Mike Cohen's Blog

You Can't Get There From Here, the expression goes.

Sometimes you find yourself in a seemingly untenable situation. You have 1 hour to get setup for an interview, in basically an empty blah room, Given a basic kit of gear that you take everywhere, lights, mics and stands, you need to be able to make something out of nothing - in other words, use your knowledge and creativity to get the job done.

**Thanks to my buddy Jake for this innovation!

I recall going to the home of retired general Bernard Trainor with a reporter back in the early 90's to interview him about the no-fly zone in Iraq post-Gulf War I. The shooter had his betacam, sticks and one Tota light. He made the general's living room look as nice as was possible, and the few sound bites that went on air looked pretty good indeed.

Hence, we find ourselves in cramped offices, hotel meeting rooms and occasionally plain white-walled board rooms, or just an empty supply closet. Indirect lighting, reflectors, gels, umbrellas and taking everything you ever learned about lighting and combining it with good old Yankee ingenuity - and you might just get a nice result.




Recently we picked up a low cost 19" LCD HD monitor to travel with. In an Anvil case originally purchased for an SGI Indy2, we can setup a client monitor or one for ourselves, to confirm that we are in focus and somewhat properly exposed. While the colors are not perfectly accurate, monitoring the V1U via HDMI is very nice indeed. Once can see a definite difference between the flip out LCD screen on the V1, the viewfinder and the LCD monitor. Presumably the true picture lies at the intersection of the other 3 views.

Sometimes happenstance is a good friend. A plant, a plexiglass award or some carefully stacked books on a table are just what you need to make blah into ahh. Wherever you find yourself, scope out the lobby or adjacent offices for plants, lamps, bookcases, framed landscapes - anything that you might be able to borrow to turn blech into ye(ch)s!

Thinking on your feet, often in a pinch, can be the key to getting something usable, versus just another plain background.

Speaking of backgrounds, it is also helpful to have some black muslin or other backdrop material (dubatine?) and a background stand (two light stands and a pvc pipe will do the job). With some nice folds and a slash of light with a gel, you can indeed create something out of nothing. It is of course important to have enough distance between the subject and the background, whatever it is, to put it out of focus. Modern full-auto video cameras try to make everything in focus. In a case like this, don't use auto-focus or auto-iris.

Check out the Whitehouse YouTube clips. Obama is making good use of the free video hosting on the web - saving us money presumably (?) - the interesting thing is the thumbnail keyframes are in some cases behind-the-scenes photos of the lighting setups - frames not present in the videos.

Some of my favorite shots on 60 Minutes or Dateline are when you see a cinema verite shot and you can see how they did what they did. It is always fascinating to see other peoples' setups. Sometimes simple can be best, and look anything but simple on camera.

In summary - you can have the best most expensive lighting kit and tons of flags and other gear. But your creativity and ability to think on your feet can make the difference in an on-camera interview situation. Whether you have 10 minutes or two hours to setup, the limitations of room size, decoration, distance between subject and background, power availability and available gear all come into play. But most important of all is your ability to make something out of nothing. Of course, if you have your wits about you, nothing is never really nothing - rather, nothing is the promise of something great.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

"Don't they do these surgeries in Connecticut," my wife used to ask me. Well now she and I have accepted the fact that video shoots and conventions tend to happen everywhere but Connecticut.

Inevitably, this travel has everything to do with airports, airlines, middle seats, tray tables, lighted signs and placards and free cups of ice with a splash of soda! Here are some anecdotes that might help you should your job take you to the friendly skies:

Security

Back in the pre-9/11 days, you would check-in at the counter and be asked two security questions: Did you pack your bags yourself? Have your bags been in your control the whole time?

These were kind of silly questions. Yes I packed my bags. No I did not maintain control of my bags while they were in the valet parking bus cargo hold. As it turned out on that fateful day, packing your own bags could in fact be a bad thing, depending upon what you put in them.

Today of course we are not asked who packed our bags. Rather, we take off our shoes and donate untold tons of multi-tools and nail clippers to the government. Hey, better to be safe that sorry. Anyway, depending upon the airport, this process can take anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour. They should have a line for people who have never been to an airport, and a line for folks who do it all the time. I actually take off my belt and deposit my phone and wallet in my laptop bag while I am still at the check-in counter. It is actually amusing to see other male and female travelers getting their kit back on just past the security checkpoint.

