The MacDaddy

Banned from YouTube, this spot won a Bronze Lion award at Cannes even though the client never intended it to be seen by anyone. Submitted by the production company without the clients consent. They could never have dreamed of so much publicity. Click the image to play

Weezer's latest video with cameos from some of YouTubes most famous faces.

This is quite ingenious. Using almost every conceivable app on the mac do a screencast and make it a music video. Apple should use this as for advertising and PR

If you love BNL and have kids now you can introduce them to some of their music.

Ah yes. A bit of nostalgia. I first saw the Avid in 1989 and was blown away. I didn't work on an Avid until 1993 yet it was still in it's infancy. Fun to see where we've been and how far we've come in such a short time.

Long time since I've been able to post some original work. The nature of my current work usually prevents me from sharing for public consumption but finally something that's already out in the public. Here's a piece I cut originally to be shown at CES(Consumer Electronics Show) in the Intel booth. Since CES it has undergone some revisions and also been turned into a television commercial as well as an online campaign. This was my first project cut in HD. Footage shot using a Panasonic Varicam at 24p. some of the spots from the online campaign are uploaded on YouTube by Intel and I've embedded them below. Makes your really marvel at the power of the microprocessor and how much we take it for granted. Shout outs to Charlie Veprek(writer) and Chris Baffa(art director) on this campaign. Click image to play

He was one of the first great voices in TV and film advertising. I got to work with him once while working at FOX. Here's a little sample of a movie trailer that really put him on the map. I remember him being the voice on many a Stephen King movies also and of course he was also well know for his roles in front of the camera. Here is obituary from the NYT.

So you might see more postings on my blog now that I'm not longer working at the agency. You see I was freelance and when you're freelance and working there's nothing better. Problem with freelance is at anytime you can be out of work. Seems there is a company mandate to eliminate all freelancers. So now on to the next opportunity. Maybe a career change. Did I, or have I ever had a career? Seems I've just been jumping around from job to job. Now with a wife and family a career sounds kind of nice. I'd really like to apply myself to something meaningful like educating people on the benefits and necessities of green living. Yup. I saw "An In Convenient Truth" and if you haven't you must go see it. It has changed my thinking about what is important in this world and if we don't wakeup then my son may not have a very nice quality of life when he gets to be my age. That is if there is even a planet to inhabit. While my first objective must be to get a paycheck, I really must find something to do with "greening" the world we live in. I've installed at least 20 CFL light bulbs, purchased 500 kilowatts per month of wind power from my power company, turned the thermostat up to save on air conditioning and I really want to see about solar and wind power for the house. Ultimately, I want to make this my business I just need to find the right avenue and people to do it with. I've started listening to a good podcast on renewable energy called Renewable Energy Access. You should also check out renewus.org. This being a video blog I've added the trailer for "An Inconvenient Truth". Whatever you politics, scientific fact can not be ignored. Please go see the movie and take a friend with you. The cover of Newsweek this week is about Going Green. Now I feel like I'm a bit trendy. Oh well. As I am writing this we have just experienced a very intense thunderstorm with hail in the middle of July. Coincidence? Click here to play.

I recently completed producing a spot with McCann-Erickson for Johnson & Johnson. The brand is Reach and the product, a new toothbrush called Clean & Whiten. The spot stars the lovable Mr. Reach who has been a part of Reach advertising since the early 90's. We hired J.J. Sedelmaier Productions in White Plains, NY to draw and animate Mr. Reach. J.J. is best know for his animated work with Robert Smigel on SNL. The 3D toothbrush and compositing was done by Spontaneous in NYC. I'm including 2 versions of spot in the post. The first version is the pencil test. This is the rough beginnings of the animation and the first time in the production process we've seen moving images from the animator. At this stage you'll see, in rough form, the beginnings of the spot. Not until final animation will the nuances and true character of Mr. Reach come through. So the second video is the finished spot and you can compare the two and see what progress was made from the early steps to the end. On this job there was approximately 3 weeks going from the pencil test to the final animaton. The announcer on the spot is Jay Gregory and the voice of Mr. Reach is done by Bill Chesley. We mixed the spot at Audio Engine with Tom Goldblatt. For McCann the spot was written by Jack Spicer and Art Directed by Jeanne Ladias. Great experience and great results. Apparently sales are up 40% over last year! So here's where we started... Click here to Play And here's where we ended up... Click here to Play

Came across this new software thanks to Michael Horton and the LAFCPUG. I was actually in the process of looking for something like this for a client. Their workflow was very tedious; digitize source tapes into Final Cut Pro...make VHS with window time code of each tape and then the producer would log the VHS tapes by playing them down and taking notes in Word. There has to be a better way...and now there is! MovieLogger from Digital Heaven. Now you can log the quicktime movies after they've been digitized, create a text document of your notes and and XML file to import into FCP. The real bonus here is the XML file import. Once you've logged your movie, exported the XML and imported into FCP, your master clip will have markers for every log note. That is awesome! Now in the case of this one client, they have a SAN where all the edit bays share storage. But since the producer doesn't have access to this storage on their computer the solution was to recompress the media after it's digitized and put it on a server that they have access to. Everything translates and links back to the original media once done. MovieLogger is $99 and you can try it for 30 days free with some limitations. This is a great product!

