My production company, David Albright Media, is the Video Partner for the Seattle Storm WNBA Team. We produce all of their videos, ranging from in-arena entertainment to marketing videos to viral web videos.
Smells Like Money is an oral history documentary that I produced, shot and edited about the controversial pulp mill on Bellingham's waterfront. It won a Silver Telly Award, and an Award of Excellence from the Videographer Awards. It is currently for sale at Village Books in Bellingham.
A blog about videos shot in, set in, or about Seattle.
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Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 12:54PM "Hope Art" is up on Current.com. My last video that I put up there did pretty well, peaking at #16, but I think this one can do better. I don't have many blog readers... so it's very important the every single one of you go to Current.com and vote! Do it! Tell your friends!
Friday, January 30, 2009 at 12:15PM Woke up this morning to find that after 2 full days online, "Hope Art" has 1000 views! More than all three other episodes of CHS-V combined. So thanks to Slog, Seattlest, O'Reilly Radar, Obama Art Report, and all the other blogs that linked to the video!
Here's the blip.tv graph of total viewers, the first two little bumps are the release days of the first two episodes "The Blog," and "Snowstorm '08," And the huge spike on the right is "Hope Art."
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 7:05PM Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 11:18AM
About an hour after I sat down to edit this video, I decided that I had a good enough story here for it to be more just a web video, and that if I spent some serious time editing I could probably submit this to some film festivals as a documentary short. What is the different between a web video and documentary short? I’m not sure exactly. (I’ve also been thinking lately about whether there is a difference between a “citizen journalism video” and documentary but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.)
The main difference for me was that when I decided it was a doc short instead of a web video, I stopped assuming the viewer had ADD. It’s pretty well established that online video viewers have short attention spans... I know I do. When I watch web videos I often fast forwarding to find more interesting sections, or just get distracted by something else on the page and click away from the video. (I hate that I do this, and I’ve been making a conscious effort lately to extend my web attention span.) When I edit web videos, I don’t add typically use very much nat sound unless it’s needed to tell the story, or long establishing shots, which slow down the pacing and give people a chance to get distracted, but I did use those things here. As a result I think “Hope Art,” is a better doc short, but probably doesn’t play as well as it could as a web video.
Editing this video has reminded me a little about the limitations of web video. It’s hard to tell a good story when you’re constantly worried about holding the viewers attention. I’ve been focusing pretty exclusively on web video for a while now, but having a story that takes a little more time to tell is making me appreciate the idea of sitting someone down and making them focus on my film.
So what you do you think? Is this video too slow paced for the internet? Did you sit through the whole thing?
Also make sure to visit this video at it's CHS page, and add a couple of pennies to my earnings (I get $$$ per page view)
Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 1:02PM ... and I'm not just talking about Obama. As of today I am freelancing full time, or I'm unemployed, whichever way you want to look at it. The plan is to just make the kinds of videos that I actually like to make, and hope that somewhere down the line someone might decide to pay me for it. So expect to see a lot of videos of mine on CHS, SeattleIAM, Current TV, and maybe even a film festival or two.
Wish me luck. Or better yet, hire me for a job!