Megan’s school had a “Unified Arts Festival” last week where students got to show off their artistic talents in everything from woodworking to painting to singing. Near the end of the evening, they had a special recital for music students who take lessons outside the school.
Megan takes voice lessons, so she got to perform. She sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”
As a bonus, her voice teacher was wonderful enough to come to the event to accompany her!
Some friends of mine who volunteer for the animal shelter Pets Alive, took a few days to get footage for a promotional video that mirrors the introduction to the show Downton Abbey. It’s been a huge hit and has been picked up by quite a few news outlets, so it’s getting international publicity, which is just fantastic! …not only for my friends, but for the animal shelter as well.
For comparison sake, here’s the opening to Downton Abbey…
And here’s the awesome Downton Tabby version!
Here are some of the news outlets that have featured it!
Lori and I went to Watsontown for the 4th of July weekend and went out on the Susquehanna River with some friends to watch the fireworks. I’m pretty sure it was the best time I’ve ever had watching fireworks. The sound carried right up the river. The reflection on the water was beautiful. It was relaxing. There were no crowds.
I got some video but it’s a bit grainy because my video camera isn’t very good in low light, but it gives a little bit of the sense of the evening.
Megan and I decided to play around a bit with some stop motion video. We decided that kayaking through the house and out the door was silly enough to warrant some effort, so here’s the end result.
She was a trooper, too. It was about 30 degrees out and the wind was whipping in the door and all she had on was her "Go Play Outside" t-shirt from Shanks Mare. Her smile (on-camera) never wavered.
There’s something creepy about animatronic bears.
I was at a friend’s mom’s Christmas party yesterday and her house is amazingly decorated with animatronic characters, four Christmas trees, animated villages, lights, bows, bells, garlands… the works. It’s wonderfully festive.
Some of the animatronic characters are in a bit of shadow and while looking at the slowly-moving bears, I was just a little bit creeped out… so I decided to run with it and took some video using my phone. Adding a bit of not-particularly-festive music changed the whole vibe from festive to disturbingly creepy.
There you have it!
I just finished my latest video project today. This was probably the most effort I’ve put into anything I’ve done to date… more moving parts and shots than previous videos. I think it was also my first multi-location video as well.
Fun to shoot. Fun to edit (to a point). It changed focus from being an emotional, tiring journey to a lighthearted romp across various landscapes (the video, not my attitude toward making it). It also changed from having a somewhat serious message to… well… not.
I shot it using a Kodak Playsport and a Kodak Zi8. Editing was done using Hitfilm Ultimate. Music composed with SmartSound Sonicfire Pro. Additional sound cleanup was done using Audacity.