My African Adventures

This business, like any, has had its share of ups and downs.  Whether you're a photographer, musician or carpenter, the independent path is often an uncertain one and filled with mixed blessings.  Sure there's the freedom of being your own boss without the need to punch the clock, yet owning your own business often has you working away while your friends are quitting at six and there have been more than a couple of slow months when I wished I was on somebody else's payroll.  Let's not even begin to talk about medical insurance and the like.   Sarah and I often joke that "freelance" means "out of work".

Still, with a mix of blind persistence, dumb luck and a whole lot of help from our friends, we've managed to do more than just get by.   We've been fortunate and we believe it's essential to help out others as much as we can.

I'll be traveling to Kenya in a short while to document in video and photographs, the amazing children of the Rehema Home orphanage in the heart of Nairobi.  This will be my third visit to Kenya and I'm often asked  "Why Africa?"  The truth is that my first trip was initiated by my own arrogance.

We were watching a video presented on behalf of the orphanage, created by a congregation member that had recently returned from Kenya.  Even by amateur standards, the video was pretty awful.  It had all the best mistakes.  Filming with a bright window behind their subject, mega-shakey cam with tons of zooming and simply terrible audio. Of course, as a professional, you just cringe at that stuff, like chalk squealing on the blackboard.  "How did they expect to raise any money with a video like that?"

Ok.  Long story short, after $400 worth of vaccinations and 16 hours on a jet, Sarah and I are standing in Nairobi airport with a six others waiting for our ride.  Totally out of context and just a little bit anxious.

Our photography and video production company keeps us traveling quite a bit and we are used to packing our gear so that, if it arrives at all, it will arrive safely.  It's for this reason, that we never send our cameras through regular luggage, they always get carried on the plane with us, or at the least, we carry them up to be gate checked on the smaller jets.   Nairobi has the unfortunate nickname of "Nai-robbery" and we wanted to make sure the cameras never left our site.

We had checked in advance and we knew were allowed one carry-on each, so I packed a small roller case with a Sony PD-150 video camera, a Nikon D200 and a couple of  lenses.  Sarah carried a our mac book and our personal items in a back pack.  Finally, I disassembled a small Manfrotto 441 tripod and put that though with our bags.  I was relieved to see that it, and our clothing had mad the journey unscathed.

 Irv Shwandt, who runs Rehema Home with his wife Ruth, greeted us with a friendly voice, scooped us up into a small, Nissan min-bus and shuttled us down the bumpy roads into Nairobi.  It was now 10 pm, and we were jet lagged out of our minds.  The dark highway turned into a gravel road that now changed to a dirt road, filled with rocks and pot holes.  For awhile, our headlights were the only source of light, but eventually we pulled up to a small guest house with a bright lamp on the gate.  We were introduced to our hosts and our rooms, read the rules of the house and then hit the sack.  The accommodations were sparse, but it was "The Ritz" compared to what was around us.

Sunlight makes everything better.  After breakfast we walked down the dirt roads that had us fearing for our lives and they were now filled with light and color.  The homes and building around us were little more than loose wood and tin shacks, poorly thrown together.  Dozens of people walked briskly down the roads among the stray dogs and roosters in the dust of passing vehicles.  You could smell the poverty.

When I finally met the children of Rehema Home, all I could do was smile and sigh..  These kids, having faced horrific circumstance, many of them HIV positive, all abandoned for no reason of their own, greeted us with smiles and cheers.  Without hesitation they grabbed our hands and lead us over to the area they were playing in.  They were just kids, no different from my own.  And fortunately, due to the love and devotion of Irv and Ruth, they had shelter, food, clothing and and were getting an education.

Millions of others were not nearly as fortunate.  It was difficult to comprehend the conditions people live under in some of the places we visited.  Kibera has the distinct dishonor of being Africa's 2nd largest urban slum with as many as 2 million people living in an area under one square mile.  I've have traveled all over the world but I had never seen anything like this.  Sadly, after a few days, it's all quite numbing.

We spent the week working at the orphanage, repairing and painting the buildings and taking breaks to play with the kids.  In 10 days I shot 11 hours of video and took over 2,200 photographs.  There were over fifty kids to photograph and the combinations were endless.  The children loved seeing their own images and they would scream "Let me see me!"  so that we would turn the viewfinder around so they could see themselves.  Half of the fun was showing them their own images and watching them giggle.

When we left Nairobi airport for London, I felt like I had escaped, but I knew I would to return.

