Taxi Cab Confessions in OKC
When reporter Tiffany Gibson made the video request for this story, I knew I wanted to shoot it. The people down at Yellow Cab Taxi were great. All of them were great people for interviews because they all had great stories. You can tell when people have traveled, they often have great stories due to their life experiences. I think taxi drivers are in that group: they have great stories because of their experiences with the various people they have encountered.
Here is Tiffany’s story.
The above edit was posted to NewsOK. I shoot with a very flat and neutral setting on the Canon 7D. In Final Cut Pro, the above video received additional saturation using 3-way color correction. I also adjusted the effects using Image Control and Levels in FCP to adjust the brightness and backgrounds.
The two edits below were also edited in FCP. I wanted to play around with two looks: the Pleasantville look and a film look.
For the Pleasantville look I took out all colors except yellow in 3-way color correction (click on limit effect, capture the desired color, turn off saturation and luma and turn the saturation level all the way down). If I was editing it again (takes over 8 minutes to export this 6 minute video) I wouldn’t have removed the color from the animations.
The third edit used a film look. I doubled up the video, removed the saturation from the top video, then clicked on composite mode and selected overlay. I bumped up the blacks in 3-way color correction since I was using the first edit to test and that edit featured some darker levels. This look is my favorite of the three.
Bubbles and Joey’s Pizza
Met up with Casey Cornett at Joey’s Pizza in the Film Row district Wednesday night. Casey arranged the above interview with his boss, Brenda Jones of Jones PR Inc, and Jane Jenkins from Downtown OKC Inc.
Casey had spent much of Wednesday helping post bubbles across the downtown area. Brenda and Jane spoke about the campaign and the awareness it aims to achieve. Cool idea. Clean design.
Brenda has always been great to work with, and is great to interview. I don’t believe I had met Jane before, but she is also great on camera.
And then there’s the pizza. When Joey’s was on Classen just south of Cafe Antigua, it always ranked on my to-do list of places to grab a bite. But I never did.
Wednesday night, then, provided the perfect stage for a couple slices of pepperoni. Outstanding. Will definitely be back.
Diving into the Oklahoma River searching for a lost wedding ring
I wish I could say this had a happy ending.
Captain Ron from the Scuba Shack and his crew dove into the murky Oklahoma River just outside the Chesapeake Boathouse on Monday. The Captain spent over two hours underwater, feeling his way, searching with his fingers for Chad Henderson’s wedding ring.
Chad had seen his ring roll off the dock the previous week as he got out of a canoe following rowing practice. We were hoping the scuba crew could fish out the ring.
The Captain said earlier this summer he found a guy’s Rolex. The man called right away and said his watch fell off and the Captain was able to find it. But a watch is bigger and easier to find via finger touch than a ring.
The under water shots were recorded by Todd Fraser’s ingenuity. He manipulated a Tupperware container into a waterproof container and used a gym sock to hold the Vado camera in place. We used gaffe tape to fasten a rock to the Tupperware so it would lower into the river, and more gaffe tape to act as rope so we could pull it back.
The camera shot was more successful than the search.
Thursday’s to-do list of editing
Screen caps from upcoming videos on NewsOK.com, all shot this week in OKC.
Taxi drivers and their safety
Captain Ron and the lost ring
Downtown It!
Open Flame: Art of Barbecue
Every month I tell myself I won’t stay up past midnight editing this video. And every month I stay up past midnight putting this video together.
In my defense, we had over 80GB of footage, over 200 clips and two days worth of shooting to compile into 5-10 minutes. I put some of the smoker tutorials into separate videos, but this is still a massive project. A beast. I would have liked to have spent more time coloring this video and those below. Adding some nat sound and more facial reaction from the audience. It’s a blessing and a curse to have heaps of footage to work with given a set deadline and concurrent workload.
Food was damn good though.
The State Of Play | Philip Bloom
Fred needs a camera today, the way things are he is probably going to play it safe. He is most likely going to buy a Canon 60D which is actually my second favourite Canon after the 5DmkII and some Zeiss Nikon lenses to future proof himself. Sensible. It shoots great video, although has more issues than the GH2 but he wants a good stills function and the stills out of the 60D are superior to the GH2. He is going to stick with Canon because that is the look he likes the most out of the DSLRs. He also wants to see how things pan out over the next 6 months and after all he is shooting for the web and DSLR stuff looks great not just on the web but on the big screen, trust me, it does!
via The State Of Play | Philip Bloom.
