as her assistant/makeup artist. The morning of the first day's shoot I was sitting in the studio's lunchroom having some coffee and she sits down next to me. I didn't realize it was her without her makeup until a few minutes of casual chatting and I recognized the voice. At first I thought it was her sister. Luckily I didn't say anything to embarrass myself.

Lot of sports commentators. Sat right next to Bryant Gumbel at a few production meetings at the '88 Olympics. He never said a word to me. I gave up saying good morning after the second attempt. One of the few celebs I have a low opinion of.

I was in high school when his brother, Greg was the sports anchor at the Chicago NBC affiliate, WMAQ. I was his guide at my school when he came out to announce the HS game of the week. 13 years later I am having lunch with him at the Olympics and chatting about the old days in Chicago. Personality wise, a total opposite of his brother.

Had lunch with OJ a couple times at the '92 Olympics. He was quite pleasant and joked around a bit. Haven't seen it for a while but I had a football card that he signed. Met Jim McKay at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Worked and chatted a bit with Bob Costas and Jim Lampley several times. Edited a studio segment that Costas was in and he was quite appreciative when I cleaned up and fixed a verbal flub of his. Always found him friendly and easy to chat/joke with. Met several Olympic athletes over they years.

Worked several months with the Pawn Stars on a road show. That can be the subject of its own post.

Yes please.

+1 to this. Would enjoy reading that.

So the Hoodie Awards went pretty well. No screw ups in switching the show. Bit of a challenge sometimes keeping up with four different outputs on the switcher, usually with different video at the same time.

Actually surprised the truck engineer and was able to build a macro to do what he though couldn't be done on that switcher, that simultaneously transitioned (dissolved) all four outputs at the same time. I had the line cut (program), an output for a massive LED screen center stage, a pair of vertical monitors usually displaying a logo, and a pair of horizontal monitors on set.

There was a blue carpet show pre-event for 80 minutes for interviewing the arriving stars, then after a 10 minute break, the main show lasted 5 hours without a break. Definitely kept the water intake to a minimum during the show.

Highlights should be up on the web within a few days. You can see previous highlights here: http://www.youtube.com/user/HoodieAwards?feature=watch I switched the 2011 and 2012 show as well.

I didn't know your dad was an actor Mike. And I didn't know you were a mod here until I saw your photo in your recent post.

Don't know if I'll see you at many more gigs. I've been location scouting and managing mostly, and haven't worked many camera gigs this past year. I do miss it some, just not consecutive HH days with OT cause my body just doesn't cope like it use to.

you're a solid mod Mike, thx.

!!

going to keep bugging you on this. you mentioned in the past you might do it for a local football game. that season fires up soon or?

Cool thread.

Did Gumbel just not even respond when you said good morning?

That is correct.

Hard to say if I'll be working any of those HS Football games this season. The station switched production companies and producers, and even though the new company made contact, not sure if I'll be able to come to terms or if my schedule will allow me to work those shows. Time will tell.

What a dbag.

.


great read pp. keep it up mang.

I made mention in RJ's thread that for a couple years I worked for a production company that would produce work for anyone and also produce their own content for the church market.

This is where I began to learn to edit. They were all film shooters that were converting to video. They had the only early computerized video editing system in town. Long before you could edit on your PC and digital video, you had to edit machine to machine, playing back on one or more "playback" video tape recorders and recording the output to another, usually passing the video through a switcher or "special effects generator" for the dissolves, wipes and layering graphics, and separate audio mixer. The editing computer would synchronize all these devices so you can make frame accurate edits and it would log all these events should you want to change or fix anything.

This wasn't our place but it was almost the exact same equipment and layout:


The multi-function buttons that wrapped the screen had a buffer so we challenged ourselves to stack as many commands a possible then sit back and let the equipment grind.

I started there and an assistant editor, which meant I would load and change tapes, ride audio, help with graphics. Since most of the work was unsupervised I would be able to discuss the editorial decisions with the senior members of the company and learn the aesthetics of editing from these former film editors. I would also study the manual for the editor and play with it whenever I could, so the mechanics, I pretty much taught myself.

Here is how I got my first real chance to sit in the editor's chair. A local hospital sponsored a health talk show, aired on local TV. They shot it in our studio and we edited it.

They decided to do a show on childbirth and actually show a c-section. Our production manger was doing the editing and when we got to that part of the show, as soon as the doctor made the incision in the mother, he jumped out of the chair and ran to the nearest waste basket to blow chunks. He said "Mike, you've got to finish this for me". I took over and finished the show. At some point in the process the client from the hospital came back and asked what happened to my boss. I explained and he showed no mercy. He went over to him at his desk and hit him with some joke about placenta and that sent him spewing again.

The next Monday the president of the company called me into his office. Said to me that he heard that I finished the health-talk show and he gave me a raise, promotion to editor and the elements to edit a Pat Summerall True Value Hardware Store commercial and I was on my way.

Funny story about one of the last gigs I did for them. I was asked to sit in and run camera on a church service in Chicago. The church was this converted old arena that used to host boxing and wrestling events from the 20's to the '60s.

So I am standing at my camera doing my thing and the preacher's wife gets up to testify. She gets into this long story about a conversation she had with her 3 year-old son then all of a sudden the kid in question shouts as loud as he could "I never said that"! I almost fell off my platform I was laughing so hard, and so was pretty much the entire congregation.

So I am in Milwaukee today and tomorrow working as the in-arena screen Technical Director for UFC 164. Today was the weigh-in show that was preceded with a 45 minute Q&A with a couple of fighters that I directed and switched.

The fight event coincides with a massive Harley Davidson festival so the town is packed. Going to head out and catch some live music.

Same arena used by the Bucks


The entrance to their locker room:


The TV compound:



The gear I am working on:

great stuff! thanks for posting.

you did a great job, you intuitively figured out the point of the show exactly.

On the NBC SLC Olympics set with the late great Jim McKay

Oh hi dere Mike, I figure you would be a good person to ask this.

I have .mp4 cell phone video files from when I recorded some bands in Austin earlier this year, I also have .wav audio files I recorded on a hand held digital recorder. The cell phone vid audio is completely terrible ofc, so what I need to do is strip the audio from the video files, and cut in and line up the good audio to the video. Do you know how I should go about this?

I think the most flexible and easy to learn video editing software for the PC is Sony Vegas. I use the pro versions but there is also a prosumer version for about $130. You can check them out and dl a demo try to accomplish your task here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegassoftware

What makes it so flexible is the ability to mix different format media on the timeline without much effort. There are 100's of tutorial videos for it on youtube so you can search "Sony Vegas" and whatever you are trying to do and a bunch of tutorials will come up and explain how to do it.

ty sir, I might try to check it out on my mom's computer.


Do you know of something on Linux? Or perhaps know of any open source programs that maybe aren't as good as vegas but still usable?

Is there a technical term for what I'm trying to do that I should look for in program feature lists?

ok ok ok, last question!


How much do you estimate a professional would charge me to fix the audio in the videos? I have like three half hour to hour long videos of bands playing.

Most will charge by the hour for the amount of time to complete the project. Rates will vary widely. $50-200 per hour. You might be able to get someone to quote a flat rate.

tyvm sir, appreicate it.