Landfills, wikipedia, stock footage, and dog parks

The last few months have been full. Mark and I went to Bonaire and Portland the last part of November. Mark did 9 dives in Bonaire, and I did 13. I also shot some underwater footage with my splash bag. I really need a housing if I am going to have a chance at getting decent footage.

For work, Mark's working crazy hours at the museum and the marine lab, and I get to stay home with the dog and new kitten. Being self employed has it's benefits. But, I am working...I freelance for Sea Studios as the Associate Producer for a PBS Nature film on salmon. We are set to online in January. I have also made 5 or so videos for the Monterey Regional Waste Management District , and have begun making wikipedia pages for a local sculptor.

I have also started uploading all my best and second best footage to two stock footage houses. Naturefootage.com represents my best footage, and Pond5 houses the rest. My clips have been looked at over 2000 times on Naturefootage, and I made my first sale on Pond5 the other day.

Being inspired by my first sale, I've been out shooting for the last full two days. I shot some fearless deer at magic hour yesterday out by Salinas River, and some very pretty plastic pollution at sunset near some shorebirds. The plastic footage will work well for a marine debris PSA I am working on for the landfill.

Today, I shot at three off-the-leash dog parks. I now have some great dog footage for future PodclassTV videos and for Pond5. I am also planning on making a series of dog park virtual tours. I think I will create a new blog for this. Hopefully, it will be handy for people wanting to find all the best dog parks in central California. If it gets enough traffic, I can probably generate advertising money via AdSense or approach local vets and pet stores.

Christmas is looking like it will be very low key.

Exporting, Compressing, and Trouble Shooting Sunday

I've been putting off today for a long time. I finally sat down and made myself figure out the best MPEG4 Compressor settings for my P2 HD footage (if anyone cares...I found that the 960x544 frame size with DVCPRO HD 720P 60 (16:9) pixel aspect to work the best). That's hours of mind numbing trial and error, so enjoy! I only have one gig of ram in my machine. Painful.

Anyway, I've started uploading my HD stock footage to iStockPhoto. So far I have a few otter clips and one snail on a dog bowl up. But will be adding other marine mammals, river scenics, artichokes, and oodles of zoo animals soon.

Lots of filming and film festivals

I've just caught my breath from returning from Jackson Hole and Portland. It's been a great couple of weeks. The Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival was a blast as always. But this time I helped lead 4 workshops on new media and spoke on one panel. It was a good experience for me. And people seemed to like what I had to say.

After the festival, I drove to Portland and shot lots of river scenics along the way. Hopefully some of the shots will be used in a Nature film I am working on about salmon. We'll see if my producer likes them. Here's a couple sequences I put together from various creeks, streams, and rivers (Columbia, Snake, Mallad).


I also spent three days in a row shooting coho salmon on Eagle Creek (tributary off the Columbia River). It was a lot of fun and a challenge. I used an Ewa-Marine splash bag. It worked great, but it's still a challenge to use since the camera is basically in a floating plastic bag. I also filmed some dippers hunting for salmon eggs. Here's three short sequences of salmon and dippers.

Facebook advertising

My SmithWalker Productions website is almost finished, so I decided to try out Facebook's advertising. A colleague of mine told me that I could advertise my Event Videography business specifically to people on Facebook near Monterey that display "engaged" statuses for a minimum of a $1 a day. So I am giving it a try.

I am also in the middle of preparing for some new media workshops, and have made a podclasstv blog on wordpress so I can teach people how to use it. So far, it's leaps and bounds better than blogger (sorry blogger). Although, for new bloggers, wordpress could be overwhelming. Blogger has less options, so probably less confusion.

Websites and Festivals

I leave for the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival in one week. I am busy remaking my www.smithwalkerproductions.com website and updating podclasstv. I will be on two or three new media panels, so I will also need to make a new media presentation by next week. I just ordered Leopard OS 10.5, and need to buy a screen capture program called ScreenFlow so I can make my multi-media presentation. With ScreenFlow I can record me (my computer) visiting and using some of my favorite innovative new media websites. If I try to show the audience the websites live from the web, there would be a huge chance the internet would be down or too slow. With ScreenFlow, I will be able to play a DVD of my me (my computer) visiting those websites. I will post this presentation soon.

New Media Project for local landfill

I have just finished the first of 7 virtual tours for the Monterey Regional Waste Management District. The first one is on the Material Recovery Facility, where they reuse around 60% of incoming waste.
I am shooting one next week on their reuse store, the Last Chance Mercantile.

International Wildlife Film Festival

Just returned from IWFF. Saw lots of great films and met some extraordinary people. The Legend of Pale Male won best of festival. I recommend seeing it if you have a chance. The original show can be found on PBS: Pale Male.

My Zebra film won a Merit Award for Scientific Value, so that was a fun experience going to the award ceremony. I also had the opportunity to see my film screen twice in front of hundreds of school children. The kids seemed to enjoy it and laughed in the right places.


I just found out today that "Why don't we ride zebras?" also won the EarthVision Environmental Film Award, Act Locally. Now, hopefully on to the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Fingers crossed!