It really wasn't until I returned home that the full impact of our journey hit me.  Everyone around me seemed totally preoccupied with what appeared to be extremely trivial matters.  My first encounter was a woman who had been waiting at least five minutes for a taxi.  She was absolutely livid.  Had she witnessed the lifestyle in Nairobi, perhaps she might lighten up a bit.

Your camera has amazing potential locked up behind that lens and it can be used to do a lot of good.

I'm happy to say that my photos and videos have successfully been used to raise money and awareness for the orphanage.   I enjoy using the skills I've acquired to give help to others and it's rewarding to actually see the results of my efforts.

If each person would simply help one or two others, we might actually put a dent in some of the worlds problems.

www.rehemahome.com
www.duckyou.com
http://vimeo.com/crazyduck

City Lights

I've just past the half way mark on my latest short film City Lights featuring elements of NYC.  All of the scenes in this film are made up of time lapse images shot in different locations around New York City.  I had hoped to have City Lights completed by now, but unfortunately, the snow and extreme cold weather have made things a bit difficult.  But the weather is slowly warming up and I'm ready to get back out there.

I enjoy shooting for time lapse and it can be done several ways.  The original technique was to shoot one frame of film or video at a specific interval.  For example, to speed of clouds, you might shoot one frame every five seconds and then when you play it back at 24 fps for film or 30 fps for video, everything will move extremely fast.  It required using a device called an intervalometer.  Basically a timer with which you could set up the interval of your shots and the amount of frames shot at each interval.  Some cameras had this feature already built in.

When creating a time lapse this way, it helps to plan ahead and try to pre-visualize the movement in order to achieve the action you are looking for.  If you set a longer interval between exposures, the resulting action will be faster movement and of course the opposite is true, as well.   More on this in a bit.

The other way more commonly used these days is to shoot a long segment of video without moving the camera and then speed it up with your editing system.  At your edit desk you can determine the correct speed for your project.  The down side here is that this technique takes a bit more time, because you have to digitize all that footage into your system in realtime or fill your drives with very large files.

The most difficult part of working in time lapse is finding the patience to complete a shot properly.  I might setup a shot of the NYC skyline, directly across the river from one of the Hoboken parks/piers.  Everything looks great and I am trying to imagine how the slow moving clouds will look, sped up.  Then, I'll see a large ocean liner making its way north of the Hudson, or a beautiful bank of clouds over the financial district.   My current shot seems lame compared to these new revelations.  Too often, I have returned home only to find that my original instinct was the best and I had killed a great looking shot by being impatient and leaving it too soon.

So, I have established the 20 minute rule for myself.  I bring along a stop watch and continue to hold my position for a minimum of 20 minutes.  I've also taken to bringing more than one camera when possible.

My longest time lapse to date was 7 days.  I set up 10 cameras in the University of Nevada stadium to document the building of U2's POP Tour stage.  Some of the cameras were capturing one frame every 2 minutes, while others moved much faster.  If the action was slow, like the building of the stage and the giant POP arch and screen, then capturing the action at one frame every two minutes was perfect.  That way, each hour of construction equalled around 1 second of screen time.  A weeks worth of construction was captured in around a minute of playback.  If people or objects are moving very fast in front of the camera, then I would set the camera to shoot one frame every one or two seconds.  

The results were beautiful and were featured prominently in the U2 POP documentary film.   

On the other hand, hanging out in the stadium while the week passed was a bit tedious.  I had to make my rounds to the different camera positions all over the stadium to ensure that everything remained operating properly and to insure that the action happening in front of camera four was still moving.  And of course, I needed to keep the continuous supply of fresh film and batteries flowing.  

The lens I'm using is also a consideration.  Clouds will move much faster on a close up shot of the top of a building than they will on a wide vista.  The more you experiment the more it will make sense.

The first part of City Lights was created using my Sony EX3 and it included the use of some low light Nikon telephoto lenses to create some "big moon" shots, but I hope to finish it using our new Sony HXR-NX5 camera.  Called NXCAM for short, this camera is smaller and lighter than our EX cameras and records onto AVCHD cards or a small flash drive that mounts on the side of the camera and it is capable of holding up to eleven hours of 1920x1080 HD video.

Regardless of the type of camera being used, it's key to have your camera mounted securely on a decent tripod when experimenting with time lapse.  A stiff wind or the vibration of a passing bus will be very noticeable and can easily blow the best shot .  

