Oops

Had a shoot yesterday... this happened.

When to work for free

There's a lot of people out there who think they should be able to get videographers to work for free.  Just check the craigslist job board right now and I'm sure you'll find a couple.  Many people are positive that the "exposure" you'll get from doing their video will be so valuable that videographers should be groveling at their feet to be a part of their project.  Well sorry!  If you want professional results, you're going to have to pay for it.

But I'm not one of those absolutists who will rant against craigslist postings (here's an example from just this morning)...

...and there are times when I will work for free.

Last month I shot an interview with Justin Carder, for Daisy Whitney's New Media Minute.  I didn't get paid, but in this case the exposure was definitely well worth it.  My website got screen time in the video, I got a link in all the places the video was syndicated to (including the Huffington Post*), and most importantly, the show is targeted at people interested in New Media, exactly the kind people that it would be valuable to get my name in front of.

So while I would, in general, recommend against working for free, there are definitely times when working for free can be a good business decision.  Just make sure that the exposure you'll be getting is worth the time and effort you put in... and remember that most of the time, it's not. 

Here's the episode.  She introduces me/ my interview at about 1:12.

* I even have my own tag on Huffington Post now! Although I appear to be sharing it with my google page rank arch-nemesis, Nuclear Non-Profliferation Expert David Albright.

2010 WNBA Champions!!

We Won!  I spent the day yesterday editing videos for our Victory Celebration at KeyArena.  The whole day was kind of a surreal experience.  I spent all day slogging through the videos ... I had to put together 3 videos to ReCap the entire season, and I had one afternoon to do it.  Towards the end it was definitely feeling like a chore.  Honestly, I just wanted to get the day over with so I could get some rest after weeks of non-stop work. 

I got to KeyArena, loaded the videos, and then walked outside and was (for some reason) surprised to see the sea of people waiting in the rain for the parade and celebration.  After spending the day in the nearly empty Storm office with a couple of stressed out and hung over Storm staffers, it was just such a sudden shift to all of a sudden be surrounded by a mob of excited fans.  I don't know how many people were at the parade, but we estimated there were around 5,000 in the arena for the celebration afterwards.  Watching those videos with the players & fans in KeyArena, and having it capped off with a huge confetti drop was one of the best moments of my professional life thus far.   By the time it was over I was completely energized and could've kept going for hours, which I did, at the after parties.

I also found out (after the fact) that the videos were being broadcast live on Northwest Cable News, along with the rest of the ceremony.  So the trend continues... where the videos I spend the least amount of time on get the most attention! Here's their broadcast... which is really just a straight feed of what we had showing live on the jumbotron.

From Left to Right; On-Court Entertainment MC Shellie Hart, Storm Staffers Matt Heuer & Shannon Burley, and Me.

LJ MVP

I had a feeling this shot would come in handy...

The Storm are Kicking Ass!

The Storm are in the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2004.  The Storm were undefeated at home this season, 17-0, and are heading into the playoffs as the best team in the league!

For me, this means we shift from making happy, fun for the whole family type videos, to intense/ battle/ we're going to kill you type videos .  Here's our Playoff TV Spot... which really isn't as intense as I'd like it to be, but that was the best music I could find at the time. 

and the Stanky Legg, which I wrote about when it first debuted... has taken on a life of it's own (well that's what they like to say at least... in reality we did a lot of work to give it it's 'life!'). Here's a segment Q13 did on it last night.