PodClassTV Webpage

I've spent the last few months teaching myself web design and dreamweaver. I still have much more to learn. But I finally have started the real PodClassTV portal.

I have mainly worked out the look of PodClassTV. So most of the links within the site are under construction. I will be developing lesson plans and games over the coming months.

Keep checking back!

www.podclasstv.com

Successful and Funny New Media Examples

This funny new media campaign helped save the Bronx Zoo's Funding.
Green Porno creates animal reproduction documentaries with a different slant.

SPCA and New Media

I just signed up for the 2009 Wag n' Walk. It's a walkathon fundraiser for the Monterey SPCA. They allow "walkers" to sign up for free. They also give the "walkers" a free personalized home page to encourage friends and relatives to sponsor their walk. I think it's a great use of new media and Web 2.0. Check out Team Dink: http://wagnwalk.spcamc.org/goto/teamdinkMy only suggestion would be for the SPCA to take it one step further, and add options for "Wag N' Walk Walkers" to "share" their personal page with social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. Youtube allows users to directly "share" videos to Facebook with a click of a button.

My thesis on new media, education, and documentary

My Masters thesis on new media, education, and documentary is now available online. Go to: http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/view/item.php?id=835

It is entitled "Moving Beyond Broadcast: Making a Children's Documentary for the New Media Landscape". It should prove handy for those who want a good summary of new media. It also included links to some of the best examples of educational games and new media.

Funny educational podcasts from NASA

Several students from the Science and Natural History Filmmaking Graduate Program at MSU Bozeman are working for NASA. They are making some great podcasts. Ryan (aka Galilelo) was in my year. I am glad to see NASA is making good use of his sense of humor.
NASA | You're Welcome Science: Galileo's Greatest Hits from NASA Explorer on Vimeo.

Links to review of zebra film and to my thesis on new media and education

It looks like my zebra film is starting to make it into some education circles. I found this blog about my film and its use in lesson plans: Joy Mullin's Technology Integration Class Blog

Also, MSU Bozeman has now published my thesis online. You can now click and download "Moving Beyond Broadcast and Traditional Pedagogy: Making a Children's Documentary for the New Media Landscape".

Trying out Doodle

I am trying to keep up with web 2.0, and one of the sites I keep seeing inn the Twitterverse is Doodle. This is an online polling site. I think it would be a great way to send out party invites, poll your potential dinner guests about what they like to eat, drink, etc. But I made a simple test, asking what your favorite social network site is. Please feel free to take this random poll.

Update

Well I have finished the 5 week distraction of working on a feature film. Now it's back to new media. I just filled out my volunteer application for the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco March 23rd. The admission is normally $2,000, so that's the only way I could go at this point.


I am up in San Francisco at the moment. I am hoping to get the San Francisco Zoo to sign a location agreement so I can do more with my Zebra film. I am also thinking about going over to CurrentTV to see if they do tours or if I could speak to anyone that works there. CurrentTV is really leading the way in new media, documentary, and television.

I also just withdrew my application for an education coordinator job in Gilroy. I just had my second interview, but the hours were more than I previously thought. I want to be able to go do things like volunteer for conferences, etc. It does me no good to be committed to working several hours a day 5 days a week. So I have decided to stay focused on getting PodclassTV off the ground. I am going to start designing the prototype site as soon as I get back from San Francisco.

Oh, here's a good site for new media and education: http://www.glogster.com/edu

Zebra Film on TERRA

I gave permission to my Masters program in Montana to use my film for their TERRA podcast site. I just received word it had almost 10,000 hits its first week and was number 1. I am on edge waiting to hear back from 16 film festivals I entered. Here's a link to TERRA: http://www.lifeonterra.com/episode.php?id=191

Greeners and new media

A fellow Greener emailed me yesterday (Greeners are people who went to the Evergreen State College) about new media brainstorming. Sounds like he might know of some interesting sites. Here's one: Jamglue.com
I wrote about remix websites in my thesis, (the user-malleable media chapter). I am in the process of applying this same kind of idea to video.

Sea Kittens

Interesting interactive campaign. Design your own sea kitten by going to http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/

National Geographic Virus Documentary

Here's a clip from the last film I worked on for Sea Studios. I cannot tell you how hard it was to find prairie vole stock footage. I ended up posting a want ad on a digital videography forum. Then a few months later, a filmmaker from Pronghorn Productions emailed to say he had just caught a prairie vole and shot some footage. I don't know what we would have done without the footage.

Why don't we ride zebras? Documentary

Here's the final version of my film. Sorry for the watermark, but youtube has some weird policies about rights. If you read the fine print, it says that youtube kinda "owns" the rights to what is uploaded. But the watermark fixes that!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Blogging

Now that I am officially done with my thesis / film, I have noticed that my blog has gotten away from its new found purpose. (It's original purpose was to get me through my thesis). Mission accomplished, but now it should serve as a resource for new media, documentary, and education. I will probably continue to sprinkle it with things going on in my life, but I am back to scouring the twitterspace and the web for useful information. Here's three gems I found today:

http://greatsites.wikispaces.com/

http://notebook.zoho.com

http://www.diigo.com/