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!