If you travel with video cameras, laptops or other difficult to identify electronic goods, prepare to easily place them into the plastic bins and wait while they are x-rayed multiple times. "Nice video camera" I hear almost every time. How shall I respond? "It does the job" usually...er..does the job. While the posted signs only tell you to remove video cameras an laptops, I tend to remove video decks, portable hard drives, and anything that looks like a radio frequency transmitter, such as a wireless mic radio frequency transmitter. Again, better to put everything out in the open than to raise suspicion and delay the line. Courtesy for your fellow travelers is a priority of frequent fliers. I have been known to advise elderly patrons to remove their metal wallet chains and oxygen tanks before entering the magnet!

Excess Baggage Fees

If you travel with more than a carry on, a personal item (another word for a 2nd carry on) and 1 checked wheely bag, you should be prepared to pay for it. Here is a typical conversation on most non-Southwest airlines:

Debbie: How many bags will you be checking sir?

Me: 8

Debbie: Just you traveling?

Me: Yep

Debbie: I am going to have to charge you $175 extra. Is that ok?

Me: What choice do I have? It's cheaper than taking another person.

Debbie: How would you like to pay for that?

Me: Nickels and dimes.

Debbie: Is that a joke?

Me: Yes. Here's my credit card.

Debbie: Thank you. Now sign here, here, here, here, here and here.

Me: Here?

Debbie: Yes.

Me: Here also?

Debbie: Yes.

Me: Here as well?

Debbie: Yes.

Me: Where else?

Debbie: Here.

Me: Oh, I see. Here?

Debbie: Yes.

Me: Ok, thanks for your help. Have a pleasant day.

Back in the day airlines sometimes offered a media discount. The conversation would continue:

Me: Do you have a media discount?

Debbie: Are you in the media?

Me: Sure.

Debbie: Who do you work for? Fox News?

Me: No, a private company.

Debbie: Oh, do you have a business card?

Me: Here you go.

Debbie: Hmm, let me get my supervisor. David, can you come here please?

David: Media discount eh? Do you work for the news?

Me: No.

David: Well then I can't do this.

Me: I got the discount yesterday in Hartford.

David: Is that so? Well maybe you'd like to come back here and do my job for me.

Me: Great idea. I haven't earned minimum wage since high school.

David: Why you!

Seriously, there was some obscure secret code only accessible on green CRT mainframe computers. I had about a 50-50 chance of getting the discount, and usually only in one direction, which made my expense report look even less organized.

More Security

"What's in this heavy case?"

"Camera equipment," I reply.

"Ooh, do you film the Hills?"

"Yep, I'm going drinking with Spencer and Brody later. You wanna come?"

"OMG - I love those guys!"

"How about this large metal tube? What's in there?"

"Rocket launcher?!"

I am not making this up - before 9/11 I actually had pilots make that joke about my heavy stainless steel operating room tripod.

It's all business these days. Be nice, be honest and be patient.

Emmanuel Lewis and Scott Baio in unison: "Now that's what I call flying the friendly skies!"

Smiles all around, cue theme music.

We know that you have many choices for internet blogs. Thank you for choosing Creative COW. Enjoy your stay wherever your final destination may be.

Mike Cohen

This old adage is often repeated by the likes of Norm Abrahm and my dear departed Uncle Ted (you know they named a school after him - no joke). It is wise advice indeed. Just as relevant to production as it is to carpentry and limb amputation.

Planning for a video shoot can range from client meetings, detailed SOW's or as simple as basic preparations the night before - usually a combination of long-term and short-term tasks.

The night before a shoot, whether in a hotel room or my living room, follows a typical ritual for me:



1. Eat a healthy, hearty, bland meal. The last thing I want to be doing mid-shoot is wanting to leave the room. Pasta with a little butter and grated cheese often fits the bill for me. Fish or poultry sans a rich sauce is another good choice. Carbs and protein is a good combination in advance of hours of standing in one place.



2. Top off the camera batteries. Thankfully, Sony Lithium Ion batteries last for many hours and have little memory effect. Thus I use every available plug in my living room and kitchen to top off both cameras, the clam shell deck and the still camera battery.