I've been using several different types of Manfrotto tripods when I go out on the street to film.  If I know that I will be working close to my car, I might use a larger tripod like my 536 carbon fiber or 545B.  Both offer great stability.  But if I plan to do a lot of walking around, I might use something a little smaller and more portable.  I don't really need a fluid head for time lapse, because I'll be locking the camera down in one position.  So, in fact, you could even use a still camera tripod.  

Speaking of still cameras, many new digital cameras have a built in intervalometer and will allow you to create beautiful time lapse movies.  I have used both Nikons and Canon cameras for this purpose with amazing results, but there is a trade off.  Digital SLR camera shutters have a limited life span and although the price of replacing a shutter is less than the price of a new camera, it can still be costly affair.  It's a fair price to pay if someone is paying you for your work, but if you wear out your only camera prematurely, it's a drag.

That's why I have used the built-in time lapse capability in all of my Sony cameras.  There are simply no moving parts.  No shutters or spinning tape drums and therefore, nothing to wear out. 

So, the snow is melting and hopefully it will stay away long enough for me to get back out into the mean streets of New York City.  I'm ready to once again brave the cold and freeze my tush off for my art.

www.duckyou.com

www.vimeo.com/crazyduck 

Team Work

Every member of the film crew is extremely important.  Just ask anyone on the film crew.

If not for the director, the talent would be impassionate and disorganized, their motivation, lost.  There would be no… no direction.  Without the DP and camera operator, all that great acting would never make it to the screen and what good is a collection of great acting and visuals, if you can’t hear it. 

And so it goes down the line.  The grips and gaffers, wardrobe and special effects, editors, the lists go on.   Each, without whom the film could never have been made.

And what about the Fedex guy?  Even with an army of talent, if it doesn’t get delivered, ya got nothing!

The truth is, everyone on the crew is extremely important and it requires a serious amount of teamwork to successfully pull off a large production or feature film, but for some, (er, uh, like myself) teamwork was an acquired taste.

My interest in film and video production had its roots in photography and began in Ireland.  I was in Dublin taking photographs of an Irish rock group called Bagatelle when Jack McNiece, the president of the record label asked if I would produce and direct a music video for the band. 

I said “Sure.  I’d love to”, without having a clue what that involved.  

Now, I had been a photographer for a dozen years or so.  I knew a bit about lighting and I was having moderate success shooting fashion and portraits, but moving subjects.  Nothing!  I didn’t know where begin or who to enlist for help.

Still, I was young and cocky, so, I decided to pull it off by myself.  As a photographer, I did it all on my own.  I operated my cameras, set up the lighting.  Sure, I hired assistants to help out and clothing and hair stylists, but basically, I was a one-man show. 

Now I’m about to make a film.  OMG!  How do I do that?

The filming was to take place two weeks later at the Rose of Tralee festival in Co. Kerry.  I flew back home, ran to Fishkin’s, my local camera shop, where my camera guru Paul set me up with a Nizo super 8 camera, a Bogen fluid head and a bunch of Kodak black and white film. 

Back in Ireland a few weeks later, I set up a few lights that I had hired, and began filming each member of the band performing their part of the song, several times over, with the thought that I would film all the story footage back home in the states.  Which is exactly what I did.

I had a relatively clear vision of the mood I wanted to instill in the video, but I had little idea how to make my images come together to make a film.  So, I began to experiment, with everything and everyone around me.  I shot and wasted a lot of film, but I was really enjoying myself.  I was hooked! 

Not surprisingly, my images looked like a series of still photographs with a minimal amount of movement in each frame.  It’s all that I knew how to do.  Later it would be suggested that this was ground breaking technique, but for now, I was heading back to Dublin with a few reels of processed film and little clue to how they become a music video.

Enter Liam, my first team member.  Liam Walsh ran an edit house called Silhouette and was sympathetic to new filmmakers.  Without a proper tele-cine available to transfer the film to video, Liam arranged for a small projector and we figured out the best way to project the images on a wall and capture them with a video camera.

He put me in a room with two Sony U-Matic machines and a young editor named Maurice Linnane.   Maurice was young and cocky, as well, but here, on staff at a small editing facility, he had worked on dozens of projects and he was used to working with producers as a team member. 

Even better, he seemed anxious to help me with my video. 

I’m not sure how much Maurice knew, that I knew very little about the editing process.  Perhaps he thought my silence was due to deep creative thought, when in fact I was probably praying for a miracle.