Just claiming my feed for Odeo. Nothing more, nothing less. My Odeo Channel (odeo/4d6e6bc90e2828d9)

While Christmas may be past, here's a nice little piece of animation I came across. The Santaman was created by Pete Fritz and Mike Horan both from Ohio Edit where I've been working on a project. This little animated movie was born out of a job both were working on at the time and the inspiration struck them to create an animated short. Mike was the illustrator on the piece and Pete the editor. They used Adobe Illustrator and After Effects to produce the entire movie. Some music composed by Matt Dolven also of Ohio Edit. If you need any of your commercial work edited be sure to look up the guys at Ohio. Enjoy! Click here to play.

My first true pro bono work. Every year Saint Mary's School, in Katonah, NY, puts together this big event on Christmas Day. Underprivileged families from around the area are brought to Saint Marys to enjoy a great Christmas dinner, receive some great gifts and have a chance to pickup some clothing and shoes. There's lots of entertainment for the kids and adults too. Ben Harvey of CTS-TV is a friend of mine and had served as a volunteer for the event. While working there he was asked to shoot some video. He served as producer on the video, logging the shots to use and picking the music. He asked me if I'd be interested in cutting a little music video out of what he shot. Of course I said yes. While I wasn't at the actual event it looked like something I'd like to be involved with in the future. For me this is what Christmas should be about. Giving to those who have so little. Not giving to people who already have so much. This is my way of giving this year. Hopefully this video will help the people who organize the event to attract more donors and more volunteers and more awareness for next year. Click here to play.

Whenever it's been awhile between postings you can be sure it means I've been working...which is a good thing. Many posts over consecutive days is a bad thing So in December I was hired by a large advertising agency to produce some unusual content, video for mobile phones. While I've never been a believer in content for mobile phones, there certainly is a market for it. Having just gotten an iPod with video for Christmas I've been enjoying my commute on the train to and from the city watching The Office from the BBC. The phone screen still seems a bit small to me and the quality of the content is not the best, but none the less the client wants content so we produce some content. The Madden Report is a weekly mobisode where we take John Madden's audio comments about some upcoming NFL games and put some graphics and pictures to it to make it look like a seamless show. The shows have been running around 2:30 in length and now we're 5 shows into production I'd say we've hit our stride. The real challenge is how do you make compelling video when you don't have the rights to use any NFL footage? We can't even call the teams by their team names only by their city. Well thanks to Manic, the produciton company producing the shows, I think for the hard core football fan we've found a way of making it compelling. The Madden Report is second only to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders for Vcast sports video downloads. We're thinking about working in some cheerleaders to our show. Only 3 more weeks of shows and then that's it for this year. So go out and get your Verizon Vcast phone so you can enjoy all the great Vcast content. Here's the show from week 16 of the regular season. Click here to play.

Heard about this on TWIT and had to take a look. Now we Mac people have always known that Microsoft was never very good at inovating and creating original ideas when it comes to operating systems. Now here's further evidence of those facts. Thanks to Maclive for putting up the original postings. Sorry I can't find quicktimes to publish into iTunes.

Whenever it's been awhile between postings you can be sure it means I've been working...which is a good thing. Many posts over consecutive days is a bad thing So in December I was hired by a large advertising agency to produce some unusual content, video for mobile phones. While I've never been a believer in content for mobile phones, there certainly is a market for it. Having just gotten an iPod with video for Christmas I've been enjoying my commute on the train to and from the city watching The Office from the BBC. The phone screen still seems a bit small to me and the quality of the content is not the best, but none the less the client wants content so we produce some content. The Madden Report is a weekly mobisode where we take John Madden's audio comments about some upcoming NFL games and put some graphics and pictures to it to make it look like a seamless show. The shows have been running around 2:30 in length and now we're 5 shows into production I'd say we've hit our stride. The real challenge is how do you make compelling video when you don't have the rights to use any NFL footage? We can't even call the teams by their team names only by their city. Well thanks to Manic, the produciton company producing the shows, I think for the hard core football fan we've found a way of making it compelling. The Madden Report is second only to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders for Vcast sports video downloads. We're thinking about working in some cheerleaders to our show. Only 3 more weeks of shows and then that's it for this year. So go out and get your Verizon Vcast phone so you can enjoy all the great Vcast content. Here's the show from week 16 of the regular season. Click here to play.

This montage was created to run at the top of a string of shortened marketing tapes produced by Beantown Productions. I guess I love cutting to music. This music was actually inspired by the iPod Shuffle ad. The song is "Jerk it Out" by the Ceasars. Click here to watch.

Here's a 30 second promo just completed. This is a generic promo meaning it can run anytime and doesn't promote anything specific. The objective of the spot is to build excitement and to get people to watch the show. Millionaire and game shows in general are tough to cut spots for because there is no variety in the shots to choose from. You've got shots of the host, shots of the contestants and they're always framed the same way. Even though none of the contestants won a million dollars you might think they had after seeing the spot. As a matter of a fact, I don't think anyone has won a million on the show over the last 2 years. I cut this spot working for Beantown Productions here in NYC. Music is from a library and this spot is actually different than the one that will air. The client didn't like the most of the graphics so we pulled them out. I like this version better. Click here to play.

