Looking down at the Ford Center floor
Angi Bruss, Tanner Herriott and I taped an interview with Ford Center GM Gary Desjardins today. Then we went up to the rafters and taped a couple of intros on the catwalks. All of this is for an upcoming video that features a time lapse of how the Ford Center swaps floors, from dirt to ice to the basketball floor.
So we shot a typical “hey we’re high atop the Ford Center on the catwalk” standup. Then we tortured poor Rob Agnew from the Ford Center into braving the heights for a little longer to shoot a second standup, playing off the NewsOK billboard at the ends of the Ford Center.
Those catwalks are quite stable really.
But way up there.
Tanner Herriott shot four days on the catwalks, often in the middle of the night, thousands of photos at a time. Then he is adding a cool Photoshop effect. Should be some decent stuff. See below, they look like toy trucks.
Coffee Break for Feb. 25, 2009
Fairly busy morning in the OPUBCO Studios. Expect upcoming videos on the Lord of the Dance and the Ford Center.
Angi Bruss interviewed Jason Gorman, lead dancer in the national tour of Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance.
Angi and I will hit the Ford Center this afternoon to complete a time lapse video. Tanner Herriott has been losing sleep, spending time in the Ford Center’s rafters. From the cat walk he has taken thousand’s of photos, capturing the Ford Center’s workers putting down dirt, ice and the hardwood for various events. Look for that video later this week or next.
In the meantime, check out the Coffee Break video. It’s a quick preview of just a few videos online at NewsOK.tv today.
This Tuesday needed a Coffee Break
More detailed explanation on this series soon. Angi and I knocked a few highlights of existing videos on NewsOK.tv.
Damon Fontenot is covering the Thunder announcements tonight: trade involving Tyson Chandler (who is on Twitter), new mascot and the game vs. the Hornets. Tim Money has been in Cushing all day covering the developments in the triple homicide. We have some video online, expect more soon.
Reporting from Lone Grove
We sent Tanner Herriott to Lone Grove earlier this morning. His mission to report from the scene and send back video. He caught up with The Oklahoman’s Steve Sisney, who left last night to shoot photos and video. Tanner reports the town is in bad shape. He drove to a nearby Burger King where residents were still in their pajamas trying to sort through their plans. Tanner used the wifi to file a video (below) and spoke with me via phone for a quick recap (above).
Here’s how we did that. Obviously he used his cell phone to call into our studio. We have a RemoteMix C+ JK Audio box that feeds the calls into our board which sends the audio to Final Cut Pro. We taped in front of the plasma screen. Covered the video with Sisney’s photos from the scene in post-editing and created a full screen graphic to show who I was talking with. Very simple stuff.
I just spoke with Tanner about 12:30 pm. Gov. Brad Henry is expected to be in Lone Grove at 2 pm for a tour and press conference. We have two more videos to post before then. Also the trailer park residents may be let back in this afternoon to tour their homes, properties and damages.
Panoramic iPhone app: Thursday night in Edmond
Went bowling Thursday night. Used the Pano app to take a picture at Boulevard Bowl. The Pano app lets you take six horizontal photos, and stitches them together.
Click on the image for a bigger version. Click on the bigger version for a bigger version. The app works well and the camera on the phone takes pretty good pics.
Buy For Less, Sean Cumming’s Irish Pub, Vito’s and Denny’s: an update on Oklahoma City food places
Had a 7:30 am shoot at the Buy For Less on NW Expressway this morning. Todd Fraser manned the cameras as we shot Chefs Sean and Cathy Cummings in the Gourmet Grille. We taped four segments, cooking everything from tuna to dessert.
The segments will be posted online at NewsOK and the Buy For Less site over the next few weeks, one every other week. You can find them by going to NewsOK.tv and searching “Chef Sean.”
Sean reports his Sean Cummings’ Irish Pub is doing outstanding business. He’s got a hit on his hands. The place at 9610 N May seems to be picking up steam since opening in August . Cathy said likewise for Vito’s, at 7521 N. May Avenue. She said they’ve often had establishments open at the same time, but rarely have both been going great guns at the same time. Good for them, they are lots of fun to work with and good people.
Took about an hour to knock out the four segments, about 90 minutes on site for set up and take down.
I drove up to Edmond following the shoot to check out a post I saw on Twitter: that Denny’s was so packed the person went next door to I-Hop. Worked well for both businesses. Denny’s aired a Super Bowl commercial promising America free Grand Slam breakfasts today from 6 am to 2 pm. And sure enough, the parking lot on Second Street was completely packed, overflowing next door to Old Chicago.
Watch the Super Bowl ads
The game was great, but were the ads?
The Super Bowl is widely believed to be the biggest day of the year for TV commercials.
Bud, Pepsi, Bridgestone, even Cash 4 Gold advertised.
NBC’s Hulu.com has all of the Super Bowl commercials. To the right is the Hulu.com embed code.
Clicking a thumbnail will take you to the Hulu.com site (one of my favorites, an amazing site). You can vote on ads at Hulu.com as well.
AdAge.com rated the commercials. It’s favorite?
AdAge.com’s Bob Garfield gave two ads 4 stars:
Coke Zero’s Mean Troy, a remake of the 1980 Mean Joe Greene ad, received four stars for its spot-on, word for word remake of the 1980’s classic.
The other top ad according to Bob Garfield came from Monster.com, an ad called Double Take.
The lowest rated ad? Garfield gave zero stars to Teleflora, for “ridiculing homely people about how ugly and sad they are. ”
The Oklahoman’s Matthew Price of Nerdage fame has embedded Super Bowl videos on his blog with some comments, check it out.
Chinese New Year in OKC and watch out for firecrackers
Saturday morning I drove down to Classen Avenue in NW OKC into the Asian District. I heard there were Chinese New Year celebrations. Actually I heard there was a Chinese Parade. I shot a Halloween Parade, so why not a Chinese Parade, whatever that might be?
I followed the cars and smoke to Super Cao Nguyen, at 2668 N Military. Smoke from the first round of firecrackers could be seen from Classen. The Super Cao Nguyen parking lot was full of both cars and people.
There really wasn’t a parade or maybe I just missed it. But there were many locations in the Asian District where crowds gathered to watch large strings of fireworks explode. I also learned you can get pretty close to the action if you want.
So I Twittered about getting a little too close to the fireworks. They really started faster than I expected. I’m smart like that. My Twitter account forwards to my Facebook account, where a friend from college who now lives in Taipei saw the update. Her response:
Hey Dave; here in Taipei we have this crazy Chinese fireworks show where anyone can put on motorcycle helmets and raincoats and what ever you want to wear, and then try to walk as close to the fireworks as you can.MAN those fireworks come at you like bullets and you have all these nutz walking around in the fireworks looking like aliens. Try getting that close to fireworks!
Here are two pics from the Chinatown Supermarket, 1228 NW 27th St. Notice the fireworks strung along the edge of the building. Click on the images for a larger version, you can see the fireworks.