Nonetheless, after a very short while, I began to see what was possible and as I saw my vision coming alive on the screen, I felt the interaction between us creating a product that was bigger than both of us.  Very cool!

The video was successful, but only because I was lucky enough to fall into the hands of other creative and kind individuals.

In the years to follow, I would work on much larger projects and with much larger crews.  Although i was still a bit of a maverick, I did learn to count on each of them for their particular skills and frankly, it’s those individual skills, coming together in concert that often enhance my work to levels I certainly would have difficulty reaching on my own. 

Today, I enjoy collaborating with my wife and partner, Sarah.  She and I prepare the groundwork for a production and then hire a team of talented freelancers to join our projects.   We still like keeping the production team small, but I am no longer trying to do it all myself.

Every member of team is important to us, but it still comes down to the Fedex guy if we want the job delivered on time.

Correction: After posting this page I received a fiery note from my writer saying that none of us, including the Fedex guy would have a job without a script.

Crazy Duck Website 

Crazy Duck on Vimeo  

Damn! Now Everyone Can Do It.

As a photographer, videographer, or musician, there is always some product that is being announced in your favorite magazine or on the Internet that makes you think,  

“Crap! Now everybody can do this!”

It could be a hot Digital SLR, a low cost editing system, Garage Band or a program like Photoshop.   You’ve spent years honing your craft and suddenly, everything you’ve mastered seems to be available in a blister pack at B&H.   With all your hard earned experience it is possible that you feel threatened by a plug-in.

Of course, there is some truth to this.  There will be hot talent out there with newfound access to resources previously unavailable to them.  Stuff, that in their wildest dreams they couldn’t afford to get there hands on.  And you can be sure that if they have the talent, their drive isn’t far behind and they’re going to take that opportunity and run with it, fast and far.

Can this affect you?  Of course it can!  But how it affects you, will be up to you.

There will be some, well established professionals whose business might tank.

It might be the owner of an editing facility that was convinced and insisted that, “This Final Cut garbage will never catch on.  Or the photographer that claimed film could never and would never be replaced by digital imaging.   

Hmm.  Getting many calls lately?

That fact is along with every advancement, a new seed has a chance to sprout while at the same time, a lot of the dead wood will be toppled in the forest.

I find it refreshing and necessary. 

Some of the inventive and brilliant images appearing on YouTube and Vimeo are enough to make an established professional wet his or her respective pants.  

If the reason is fear that you have lost ground, then it should be a wake up call to get back to the spirit you had when you left school.  When you were ready to take on the world and you did.

On the other hand, if the reason is excitement, then there is no need to completely reinvent yourself.  Embrace the new technologies and incorporate it into all those years of experience and creativity that you have already accumulated.

Better yet, hire one of those rising stars, complete with their new tools and techniques for your next production.   And don’t impose on them what you think you already know.  Let them show you what they can do, with ideas suggested by you. 

You just might find their free and unbridled thinking contagious.

www.duckyou.com 

www.vimeo.com/crazyduck 

Getting a Leg Up on Down Time

In our business, it’s not unusual for productions to jump from 0 to 100 mph in seconds or for that matter, screech to a halt in the same short period of time.

Budgets get revised, products might not be ready for market, the lead singer is saving the world, so the tour gets delayed or perhaps the FDA decides to take another look at the drug you’re about to launch.

Although it can be a pain in the bank, we’ve learned to use this time to our best advantage.

When we’re busy, we often discuss what we’d create if we only had the time.  So we try to keep several experimental projects, at low heat, on the back burner.  

It would be easy to sit around and whine about things we have no control over, but of course, that would accomplish nothing and there’s a good possibility that the new ideas we generate will help bring in new business, so perhaps it’s worth the effort.

Sarah and I have found that some of our most successful imagery has been created in down time and we’ve had just as much fun working together to create it.   

First of all, when you are creating your own project there are no restrictions.  Too often I’ve heard DPs or camera ops complain, “Well, if I was in charge I would do it this way”?  Well, here’s your chance to do it your way. 

We’re always interested in what the people we work with are doing as their “personal projects” and we have found that our clients are interested in ours.

For us, it’s producing short films.  I use this time to create as many images as possible and the next time I have down time, I use them to create a new film.

In the olden days of film, you had to first buy the film stock, and then, after you exposed it, you had to have it processed and transferred to video to edit.  That could easily run into a lot of money and not having enough funds to test was a fair excuse.  Although, to be honest.  Those cinematographers that really wanted to hone their craft found a way.  