Having worked in television promotion and advertising for almost 20 years now, I appreciate the gift and talent of the voices behind the spots. Here are some of the best and most recognizable in a great video. What happens when you put 5 together in a limo? Take a look. Click here to play.

Apple is not only known for great products but great advertising too. You may know about the famous spot that aired in 1984 during the Super Bowl and introduced the Macintosh, but here's a more recent spot probably from the late 90's. It shows you what emotional music, great images and simple voice over can do to make a spot memorable and impactful. Click here to play.

You got to watch this! A very fun music video I found thanks to Rocketboom via the iTunes music store. It features the music of The Real Tuesday Weld and animation by Aleksey Budovsky. Apparently this litte video has won several awards at various film festivals. Watch and if you want to know more be sure to click on the links above. Click here to play.

Ah yes! Remember the bubble...the dot com bubble? Seems so long ago yet it was just 5 years ago. Well I found myself riding the bubble when I took a job in Florida. To make a long story short, the company I went to work for was bought by ByeByeNOW.com, a travel and vacation website. In addition to the website, we produce a weekly hour long show called Vacaton TV. The show highlighted vacations and travel products and drove people to the 800 number and website to purchase. Well we all know what happened to the bubble. We produced a total of 7 shows and then the money was gone. Truly one of the best work experiences I've ever had though. I truly felt like I had equity in what we were doing and didn't mind the 14 hour days to put these shows together. The video below is actually a commercial for ByeByeNOW.com. Priceline.com had William Shatner but we had Regis! who was hot with the sucess of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Each ByeByeNOW.com store received a custom spot. For those who know me you might recognize the voice over on this spot. You see these spots were produced towards the end of ByeByeNOW's existence and they didn't want to spend money on the voice talent. Well it turns out they had to pay me scale anyway. Thank you ByeByeNOW.com. I left ByeByeNOW at the end of 2001. They went bankrupt in early 2002. Like many dot coms then they were probably a bit ahead or their time. Click here to play.

Here's a 30 second promo just completed. This is a generic promo meaning it can run anytime and doesn't promote anything specific. The objective of the spot is to build excitement and to get people to watch the show. Millionaire and game shows in general are tough to cut spots for because there is no variety in the shots to choose from. You've got shots of the host, shots of the contestants and they're always framed the same way. Even though none of the contestants won a million dollars you might think they had after seeing the spot. As a matter of a fact, I don't think anyone has won a million on the show over the last 2 years. I cut this spot working for Beantown Productions here in NYC. Music is from a library and this spot is actually different than the one that will air. The client didn't like the most of the graphics so we pulled them out. I like this version better. Click here to play.

So last week NBC/Universal announced they are joining ABC and selling some of their television shows on the iTunes Music Store. Not only are they providing shows currently on air, but also some classic shows dating back to the 1950's. Here's a fun spot produced by NBC promoting the shows in iTunes. Pay close attention to the ending where it says coming soon. Seems we haven't see the last of the TV shows from NBC/Universal. Click here to play.

What do you do when you hire a brand new play-by-play guy for your Major League Baseball team? Take him for a tour of the city of course! A few years back Cox Channel 4 in San Diego hired Matt Vasgersian to become their new play-by-play man in the booth. My friend Ed Roth, who's been doing the marketing for the Padres on Channel 4 for several years, had the idea to take him for a tour of the city with the color analyst and former Padre Mark Grant, to introduce him to the people. They make a great team in the booth and on the tour. While I missed the tour, I did get to edit together this short little featurette. See Matt and Mark as they explore beautiful San Diego. Click here to play.

So it's come to this... See whether you knew this or not, I'm not making a living by maintaining my vlog and posting fun videos every once in a while. That's why you might see my links to the right for my demo reel and my resume. Right now I have way too much time on my hands so I thought maybe if I get my little demo montage out there into RSS land, someone might see it, have a need for my services, and who know's maybe get a little work out of this deal. So here's the demo montage. Just a little something to try and wet your appetite. Much more where this came from. The clips are taken from over 10 years of writing/producing and editing stuff for television. The music track is taken from an artist called Bostich and the track is called Polaris. Click here to buy the whole track from iTunes. I'm also available for Mac consulting, troubleshooting, tutoring and much more. I am after all...THE MACDADDY! Click here to play.

Okay so it's time to give the other side equal time. Yes I would say even as a longtime Mac enthusiast, there have been times where I just want to throw my Mac out the window. In a paradoy of the Apple "Switcher" ads, here's one man's opinion on why not to get a Mac. Once again I sourced this video from Google Video. Since Google Video only plays Flash video, I used a site called Goolge Video Dowloader to download the flash file. I then used iSquint to convert the flash file into a quicktime. This should play in Quicktime 5 or later. Give it a look! Click here to play.