In January of 2005, Oconee Media Services was officially born in Oconee County,
South Carolina. Since my darling wife is required to keep me under her thumb at
all times, she is the CEO,CFO, President, Owner, etc. That keeps the hierarchical
order of things in check, I am number 2. And that, dear friends, is the structure.
Sometime back in the early 1980's, I thought it would be a good career to become
involved in producing and staging presentations for corporate business meetings.
So I got a job in Audio Visual, not in high school, a real job. I was in my mid
20's. I got to start at the bottom, as a driver!
Now, before this gets out of hand; cause I'm 50 now and 25 years is a lot of
stories to tell. There's a point to be made here. I'm old enough that a
lot of our potential clients are younger than I. If you're one of those people,
you probably can't imagine life before color TV, Compact Disc, Video Cassette
Recorders, and 500mb hard drives. My point; Knowledge is the culmination of years
of experiencing the technological changes in the industry. It's the difference
between knowing how to use technology and how to make technology work for you.
Because I was blessed with working for large A/V staging and production companies
in the late 80's and the 90's, I learned how creative individuals made the
technology work toward their goal. We pushed the envelope of technology which, in
turn, drove the technology forward. Make no mistake, if you enjoy a Plasma or LCD
TV in your home; it's because businesses in the 80's and 90's had techs
like me using 2 and 3 video projectors stacked up to increase the brightness. We
worked our eyes to death "tweaking" the convergence grids for optimum
clarity and to get maybe 1000 lumens on the screen. Now, you plug it in, turn it
on and get 3000 lumens and your done. I wouldn't trade my experience in for
anything. Why? because techs in my generation learned to problem solve and troubleshoot.
I learned how components worked together and why. My first computer at work had
2 5.25" floppy drives. You boot with one and run program from the other. Windows,
not yet. A mouse was something you caught in a trap.
Slideshows were called slideshows cause they used slides! PowerPoint doesn't
call it a slide show because Microsoft thought it would be cool. I experienced slide
shows! 27 Kodak Slide projectors (collectors items now) run by computer code projecting
images onto a widescreen, you thought widescreen was for movies and TV? Each projector
had a piece of the greater whole image. If you never saw a "multi image slideshow",
you missed magic! That was creativity. When I make a Montage Video for an Anniversary
or Wedding, that's the experience I draw upon. I can use those soft fades, feather
masks, inset images to make my videos more artistic. Secret, old school techniques.
The same holds true for PowerPoint. I learned on 1.0. It took until PowerPoint XP
for them to finally put the kinds of creative transitions and object movements into
the program that I have been faking for years. And most modern people don't
even use builds and transitions. I learned speaker support visuals with real slides.
I understand how to support a speech, not display the speech on the screen.
Then came video. Resolutions get better. Computers become capable of capturing full
motion video. Hard drives are big enough to store the video. Editing programs allow
us to produce video. And I keep using the creative experience from the slide days
to develop the look and feel of some types of my video. Of course, I don't keep
everything old school, I am still capable of learning new tricks. And now, everyone
with a computer and camera thinks they are a producer. The issue is production values.
we don't seem to criticize the quality of the work, only the content. I have
to stop myself on this thought because I have to compete with crap to make a living.
Well, if you made it this far, good for you! Even bigger kudus if you're under
35. My bottom line is this.
- 27 years of working with technology hardware.
- 21 years of working with creative presentation software.
- 8 years of working with creative video hardware and software.
These experiences have proved a solid foundation for not just creating artistic,
powerful, emotional media but also for understanding the delivery medium for the
production.
My classic example is from video transfers to DVD. Why would you preserve your family
video memories, your can't be replaced treasures, on a DVD that won't let
you search for the piece of video you want to see? Random chapters and menus don't
provide what you should have. Every event on that DVD should be accessible from
a menu. You want little Johnny's 5th birthday, go to the menu, find the chapter,
watch the party. Sounds simple. Sounds basic. Make sure it's what you get when
you choose someone else to transfer your videos.
Thanks for reading! If you want me to rant on any subject for the future, contact
me, I'll do it. I may be number 2, but my opinion is always number 1.
Mike