With today’s cameras, the costs are negligible.  If you are recording to SXS, AVCHD or P2, it’s endlessly renewable and if you are using tape, you can always re-purpose a tape from that client that you never want to see again.

Just go out there with your camera and shoot.  Make some incredible footage that you can use in your own project or shoot images for stock and put them up on one of the more popular sites like Shutterstock or Pond5.   No matter what level of camera operator you are, the more you look through that viewfinder the better your images will become.

I’ve also trained myself to carry a small journal with me to write down ideas when they hit.  It might be an idea for a film or a photograph or the location of a great looking shot.

How about all the times you’ve said, “Wow!  This would make a great shot!” and then when you have time to chase it down, you’re like, ”Duh… Now where was that?”

I use the journal to remember those shots.  You can do the same thing using your phone/camera, but I like the formality of a little red book and I look back at it often and plan which scenes I can get if I have the time.  It also helps me remember the time of day and position of the sun at the time I noticed the shot.  All of that will help you recreate your vision.

The worst thing that can happen is that you get better at using your camera.  Learn different ways to set the personal profiles in your camera, get good at making a smooth pan with your fluid head or try out that new follow-focus you just handed over a pile of money for.

Don’t wait until you’re on a job to get used your cameras accessories.  The last place you want to learn that kind of stuff is on the set.

If you’re writing a screenplay, or cracking a new editing program or animation software, again, this is the time to learn, not when you are under pressure to produce. 

Finally, be diligent about it.  If this is what you want to do, put your all into it.

There’s a lot of competition out there and the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

If all else fails, arrange a vacation.  You can be sure that someone will try to book you for those dates.

www.duckyou.com 

http://vimeo.com/crazyduck
www.duckem.com  

Another Format Bites the Dust

My HDV camera fell off its perch today and smashed on to the carpet.   It was a Sony Z1, originally costing us around five grand when purchased four or five years ago.

F....Ouch!

The fault was my own and after circling the damage on the floor, stamping and cursing a bit , I got on to the business of getting it repaired.   

My little Sony has traveled quite a bit.  I have used the Z1 to film a Jazz documentary in Dublin, Ireland and for a radio promos for "I-105 in Sligo.  It filmed the Celtic Woman at Carnegie Hall and chased Bono around the stage all over southern California. 

The Z1 was also one of seven cameras filming several jazz performers at the Blue Note in NYC and I have used it in a variety of locations around the world, to collect nearly 500+ hours of stock footage in both NTSC and PAL   Truly, the camera has performed outstandingly under most conditions.

Yet, sadly, despite all that great history, the camera had been used very little in the last two years and in fact, the illustrious camera has been relegated to the embarrassing task of documenting the first shrieks of our baby daughter. 

Important images, yes, I know.  Still, it’s like asking Spielberg to shoot a Bar Mitzva.

The problem is not to do with the performance of the camera.  The Sony HRV-Z1U remains one of the most reliable cameras that we have ever purchased and I had kept it in constant use, often in conditions of heat and high humidity.

What killed this camera was not the fall to the floor, but the HDV format and more specifically, the use of tape becoming obsolete.  Alarmingly, it all became outdated in a very short period of time.

Progress can be painful when you own and operate an independent production company.  Every upgrade is supposed to bring something wonderful and amazing that will enhance your creativity or at the least, repair a bug from the last version you purchased.   

Upgrades can also be a pain in the ass when they require that you stay current to remain in the game  Like your shinny new Mac wanting Quicktime 8.4 while your Avid system chokes on anything higher

than version 7.2.  Sometimes it's the software, other times the computers or the cameras, but it's always costly in one way or another.  

Through our own mistakes, we've learned not to take out a lease longer than two years, as the gear we acquire has a real chance of  being unusable, long before it's paid off. 

One particular upgrade that effected us was the arrival of XDCAM and Sony ‘s EX1 camera.  (sigh)

The quality was phenomenal and the image was far superior to any other small camera, under twenty grand that we had acquired to date. 

In the time we owned and used the Z1 cameras, none of our clients actually finished any of their programming in HD.  They were all excited about capturing in HDV, but when it came time to mass-produce a DVD, they all stayed with SD. 

Partly, because of the cost and more importantly, the low percentage of people that actually had the capability to play an HD disk.   And if they did have an HD player, which format did they own, Blu-Ray or HDD? 

The format war was raging on there, as well.

