The Living Résumé of a Producer, Director, Editor, Writer working with innovative businesses, non-profits and educators to produce value adding multimedia based solutions
Pics from a recent trip to Miami. I saw Super-8 here. I liked the Drive-In better than the movie.
"The Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop is a 14-screen drive-in theater in Lauderhill, Florida, USA, that doubles as the largest drive-in and largest daily flea market in the world."
A friend of mine, Walter Hatcher, is the owner of SWN Software, an Asheville based iphone App developer. SWN does contract work for several corporations developing customer focused apps, and he has created several games available at the AppStore. For one game - SnowWriter I helped create the pun filled marketing text on the landing page. It was a nice departure from the typical corporate writing gig.
AdvantageWest Certified Entrepreneur Community site www.awcec.com
The Certified Entrepreneur Community website created by AdvantageWest to promote area entrepreneurial development has snagged the Best in Class award at the annual SEDC conference. I worked with an amazing team of local developers, writers and photographers on this project. Many of the videos featured on this blog are from the 18 pieces I produced as part of the site.
Another of my Certified Entrepreneur Communities videos was for a small business in Jackson County, NC called Cherokee by Design. The arts and crafts shop specializes in customizing items using native artwork and the Cherokee Syllabary. The shop is run by delightful Cherokee woman named Charla Crowe who has found a business model that works in a tough economy.
Tonight is the finale of American Idol, and my kids are big fans. The show's narrator is sometimes heard introducing Ryan Seacrest and oddly enough is also the narrator of a series of pieces I did for TBM Consulting Group. Here's a segment on the roots of Lean and Six Sigma featuring his VO.
I believe the cell phone video camera is today's equivalent to the Super-8 camera. The quality is compromised, lenses are simple and it's a little bit of a hassle to use, but it's perfect for those moments when you want to capture a short clip of something special. This display at the Vegas store AllSaints Spitalfields featuring several hundred sewing machines was one of those things that begged to be captured. With Youtube as the new Super 8 projector, enjoy.
One of the AdvantageWest Certified Entrepreneurial Communities pieces I did was for Toner Machining Technologies in Morganton, NC. The small specialty machine shop serves a variety of markets from manufacturing to Aerospace. I interviewed Jim Toner and captured activity around the plant.
Harsco is a global company with divisions serving infrastructure, metals, minerals, rail and industrial sectors. I created a series of Kaizen related videos for the company including this one at a steel plant in Hamilton, Ontario. The operation's scale is amazing and the location is like shooting on the surface of Mars. This is one of my favorite industrial pieces and the employees of the MultiServ division were a great team to work with.
For the rail division - HTT - we shot at the plant in Columbia, SC to capture the dynamic week where a cross functional team reconfigured a production line.
Quintiles is an international drug testing firm based in RTP, NC. Last year they launched a program called Improving Q with You which was focused on reducing waste, improving internal processes, and enhancing response times. As part of the launch I followed two Kaizen teams in Marietta, GA and Kansas City as they focused on specific challenges for a week. The resulting video is a look at the power of Kaizen methodologies in a business process and lab environment.
Lantech is known as the creator of plastic wrapping systems for packaging. The company's founder Pat Lancaster came up with the idea of wrapping an entire pallet full of boxes in cellophane and the resulting patent gave Lantech a lock on the lucrative market for 17 years. In the 1990's Lantech began working with TBM Consulting Group to launch a Lean journey focused on innovation and creating operational excellence. For the 10 year anniversary of the TBM/Lantech relationship I was asked to produce a video that cellebrated their many successes.For those gadgeteers out there, this plant was endlessly fascinating and staffed with wildly creative people.
For most of the 2000s there was a movie studio in Asheville known as Blue Ridge Motion Pictures. The studio building was a huge converted textile mill that also was home to Highland Brewery. Part of the building once served as an enormous indoor set for The Last of the Mohicans. During its operation the studio featured a small film school and housed an indoor street set, screening room, grip and lighting dept. and several sound stages. It was home to the production offices of The Clearing and All the Real Girls, and it was host to many smaller commercial shoots before closing around 2009.
I kept an office at the studio for a few years and taught the Teen Advanced Filmmaking Class one summer. It was a two week intensive production class where a small group of teens wrote, directed and edited a short film. With a 30 foot bluescreen available to us, we landed on a superhero story about 3 inch high heroes fighting a mad scientist seeking to destroy the world (or something like that). Here's an early bluescreen test that we did as a proof of concept.
AdvantageWest is a dedicated economic development group serving Western North Carolina. They have been partly responsible for Google, Facebook and Apple locating data centers in the region. They have also been very supportive of entrepreneurs and small businesses in the region. Their Certified Entrepreneur Community program is the first effort in the US to certify a community as entrepreneur ready.
I've been working with AdvantageWest for about 5 years on various projects, but the CEC program has been the most rewarding. As part of the www.awcec.com launch, I worked with a team to create entrepreneur spotlights for the success stories section. The resulting profiles can be found here. Here's one of my favorites for Sylvan Sport.
I'm working on my article for Make Magazine on building the 3-D rig I'm naming Frankencam3D and thought I'd post a new still from the experiment. Red/Cyan glasses required.
My work with TBM Consulting Group has allowed me to meet the leaders of some of the country's most innovative companies. This testimonial piece shot last year features top Lean Leaders exploring the value of creating a Lean culture.
A couple of years ago Deltec Homes participated in two episodes of the hit TV series Extreme Makeover - Home Edition. The setting was post Katrina New Orleans where a home and church were both destroyed by the storm. Deltec provided their Green building expertise along with the materials for modern, hurricane resistant replacements for the two buildings. Andy Spencer spent the week following the Deltec team as they and a small army of contractors built a Leed Certified home and new church. This is a teaser piece I edited from Andy's work.
Bob Moog was an electronic music pioneer who spent much of his professional life in Asheville, NC where Moog Music is still headquartered. Moog's synthesizers, theremins electronic filters created a sound that changed the face of music and introduced sonic science to a generation of musicians. Today, Bob's daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa carries on her father's legacy as the head of the Bob Moog Foundation. I've worked with Michelle to create promotional videos for the Moogseum and the educational outreach program MoogLab.
From MoogLab:
With arts programs and school budgets suffering nationwide, and science education lagging behind that of other developed countries, we are committed to making an impact with MoogLab.
MoogLab brings electronic instruments like Theremins and synthesizers into underserved schools to teach children the science of sound, to inspire their own creativity and desire to innovate, and to forge connections between their classroom learning and fun, real-life applications.
We have brought MoogLab into North Carolina elementary and middle schools, festivals, and our own public events. Student reactions have been amazing, encouraging us to further develop the program and take it nationwide.
