The Tascam DR-60D

Good Audio for Great Video: Turning to Tascam

One of the most important… and useful… sayings I’ve ever heard, and which I’ve incorporated into my workflow as a filmmaker is this: ninety percent of good video is good audio. From my earliest days in television news and all the way through to my current documentary, this is valuable advice that I keep in mind every day during production and editing. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the effect of your shooting and editing on the people who will ultimately be taking in your work.

Most of us multitask, not so much as a matter of Continue reading “Good Audio for Great Video: Turning to Tascam”

The Ghan
Real life painting
Really, really red
GoProGhanRed
The Ghan and the Outback

Entering the Red Centre: Beyond Color

When writing about our travels and experiences on our way to visit the Red Centre of Australia, I’ve referred to our arrival in our  jumping off point of Adelaide as a soft landing, at least in reference to the beginning of production for the documentary. As we prepared to depart for the heart of the Red Centre, I can’t say my opinion changed much. For a city of more than a million people, Adelaide seemed surprisingly… cozy. Dropping off the rental car on the way to the train station, we couldn’t help noticing that the car had remained parked at the hotel for almost the entirety of our stay. Between the public trams and the easily accessible markets and commercial areas, most of the essentials for the itinerant traveler are well within reach. I can’t say with complete authority a car is unnecessary for an extended stay, but for what was essentially a layover, a repeat trip would have us forego the rental car.

With that, the heart of the trip was looming. This was the onset of what The Palette Project is all about – exploring the world through color – and the Great Southern Rail was getting us there. We had reserved overnight seats on the Ghan – the north/south rail line from Continue reading “Entering the Red Centre: Beyond Color”

Guide Dog in Training
Guide Dog

Si Se Puede, Part II

The life of a visual storyteller is based on one hard and fast rule: you write to the video you have, not the video you wish you had. Our unscheduled shoot at Guide Dogs of South Australia and the Northern Territories was a reminder that whether you’re the last reporter on the scene and the police are rolling up the crime scene tape or filming an around-the-world documentary about what it’s like to explore the world in the midst of losing your eyesight, the rule is the same.

Guide Dog

For this, I couldn’t be happier.

The challenges facing my shooting partner and I could hardly have been more daunting. We had been on the ground in Continue reading “Si Se Puede, Part II”

adelaide+aerial
Adelaide, Australia
veale_ws
Veale Gardens
What the...?

Si Se Puede: Adelaide Part I

All respect to Ché, this was our motto as we began our travels in Australia for The Palette Project.  We would shoot the stories we came to tell, but we would be open to whatever new adventures came our way, and when it came to new stories, we would not be disappointed. They… were… everywhere.

I often tell beginning storytellers  if they end a project with the same story they started with… they’re doing it wrong. My goal was to leave the southern hemisphere with loads of footage that was never Continue reading “Si Se Puede: Adelaide Part I”

Ducks in Their Rows

As we get closer to takeoff for The Palette Project’s first two colors, I find myself becoming more comfortable with my filmmaker’s hat. Thankfully, it helps that I still had my reporter’s hat stashed in the closet, and although took a few adjustments to get it cinched correctly, it still fits remarkably well after all these years.

Turns out being in daily news is, well, if not identical to working on a documentary, very much in the same language family. I can’t presume to say the deadline pressure is identical, but traveling to the other side of the world and having one chance to get the footage on specifics days… or else… well, it’s at least congruent. Certainly the beginning of production is a pretty ironclad deadline.

So in one sense, worlds are colliding – my past life as reporter, and my current one as a director, but the world of freedom a reporter live in is so vastly different than the world of filmmaking. Working reporters are probably doing a spit-take over the idea that there is  world of freedom in that job, but to quote the great Joni Mitchell, you don’t know what you have ’til it’s gone. The ability to just show up and shoot what you need in the bvast majority of places you want to go is reason enough to stay in the business. For the naysayers, I would refer you to the seven filming permits that our little dog and pony show is required to carry in order to shoot in locations where a reporter could simply just show up and start shooting without any warning whatsoever.

This, by the way, concludes today’s entry in the “grass is always greener…” files.

What thrills me most about finally taking off is the idea of finally putting my virtual money where my virtual mouth is. My skin in the game, as it were, is living up to pretty big talk on my end that people with a physical challenge are just as capable of fulfilling the expectations accorded anyone else who just want their shot. Visually impaired photographer directing a documentary… and even shooting part of it? Tall order. Doable? In theory, sure. You can strap a GoPro camera onto a dog and get interesting footage. Does it have a consistent and unique creative vision? Directing that vision hopefully where everything up to this point in my life leads to this.

What’s about to happen is new territory, because unlike all those years in news, the risk is real. I don’t have a backup plan for failed footage or missing a deadline. There is no backup package from the feed that can run in my place if we don’t deliver. There is no other reporter or backup filler vo to pad the show. It’s California or bust, or in this case Australia or bust.

That fear of failure is both real and very, very exciting.