Event Video Production

This isn't your father's convention video, with a few slide projectors, and a couple big TV screens.

It's massive, wall sized screens, sometimes five or more of them, displaying images from a half-dozen broadcast quality cameras, multimedia elements and perhaps a few live satellite downlinks. And it's big business.





With a small army of technicians and miles of power and video cables and sophisticated lights and projectors (with bulbs that cost as much as a new car), today's event multimedia productions deliver an immersive experience for the attendees.





Operating camera for these events is a kick. It's really a live TV show, more akin to something CNN or Oprah would do, but only ever to be seen by the select couple thousand in attendance.





A recent production featured a satellite link to an operating room where the doctors performing heart surgery were in live consultation with doctors in the audience via audio and video links. Amazing, indeed.



(all photos via iPhone) ©Brad Kelly 2009

Umbrella Photo a Winner in RAW Boston.com Contest

One of my photos was recently chosen as one of ten winners in the "April Showers" themed contest sponsored by RAW, a photo community run by The Boston Globe. It's an honor to be picked out of hundreds of submissions, even if "honorable mention" doesn't come with any cash.

My photo was snapped from the hip one rainy evening outside the Coolidge Corner Theater, as a couple waited to cross the street, the streetlight casting silhouettes on the wet translucent fabric of the umbrella they shared. It's one of those fleeting images that often catch your eye when you don't have a camera with you to record it.

You can view my photo and the others in the Winners Gallery. I have to give props to the Globe and the judges for going with a more abstract collection of photos than one might have expected. Good to see it wasn't full of the usual stock suspects.

Pat Glennon's evocative winning image (scintillatingly titled "21/365 v2.0") is positively minimalist; a blurred glob of tail lights through a wiper-streaked windshield.

I Am a Camera: "Eyeborg" filmmaker to implant camera in his eye

EYEBORG-- The Two Week Trial from eyeborg on Vimeo.

From Reuters:

Anti-surveillance filmmaker plans eye-socket camera

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Reuters) - A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.
Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board.
"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero ... fighting for justice against surveillance," Spence said.
"In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don't care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy."
Spence, in Brussels to appear at a media conference, said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain.
He does not intend to create a reality TV show and the camera will be switched off when not needed, he said.
"I don't want to go into a locker room. I don't want to show the world me going to the bathroom either ... I'm not a life-caster and I don't plan to be one," he said.
(Reporting by Bate Felix; Editing by Louise Ireland)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Sinusoidal Depleneration and You

Rockwell Automation @ Yahoo! Video

Gotta love those niche market corporate videos.

Floating Pool Photos on UrbanOmnibus

Moon and sky view through the roof of the Floating Pool 

I had the pleasure of shooting for an HD documentary a couple years ago, produced by Doug Cabot, about a unique project, the Floating Pool.

The documentary follows the conversion of an old barge in Louisiana into a floating pool to serve the residents of the New York City area during the summer months.  

Imagine being able to swim "in" the East River with the skyline of Manhattan as a backdrop.  Well now you can!  Find out where the Floating Pool Lady will be docked next summer and plan a visit. (PS-it's free!)

The Floating Pool under construction in Louisiana

In the course of spending time with the project, in Louisiana and New York, I also took some still photos.  Some of these and others are being featured as part of a slideshow and article on the Floating Pool on the just-launched website, UrbanOmnibus.  

UrbanOmnibus is a project of the Architectural League of New York and hopes to highlight interesting projects and create conversation about design and the future of sustainable architecture in New York City.

The Urban Omnibus interview with Pool architect Jonathan Kirschenfeld features a slideshow with images of the pool at various stages of planning and construction.  I've also added more of my photos to a set on my Flickr, if you're interested.

Believe it or not, the floating pool is not really a new idea.  New York city once had 15 of them a hundred or so years ago.  The Omnibus interview with Ann Buttenwieser, the person most responsible for the floating pool project, explains some of the history of the floating "baths" (as they were then called) as well as the torturous path the project took from when Ann first proposed it in 1980.

You can also listen to a WNYC produced conversation between Ann and Leonard Lopate below:

Look Around You!

The highly amusing British send up of 1970's classroom instructional videos, Look Around You, has been my own personal best argument for the usefulness of YouTube, being that Yanks like me couldn't have basked in its gentle genius without it.

Now, the BBC produced parody series has been picked up by the Cartoon Network to air beginning January 18th as part of its Adult Swim block.

The series is Moog synthesizer-note perfect--as anyone who went to school in the 70's or 80's can attest, with little scientific absurdities building upon themselves throughout the instructional "modules" while the spirit of Monty Python hangs over the proceedings like a benevolent ectoplasmic fog.

Homer Simpson's Favorite iPhone App

I was playing around with the AroundMe iPhone app--a very nifty feature that lets you check for things like "restaurants," "gas stations," "hotels" or simply and importantly, "coffee," and the application uses your current location data to direct you to nearby establishments.

In this case, I was home and I used it to tell me something I already knew:

There are a million freakin' Dunkin' Donuts in Somerville! No less than six within a mile of my house!