News and Notes

2011 Wrap-Up…and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

December 8th, 2011 at 9:50 pm

The end of the year has flown by! My contract was extended with WebsEdge just as the workload picked up. When I last wrote I had seven completed videos and was almost done with another four, for a total of 11. Since July I have completed another 12, and I’m working on the last four of the year right now! 27 full videos in a year isn’t to bad, especially considering I was helping coordinate others’ projects for the first six months. Thankfully we’ve reorganized and each producer is only coordinating their own projects now. It makes a huge difference.

I’ve also produced four entire conferences by myself. I described what goes into a conference program in my last update, but suffice it to say, it’s a lot of long days. This isn’t to say there aren’t fun moments. The last conference was for the National Council on the Social Studies, and as my subject line suggests, they had a special guest: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! Mr. Abdul-Jabbar wrote a book (On the Shoulders of Giants) and the study guide for teachers had just come out. It turns out he is very passionate about the importance of teaching history and learning from our past, which is great.

Here’s to the end of 2011!

A minute to breathe before Conference TV

July 29th, 2011 at 12:34 pm

I realize that I haven’t posted an update in quite some time. That’s mostly because I’ve been swamped with work at WebsEdge. Since June I’ve produced seven videos from start to finish, helped to coordinate 26 others (at least through pre-production) and am in the midst of producing four more!

Aside from creating videos, I’ve also been working with the Conference TV side of WebsEdge. I co-produced a conference in June and will be doing my first full conference in about a week (APCO, or the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials). When we produce a conference, it basically means we create a news-style magazine program with conference highlights. Every day during the conference there is a new program, which plays on TVs around the conference, on the website and on hotel televisions. This means that each day, we film all morning and edit all afternoon to make a new program for the following day. I am in charge of everything from creating a schedule and lining up interviewees/events (which is what I’m doing now) to watching over the edit of the final programs. It’s a lot of work, but it’s great to see the programs once they are finished.

Branching out – and some British slang

April 27th, 2011 at 9:35 am

I was hired at WebsEdge to coordinate all North American production (working with the clients to set a shoot date, find their basic messages, hire a crew, etc.). Now I have branched out into producing some of the pieces all the way through, which includes writing scripts, tracking budgets, overseeing the edit – the works. The pace and breadth of work at WebsEdge is far different than what I’ve experienced before. I enjoy having up to a dozen different clients on my plate at once, and it’s good to know that my multitasking skills can handle switching from working on a video about firefighters to one about bipolar disorder and then to one about mathematics. These “mini documentaries,” as I like to call them, challenge me to work quickly and efficiently, which is good.

Another thing I enjoy is the British slang! I think I ought to start a twitter feed just dedicated to posting one new British phrase a day. Some of the new words I’ve come across include:

Pants = Trash or Rubbish (This tripod is pants! It’s broken!)
Boot and Bonnet = Trunk and hood of car, respectively.
Muppet = An idiot
Mate = Friend (but we all know that one, yeah?)

There are loads more, but no time to write them all down now!

WebsEdge productions

February 25th, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Working at Websedge has been a good experience so far. One of the main things I work on is creating videos for public and private sector companies to promote their work at conferences. WebsEdge calls this “Conference TV” because the videos are broadcast on plasma screens throughout the conferences and also on the hotel televisions.

I also help to make videos for the WebsEdge Web TV channels. We have several channels, and each focuses on a specific topic, such as global health and the local government in the UK. WebsEdge continually feeds content onto these channels by producing packaged videos that feature stories from the field, best practices, interviews with experts, internal communication messages and a variety of other topics. Later this spring we will be starting a new web TV channel for the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), and this is the channel I will be working with most often.

In coordinating and producing both Conference TV and Web TV, I’m working with multiple stakeholders and meeting a lot of interesting people from around the world.

New ventures

January 13th, 2011 at 12:35 pm

The president and owner of VideoTakes is downsizing in preparation for her retirement and as such, my coworkers and I are moving on to new jobs. As of January 18, I’ll be a Coordinating Producer for WebsEdge, a company that makes videos for public and private sector organizations for use on the web and at conferences. I greatly enjoyed my time at VideoTakes and am looking forward to the new challenges at WebsEdge. I’ll be performing similar job duties, but I’ll be creating different types of videos and for a larger number of clients. In addition, WebsEdge is based out of London and works in over 50 countries, so I might get to learn about filmmaking overseas.

As for the films I’ve worked on at VideoTakes, the Botanic Garden video is into the fine cut stage and going strong. I’ll be excited to see the final product once it’s ready in early March and will hopefully post a trailer on this site at that time. Two other projects that are also in the works will be finished by my colleagues before they leave the company.

Happy New Year to everyone, and let’s hope for an excellent 2011!