Weatherlight Productions Blog

Moving the blog

Rhett — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:16:09 +0000

Hey there to anyone arriving at this blog. We’re consolidating things down, and since Rhett is really the driving force behind our video work, posts about video are moving to his personal blog at http://rhett.weatherlight.com. We hope to see you there!

It’s Never Just a Hobby

Rhett — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:39:56 +0000

Make no bones about it. Weatherlight Productions is not a business and it’s never generated revenue of any kind. I’ve been gifted with roller derby swag, and a “client” once gave me a bottle of Parisian absinthe for my troubles, but I have never asked for payment of any kind, haven’t seen a dime from Google Ads, and I don’t even seek revenue. That might make it sound like Weatherlight Productions is just a hobby. Maybe.

In my experience, though, nothing you do is “just” a hobby. Well, maybe stamp collecting or something like that. Producing video, no matter how low-budget or guerrilla you do it, is never “just” a hobby, though, and that’s one reason I love doing it so much.

What am I talking about? Well, I’m glad you asked. A week ago, my boss’ boss, a person fairly well established in the pecking order of executives, asked about doing a demo of some software we want to make a product out of. When he discovered he couldn’t get it working, live, on a prototype, he came looking for someone to do a video of the software being demoed so it could be run full-screen on a prototype…to give his audience an idea of the experience. I answered the call. I actually had a Flip Mino HD, a gift from my wife on my 30th birthday, on me at the time. Within hours, I’d done a quick pilot shoot and worked out the encoding issues to run it on a prototype. The next day, I rigged a camera mount out of a dead laptop and a rubber band, and we were off to the races.

The video was a perfect fit. I not only got a pat on the back (literally…my boss’ boss slapped me on the back) for my efforts and public praise for the ingenuity of the camera mount, but I also was kept in mind for when another demo video was needed.

One was needed this week. This time, I got a ride home to grab my best camera, and an intern and I stayed a little late to get a completed demo of another project-to-be that was needed for a very important meeting with outside parties. This was very important to driving the project home in the eyes of people who could influence its fate. I stayed up pretty late that night editing, cleaning the video up, and balancing and warming the colors. The DVD burned while I slept. The next day, the execs looked at it and decided to run with it. It ran, silently, during the presentation, allowing the imagery of a live demo while a speaker presented the concepts behind it. I was, yet again, profusely thanked for my efforts by people well established in the executive order of my company, and I contributed to a successful presentation.

Some audience members even believed there must be trickery involved, because the demo video made features seem more mature than they had expected. I’ve been told there’s talk of doing more video work.

So, maybe I did finally get paid, because some of my paycheck this week was earned doing video at the company. The big point, though, is that I put two feathers in my cap in two weeks by being trained, equipped, and in the right place at the right time. I was ready to go because I’ve been training at doing this for three years in my spare time.

These days, you can never have too many skills, and you may be called upon to employ all of them at a moment’s notice. These days, nothing is “just” a hobby.

Goodbye South Florida, Hello South Bay

Rhett — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:50:59 +0000

Radio silence again, yes, but this time with a really good reason. Shortly after the last post we made, Rhett was laid off from his job at Motorola and we decided it was time to move to the Bay Area to seek our fortune. Rhett, being a mobile computing engineer by day, is well-suited to the job market in Silicon Valley, and so we’ve moved to San Jose.

Sadly, this means that we’ve had to say goodbye to our old home league, the Broward County Derby Girls. Fortunately, it doesn’t mean we’ve left roller derby…no sir! We’ve taken up a gig with the Silicon Valley Roller Girls (SVRG), producing bout footage and more. We sincerely miss our old home league, and we keep in touch and cheer for them from afar, but we’ve also been pretty excited about our new opportunities out here. We’ve actually been producing bouts for them since April, and it’s been great getting to know a new league.

Additionally, though, we’ve had the opportunity to work on more creative projects. For example, we’re currently producing a comedic promo video for SVRG and Psycho Donuts, one of their sponsors. The general premise is derby girls trading places with the Psycho Donuts wait staff for a day, with hilarious consequences. We’ve shot the first half, and here’s a draft edit for your viewing pleasure:

We can’t wait to finish this one up with shots at the track, which we’ll hopefully be doing in August.

Dragon*Con Videos

Rhett — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:43:30 +0000

It’s been way too long since our last update. This isn’t to say we haven’t been productive. Of course, at this point, Greentime has risen and fallen as a project. A lot of people probably don’t know how hard it is to do a weekly show like that. I’ll get to that in another post, though. What we’ve mostly been up to has been less web-related, though I think that may change soon. We’ve been doing events footage for the Broward County Derby Grrls as well as some other one-off stuff.

What I wanted to post here, however, was a tremendous opportunity we had at Dragon*Con this past year. We’re both members of a fandom group called The Colonial Fleet, and they organized an amazing Battlestar Galactica event. Lots of money was raised for charity. Dragon*Con is an interesting place because it’s so democratic– the VIPs are ready and willing to work with fan groups. In our case, this led to some amazing events footage of the Battlestar Galactica cast as well as interviews with Edward James Olmos, Michael Hogan, and Richard Hatch. Check it out:

Edward James Olmos Party Speech from The Colonial Fleet on Vimeo.

