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October 1, 2009 - Lima Lima
In 2002, my kid's high school marching band was preparing a halftime show titled, "I Am An American." As I was going to do the video again, I thought it would be great to arrange a flyover by Naperville's aerobatic flight team, Lima Lima, at the end of the school's homecoming halftime show. When I contacted Lima Lima to make arrangements, they asked if I would help them by creating a video of their performance at the 2002 Chicago Air and Water Show. It sounded like fun, so I agreed.
The day I shot their performance, the weather stunk; lots of clouds. With a reported 300,000 spectators, I also could not find a place to put my tripod where it wasn't being jostled every few minutes by people headed for the beer vendors. When I got home, most of the video was unusable, but some was pretty good.
The guys at Lima Lima had earlier showed me some videos they had produced. It was all in-cockpit cameras, lots of turning propellers and hard driving rock music. That made sense to me if you were looking at their show from the pilot's perspective, but not from the perspective of the audience. To me, the slow aerobatics of their prop driven planes looked more like ballet then slam dancing.
So I created a ballet video of sorts out of the usable footage and sent it to them. I don't think they liked it much and nothing more was said. About the middle of last year, I was contacted by Lima Lima's Vice President, John "Ripper" Rippinger. He wanted to know if there was a high quality version of the original video, as the team now wanted to post it on their website as a "video of the month."
When I finally found my old files in the basement, I realized that I had been using an MPEG based editing software package that left the edited video muddy and of very poor quality. I had no high quality version of the video.
So last month, I dug out the original video tapes and started again. There is lots of time to do these things when you are between jobs as I am (again). I recreated the original video, added a new title and music credits, a new copyright and sent it to John. I got an email last night that they had posted it as the team's video of the month. Watch it in High Quality (HQ) and full screen. It looks pretty good for a web video (if I do say so myself).
Aerial Ballet (Lima Lima Video for October, 2009)
As a postscript to the above, I was never able to get the halftime show flyover set up, as the band director informed me that they would not be able to do the entire show during homecoming. The school needed the time to introduce the homecoming court and would only allow the band to do two songs from the show. Too bad, as it would have been ultra-cool.
September 22, 2009
Last winter, Patty and I planned a driving trip out to Yellowstone for July. Even though I am between jobs at the moment, we decided that we still needed the break (that and the fact that most of the trip was already purchased).
We set out on July 16th, stopping in Kansas City and Denver to visit friends and relatives. We spent one night at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park and then drove up to the Old Faithful Inn for four days of Yellowstone.
Everywhere I looked there was something amazing to shoot with my HD camera. I shot 90 minutes of video just at Yellowstone. When we got home, I watched the tape. Man, how many shots of geysers can one person watch?? Some of that stuff just doesn't translate to video.
So, I decided to cut the 90 minutes down to 6 minutes and make a music video:
Trip to Yellowstone: The Music Video
April 8, 2009
There have been two revisions to the GoDaddy site building software, so I am updating and upgrading the site to conform to their latest features.
Not much happening at ol' DF, with the exception of the posting of a web video shot for Dr. Robert Deaver, Dentist to the Stars (at least here in Chicago). Bob is one of my closest friends and shooting this video was not the easiest thing for him to do. But he came through it like a champ and he seems to like the results.
Bob just moved into a new office about 14 months ago, so it may be getting close to "video update" time. I'm ready when he is. (NOTE: Bob just added a "Virtual Tour" video at the top of his home page. That's not mine. Mine is the one below that.)
Dr. Robert Deaver's website with video
And by the way, if you're ever looking for a top-flight dentist in Chicago, Doctor Bob is your man!
May 31, 2008
Patty wants to trade in her minivan for something with better gas mileage, so we start at the top of the heap; the Smart Car. We later decided not to get one, as there are no dealerships within 40 miles of our house. That's too far to go when we need regular maintenance. Can you imagine what we'd have to do if it died completely??
Patty Tests A SmartCar
February 19, 2007
GoDaddy.com will only let me add files of less than 5MB, so I had to put my newest video on YouTube.
