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In January, 2003, I took the video plunge. I spent about $800 on a DCR-TRV740 Sony camcorder (it's been discontinued and you can now get them for $600). I went with Pinnacle Studio 8 for my capture and editing software. While a little buggy, I'm very pleased with Studio 8. I have a copy of Adobe Premiere but it's over my head for now. I used MGI Video Wave for a while but it lacks many of the features in Studio 8. My strategy is to make as many videos as I can... make lots of mistakes... keep shootin'. If you are unable to view these (see About Streaming Video on this page), I'm sorry. If you are able to view them, I'd love to hear what hardware/software/operating system you're using. Email me.
KBOA Jingles & Pix. I grabbed some pix form KBOA830.com (the first website I did, back in the day) and tossed 'em in with some jingles that Jeff Wheeler saved. The 5 min video (3 meg .mov download) could have been better if I had taken the time to try to match images to audio but I didn't (keep your Media Player at 320x240). You might need Media Player 10 to watch this.  Watch video »
Mr. Steve's Virtual 4th of July. You can fight the traffic, mosquitoes and screaming children...but it's not absolutely necessary. This short video (2 min) is about an 11 meg download. 07/04/04. Watch video »
Game Day. There's really no way to fully appreciate what goes on behind the scenes on a game day at Learfield Sports Operations without spending a full day (or a lot of days) with the men and women that help make it all happen. Producers, board ops, engineers. Endlessly ringing phones. This brief video runs about 7 minutes and was shot on August 30th. Watch video »
Photo Story. I really like this little add-on for Windows XP. Drop in a bunch of photos...put them in the order you want...add narration and/or music and Photo Story squeezes it all down to a .wmv file. My favorite part is the "Ken Burns" effect. Appears you're panning or zooming the still images. This one (2 minutes) took about half an hour.  Watch video »
Zippity Do Dah! A spring day in 2003. This is --as the expression goes-- about as good as it gets. I'm using a different codec to create the .avi file, and converting to .asf using older version of Windows Media Tools. Trying for a little great backward compatibility. 2:00 Watch video »
State Tournament. In March of this year (2003) Radio Iowa Sports Director Todd Kimm let me hang out with him for an hour or so at the Iowa Girls State Basketball Tournament. This is really an exciting chunk of Iowa and my little video doesn't begin to capture the excitement. 2:00 Watch video »
Body Walk.  My first effort for a client. Body Walk is "walk through" exhibit that tours the state, teaching pre- and grade school students about the body (I Am Joe's Colon). I shot the on-site stuff at a school near Kansas City. When it didn't "tell the story" I interviewed one of the people that started the project. Running time: 10 minutes. Watch video »

The client liked what I had done but wanted a different angle so I shot additional interview footage and re-edited the on-site stuff. Running time: 5:40 Watch video »
Techno-Gods. This one was just for fun. I came in one Friday evening and set up my camera in the engineering workshop area. I ad libbed the full ten minutes and did it in just two takes. You'll see that my character swung from Sling Blade to Ratzo Rizzo and back. And the sound sucked because of some equipment sitting next to the work bench. Running time: 10 minutes Watch video »
Satellite Dish Move. Matt Lear shot this video in 1989 and all we ever had was raw footage. I edited 10 or 15 minutes down to five or less. I chopped it further and got it down to under two minutes. I mixed in some audio of Charlie Peters --the poor guy supervising the move-- describing the event. Running time: 1:50 Watch video »
The Derry Brownfield Show. This was my first "learning project." The final cut ran about 10 minutes but I've just posted the trailer here. I made lots of mistakes on this project. Lighting and sound were not consistent and I needed much more B-roll. But it came out better than expected for a first effort. Running time: 1 minute. Watch video »
Kung Fu. Studio 8 makes it pretty easy to add narration to a video. I decided to experiment with a clip from a Bruce Li movie (The Invincible). The references to blogging are irrelevant, so just ignore them. This gave me a new respect for those actors and singers that have to go back and re-record audio while watching the picture. Running time: 1:20 Watch video »
Born to Run. I had just gotten my video camera and shot this on the street in front of Learfield. One of our sales assistants needed still shots of a young person jogging so they persuaded one of our new employees to let them take some pictures. I tagged along with my Sony and Carrie was a good sport. The entire process took less than 5 minutes. Running time: 40 seconds. Watch video »
The Basement Diaries. This is a series of about 75 still images from The Basement Diaries website. I had not purchased a video camera yet and I used Studio 8 to create this montage. The song is Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Kamakawiwo Ole' Israel. I first heard it under the credits of the movie Finding Forester. Running time: 5 minutes. Watch video »