EJO Interview from The Colonial Fleet on Vimeo.

Hopefully, the Colonial Fleet media leads will get the Michael Hogan and Richard Hatch videos wrapped up soon, too.

And this was the result of a weekend of playing phone tag and a chance encounter at a bar. Add our interview with Lloyd Kaufman onto this, and we’re very pleased with ourselves. Never question the power of a dedicated amateur!

We arrived.

Rhett — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:41:08 +0000

Last night, a Weatherlight Production was seen by a huge auditorium filled with people. A couple of months ago, we were approached by a member of HotShots, an award-winning barbershop quartet based out of South Florida. Yeah, so they’re friends of ours, too, but just because this was between friends doesn’t make it real.

Basically, they were in a pickle. They had to put on a show up in Jacksonville, FL, as part of being the outgoing champion quartet, but their baritone had just had a son and couldn’t make it to the show. So, they approached us to help them make a “TV head baritone” similar to a bit that the Blue Man Group does. A body-double would strap a television screen on his head and a video of the baritone singing and doing jokes with the rest of the quartet would play on it. It wasn’t an easy project for us to put together, but it was a fair amount of labor on a fairly short schedule.

We got the call last night. The “virtual baritone” bit was a smash success with an amazing standing ovation. We wowed everyone, and the routine is now being considered for regular use in their shows. We’re still reeling from the surprise. We’ve pretty much arrived. That show represents the largest one-time audience that we’ve ever had.

Dealing with Whole Foods

Rhett — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:50:45 +0000

Maybe it’s unwise to comment on our ongoing attempts to have a relationship with a large corporation, but frankly, at this point, I say fuck it. I want to tell the story so far, with names omitted to protect the…something.

Anyway, something we’ve been trying to get together for Greentime has been a video showing the ways we’ve changed our shopping. We go to Whole Foods quite a bit. In fact, we actually buy the majority of our staple goods through them. We’ve done this by basically simplifying our diet and focusing on things we can make for ourselves. We don’t buy a lot of fancy meat substitutes, for example, preferring to make our own from a mixture of gluten and TVP. We bake our own bread (when Rhett remembers to). We also eat a lot of beans and rice, which we buy dried. Using their bulk food hoppers is green and it makes shopping at Whole Foods so much cheaper.

So, we wanted to do an on-site at the store where we could show people how we do this. We envisioned the video would be a “how to be thrifty at Whole Foods” video and would be mostly positive. Our goal was to show that it can be a pretty regular store and that you don’t have to treat it as a place for luxury goods only. Man, talk about a bureaucratic mess that turned out to be. We called the store. They were interested, but needed clearance from their corporate office. Called them, and they liked it but needed clearance from the regional corporate office. Called them, and they explained that, because it’s an Internet video, it has to be approved by the main corporate marketing group. We get asked to provide a written proposal. So, we prepare our proposal and submit it. I was promised on the phone a turn-around time of 1-2 days maximum. After a week without contact, I send a follow-up email. After a couple more days without contact, I phone. The person in question was on vacation and hadn’t put on her out-of-office auto reply. So, I wait for her to have a few days to settle in after she gets back, and I phone again. She hasn’t even read the proposal yet, and says it’s at the back of a mountain of email. She says she’ll try to give us some kind of response by the end of that week. Two weeks go by without anything.

So, I phone again. Minutes after I leave a voice mail for the contact, I get an email from her. It curtly says that they don’t do anything which will involve price comparisons. Kaput. That’s the end. This, in and of itself, is weird. Did she mean that they don’t compare prices with competitors? Will they not accept comparing the prices of comparable goods at a given Whole Foods? What? Even more frustrating is that price comparisons were really the least of our interests, and it was clear from reading the proposal that we were more than willing to play ball with Whole Foods. We believe our message can get through even if some allowances are made. There was no negotiation from her end, there was no “we’ll allow this, but not that”, there was nothing at all. Just a flat “we don’t do price comparisons”. Thanks for working with us, there.

Now, I want to stop and say that I personally find something a little bit sinister about that treatment. Whole Foods puts out an image of being a bastion of corporate ethics. Despite some strange behavior from its CEO, it’s had a pretty squeaky image. We also really enjoy shopping with them, and we’re dedicated customers. We, a pair of small-time indie video producers out to be cheerleaders for businesses like Whole Foods, ask them for nothing more than to set the terms on which we can take our camera in the store, and they decide it’s better to try and ignore us in the hopes we’ll go away. When we won’t do that, though, they find the least of our proposed ideas and deny the entire thing based on it. Come on, guys. You can do better than that.