Although some productions required higher formats, not all of our clients needed the technical superiority of HDCAM or Varicam and if the budget was limited, (and how often is it not limited?) we’d prefer to spend their production dollars creating great imagery rather than at the rental house.

To this end, Sarah and I completed many successful productions with our DSR-570s and the Z1.  The cameras were professional, affordable and the images they produced were perfect for the majority of programs were working on.

Then, the EX1 and EX3 arrive and all our existing footage looks like junk next to it.  Even projects that we shot in HD and posted in SD made the older cameras look soft and mushy.

In some cases, the EX1 images trashed those from the DSR-570 when posted side by side and it only took one instance of the client asking “Is that last shot a little fuzzy?” to motivate me to go back and re-shoot a few scenes with the new format.

That became our point of no return.

It would have been nice if any of the accessories from the Sony Z1 would work on the new gear, but other than the tripod plate, everything had to be replaced from the zoom controller to the UV filter.

So, even knowing all this,  I brought our poor wounded camera to Sony Service in Teaneck, NJ last week, figuring the baby deserves decent HDV quality in PAL and NTSC.  

As always, they were helpful, caring and mindful to remind me that there was a $135.00 fee for estimating the damage.  The total repair was close to $ 600.00 and Sarah and I took a good five minutes to discuss the camera’s “illustrious” career and its future.  We decided that to pay for the estimate only and cut our losses.

The Z1 will adorn the shelf next to my PD-150 my Nikon F4 and my father’s Pentax.

No real complaints though.  None of them owe us a dime.

www.duckyou.com 

www.duckem.com 

On The A-List for B-Roll

It's always fun to see our work appear on TV.

Sure, we do video work all year round, but not all of what we do is produced for broadcast.  Some films, like a sizzle reel for Jean Paul Gautier or Issey Miyake, might be created to announce a new fragrance to magazine editors or cosmetic department managers.  Films we create for Victoria's Secret, will be used to educate new employees on how to effectively approach their customers and a film for a government contractor might explain just why they need another six million bucks to finish the project they said would cost five. 

But for many of our clients, the footage we're shooting is for broadcast and I'm proud to say that our imagery has appeared on all the major networks and many cable stations around the world.  Sometimes it might appear in a completed documentary, or as background footage (b-roll) in stories about Six Flags Great Adventure, HersheyPark, U2, Harley-Davidson, Norah Jones, Garth Brooks or others.

On several occasions our footage have been used to add pepper to a report from CNN's Jeanie Moo, or to illustrate ride construction on "Megastructures".  Often, reporters are on a tight schedule and it could take hours to film enough footage to produce an interesting four minute segment, so they'll ask our clients if they have any video or "b-roll" and for this reason, our clients will ask us to create it, so they can have it on hand, ready to go.

B-roll reels, are made up of a series of interesting video clips and on occasion, an interview, reaction or testimonial from someone involved in the story.

If it is a new roller coaster, it might be the ride's designer, engineer, the park's PR manager or even the company's CEO.  This might be followed by some kids telling us how cool the ride is or how much "air-time" they got.

Sometimes we know when our material will be on the air, but most times it just appears and surprises us.  The fact that it has been used by the news services means that we are doing our job properly.
 Knowing what to shoot and how to deliver it is an important part of the process.

Monday night we received an urgent call from our friends at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, where we are currently producing several films about blood management and bloodless surgery.  They were having a major press event the following morning and asked us,  "Could you put together an effective b-roll package from the footage you have been shooting?"

Fortunately, the footage had already been logged in our Avid editing system and it was just a matter of picking appropriate images, placing them in the correct order and adding titles and logos to complete the package.  We came up with a fair price for the project and got to work.  After creating the 5 minute reel we posted it on a secure site and sent a link to our client so that they could approve the content. We then prepared the final product as Hi-Def files, DVDs and Betacam SP tapes.

BTW: They needed it by 8am tomorrow.  Here's Our B-Roll In Action

The reporters had their camera operator shoot the interviews, any relevant speakers and of course, the reporter themselves and then the rest of the story is made up of our shots.   The more appropriate the footage is, the more stations that will use the images in their stories and in turn, the more press our clients will get.   And that's what we're getting paid for.

Just yesterday afternoon we were informed that some of our NYC stock footage was purchased to be used in the network drama "24".   I wonder how many episodes we will have to watch to cheer for our five seconds of fame.

www.duckyou.com
www.duckem.com