Click on the link below to see the new "Me & George" Featurette:
This short video has an interesting history. I had to test my old Super-8 movie camera to make sure it still worked, as my son Matt needed to use it in his film class (he is no longer a film major, but it was fun while it lasted).
I shot the short little non-story and then sent it out to California for processing. After that, I sent the film down to Texas to have it professionally scanned for video (frame-by-frame).
Someone on Youtube complemented me on how the video really looks like film. That's not hard to do when it really IS film.
November 10, 2006
With Patty off on a cruise of the Caribbean, I decided to take two days off to work around the house and edit videos of Hawaii and London. You know what they say about the plans of mice and men... Take one rotten tree and a remodeling project and kiss the days goodbye.
These are Quicktime movies that are large (3-4MB). You may want to right click on them and download them to your hard drive before viewing.
April 19, 2006
The following is a very short clip taken with a Canon SD450 Digital ELPH camera. This is a digital still camera that has a built-in microphone and has the ability to take video clips. The quality is not bad, but it eats up the memory card.
The clip was taken on March 12, 2006 at an English football match between Arsenal and Liverpool in London's Highbury Stadium. It was Matthew's Spring Break trip to London, Edinburgh, and Inverness.
I have edited the clip and converted it to an iPod Video format to save space.
August 31, 2005
Dad Films is branching out. Welcome to the world of
DAD DIGITAL is Audio Restorations and Visual Effects
The first project was the restoration of an old family record of "Rhapsody In Blue" owned by both my parents and Patty's parents (Kismet, no?). Patty's parents had a stereo version and my folks had a mono version, so for years I have been trying to save the stereo copy by transferring it to cassette, then reel-to-reel and finally to CD.
The problem was that each playing of the disk added to the wear, noise, and damage to the record. I might have made a good copy, but the copy included all of the flaws.
Now I have professional grade software that lets me use the same tools as the big record companies to re-master and restore the original recordings. Below is a sample of what this means:
Here is a 24 second sample (in MP3 format) of what the record actually sounds like:
Rhapsody Sample - Original Recording
Here is the same sample with the clicks and pops removed:
Rhapsody Sample - Click & Pop Removal
Note that while this is much better, there is still a lot of record surface noise plus an annoying 50Hz hum that no doubt came from the original recording session (stereo was pretty new in 1955 and hum was normal). After a spectral analysis, I isolated the record surface noise plus the hum and removed it, without removing any of the original sound (or at least not so you would hear it). I then gave each channel a 3db boost to bring the sound level up (the record is soft or softly recorded) to give us the final product:
Rhapsody Sample - Noise Reduction and db Boost
Pretty neat, eh? Plus I've tested this on other records and it seems to work great. However, too much noise reduction seems to remove the ambiance of the recording hall, so I'll have to figure that out over time.
More to come...
August 27, 2005
Here is a new service of DAD FILMS: Cheesy Ring Tones for Cell Phones! Just for you old friends at NCHS Band!
NCHS Fight Song Ringtone (Midi file)
(Note, added 6/8/09: For those of you not in the know, this same fight song, recorded by the Marching Redhawks, can be heard at the end of the movie "The Weatherman" (the final parade scene). The band was hired to march in the shooting of the parade scene, but their shots ended up on the cutting room floor. Don't bother to rent the movie just to hear them. Just listen to the midi file!)
August 3, 2005
Finally, after months of fighting with new software and missing tapes, I was able to complete the "Pirates" DVD and have it it out first class mail to all who ordered it. The shipment went out on July 18th. After that, our family headed out for two weeks in Hawaii (that's what I read that George Lucas did after finishing "Star Wars.")
Next on the agenda for Dad Films are two family DVD's which will not be available to anyone outside the immediate family, as no one would care about them anyway. One is a retrospective of summer vacations in Rehoboth Beach and the other is my first High Definition video of the Hawaii trip.
Will there ever be another Marching Redhawk Video? Probably not, as both the kids are in college now. I am talking to Tom Rogers, however, and we'll see what we can come up with. There is always a chance. Stay tuned.