Anyway, I rarely take “no” for an answer unless it’s polite and well-formatted. I email back and ask if they’ll agree to work with us if we promise not to compare prices against a competing store. I ask if we can compare prices of, say, boxed cereals to cereals at the bulk groceries bin. I say we’ll still work with them even if we can’t do that because we just want to show people how we shop at Whole Foods without breaking the bank. I get back an email auto-reply saying that the marketing coordinator I was working with will no longer be my regional coordinator, that a new one is coming into the office beginning in September, and it’s basically a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” scenario when he starts sending replies in October. We’ve decided to table the entire affair and start again in October. Hopefully, the new person will be willing to hear us out and understand that we’re letting Whole Foods hold all the cards.

Until then, consider me less than amused about how they’ve treated us.

The trials of new hardware, or how not to do sound.

Rhett — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:34:27 +0000

Amy is super hella awesome and bought us a new condenser microphone (for use as a boom mic) and a Peavey PV-6 mixer to supply it with phantom power. Wow…felt like genu-wine filmmakers there for a second. We were eager for Amy to be hands-free in the kitchen for Greentime tonight. Then things started falling apart. Follow our fall.

Noon– I realize that the extra boom I have is for lights and doesn’t have the right mount for a mic. Run out to music store to get a boom.

1:00– Music store doesn’t sell that kind of boom. We get something to modify the light boom with.

8:00– I add the mount to my boom. It clips to the boom fine, so it must be smooth sailing.

10:00– Wrong. The other end has a screw head the wrong size. The mic’s clip doesn’t fit. Well, that’s nothing a little gaffer’s tape can’t fix.

10:30– Still taping everything together.

11:00– Suddenly realize we’re shy one cable and can’t run the mixer to the camera. Begin freaking out.

11:05– Figure out how to make things work if I can find that one tiny piece of 1/8″ stereo cable with two male ends.

11:06– Tear apartment apart for a six inch cable.

11:15– Give up.

11:20– Second wind. Continue the hunt!

11:30– Find the cable and feel really smug.

11:35– Point the boom at Amy for a test. Noise floor is for SHIT. WTF?

11:40– Plug headphones into the mixer. They sound great on their own. What’s the problem?

11:45– Conclude it’s the unshielded bit of shit cable I tore apartment apart to find. Switch back to the old setup.

12:00– Finally shoot, apartment in total shambles.

The things we do for our art, you know?

No more vloggies?

Rhett — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:57:46 +0000

Chatter has just come along that Irina Slutsky, the wonderful employee from PodTech who organized the 2006 Vloggies, has been let go. PodTech seems to be changing directions financially and is no longer focusing on her or the projects she’s done for them. Irina is a pillar of the vlogging community. Sadly, without the backing of PodTech, I fear this will also spell the end of the Vloggies.

Excelsior, Irina. You’re one of the great ones. You even made sure our trophy got to us. We hope you do well in your future endeavors.

Greentime / greenerMIAMI Redistribution Partnership

Rhett — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:16:50 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that Rebecca Carter, creator of greenerMIAMI and one of the minds behind Ecorazzi, has agreed to begin redistributing Greentime on the greenerMIAMI website. Our videos will now be posted to her site as they come out.

This is a huge step forward for Greentime. greenerMIAMI has a strong user base and has recently opened itself up to third-party writers and content creators. Being able to show our videos through them represents a chance to reach out to a much wider audience than we had before, and this audience represents not only members of the green blogosphere but also South Florida locals. Being able to bring our work to a wider audience is a dream come true, and we look forward to a positive relationship with greenerMIAMI.

Considering Chroma Key

Rhett — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:16:21 +0000

We’re back from our honeymoon in Costa Rica, and that means it’s time to get slugging away at the next Greentime video. I’m thinking that I’m going to do it on our attempts to find a good carbon offset company, my total inability to find one I like and trust, and how instead I’m spending my offset money on a donation to a Costa Rica preservation fund, since anything that restores the rainforest is also helping sequester carbon. Costa Rica’s been really good for us and we’re very refreshed and ready to get buried in work, research, and video production again.

During the last episodoe of Greentime, we burned out our first floodlight bulb. Amy was working as DP (director of photography) for the episode, so she was ceremonially offered the studio’s first blown bulb. We need to go buy replacement bulbs, as there’s a good chance the other 500W flood is not far behind. I think that, while I’m at the store, I’m going to invest in some background paper for chroma key. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

Croma key offers us a number of amazing opportunities. The first and most obvious is that we will be free to choose backgrounds for the videos. I’ve been dreaming of creating the appearance of an actual “studio” from which we speak, as well as the opportunity to add better motion graphics to everything. Chroma key gives us this opportunity in new and powerful ways. The second thing it does is it improves our lighting. In the past, we have had to focus our lighting efforts on making everything look good simultaneously. The wall…the plant…everything. Because we don’t have a lot of room for a studio and we don’t have a lot of lights, we’ve ended up with a very flat look with the lighting. It’s well lit, but it’s just…flat. It looks like a room. With chroma key, we can focus on getting even lighting just for the background and spotlight the actor. I suspect this will improve our look and feel quite a bit, if I can get the time to play around with it.

This will probably also add labor to our workflow, so I’ll have to find a way to roll around that. We need better dedication to a schedule, no doubt. Life keeps getting in the way, though, you know?