3. Lately I have gotten into the habit of pre-labeling blank tapes. You never know when you are going to be rushed in the morning. The worst thing you can do is stick an unmarked tape into a camera and start rolling. Inevitably you will quickly change tapes and forget to label the first load - not good. I take more than enough tapes on a typical shoot. You never know, aliens could invade and wouldn't you know it, we would have yet another UFO landing shot with a cell phone camera. Well that will never happen to me.

For the typical surgery shoot, knowing the type of surgery I can anticipate how many tapes I will need, and then pre-label a few extra as well.


Another reason to pre-label tapes is the mini-DV tapes we use have two inserts in the tape case - a label sheet and a "precautions for use" sheet, both of which tend to be stuck to the back of the tape via static cling - most inconvenient when changing tapes in an austere environment such as the OR. Thus, these annoyances are safely left behind along with the cellophane wrappers.



I lay out the blanks in symmetrical pattern, remove the tapes and label them with the date, camera name and tape number. There is a 99.9% chance that this will be the only shoot on this particular date, so no further naming convention is needed:

4/13/09
V1U_1



Location, Location, Location

If I am driving to my location, chances are I have been there before. However believe it or not, there are a few hospitals that even I have not been to - yet. Back in the day, circa 1997, I would print out directions from Mapquest or Yahoo Maps. The only problem with these services, and to some degree with Google, is the preponderance for silly directions, just to save distance, not taking into account logic or actual driving experience. For example:

Take Left on Main St. South for 1.5 miles.
Take Right onto I-84 West for 18.5 miles.
Exit right onto Mill Plain Rd. for .02 miles.
Enter I-84 West and continue 100 feet to Exit 23a, NY City.
Take Slight right onto 684 South for 1 mile.
Exit right onto Middle Road Turnpike for 1.2 miles.
Enter 684 South for 152.5 miles to Philadelphia.

Etc.

See what I mean.

Enter the 21st Century and Google Maps(or GPS). Now it is ever so easy to find your own directions, print out your own maps in as much detail as you like, and of course you can not only see satellite images that would make Jake Ryan jealous:



But you can in many cases get a street-level view of your exact destination.



Amazingly this exact hot dog cart was right where it was supposed to be. I was disappointed to see that the price of a pretzel has gone up $1.50. Must be the economy!

With my batteries charged, my maps printed and my ghrelin levels satisfied(look it up), it is off to bed for a few restful hours dreaming about what I always dream about the night before a shoot - going to the wrong location!

It's only a dream. I planned ahead!

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

Stress is a natural part of life. Even happy events like a wedding cause a lot of stress. As discussed at length in this blog, air travel and travel in general causes plenty of stress. Planning a video shoot and dealing with clients of different levels of detail-orientedness are more ways to lose one's hair. Luckily, I haven't got much hair left to lose. This means I need to find other ways to decompress. Here are some ways:

1. After an especially stressful phone call with an angry mob, get up, walk outside and walk around. Even in the dead of winter I have bundled up in my ski jacket, hat, scarf and gloves just to get some air. If it is warm, go for a longer walk. In the Spring and Summer I try to walk half a mile every day during my lunch break, or whenever I need a break.

2. Get a massage. We have the advantage of having a great massage and acupuncture studio right next door, so at least every couple of months a deep tissue massage really gets me relaxed. Sitting in a poor position at the computer for days on end is not good for the neck, the back, the eyes or the hands.

3. Keep healthy snacks at work. You are what you eat - it is an overused expression, but true. If you keep your desk drawer stocked with candy bars and soda cans, you will feel even worse after your 5 minute sugar high. I need to work on this area of my own life, however i recently switched from high carb granola bars to flavored rice cakes. They take some getting used to, but are filling but low in calories. This Summer I plan to keep some fresh fruit at work as well.

4. Drink. I'm not talking about what you do after work - I mean hydration during the day. A narrator once told me that every time he takes a sip from a bottle of water he tries to drink at least 1/4 of the bottle. That's a lot of bottles of water, but we have a well and the water is pretty good. Do you need 8 8oz glasses per day? Who cares about specific quantities. Drink so you don't feel thirsty. I can tell you at the end of a well hydrated day I am a lot more relaxed when I get home. Alternately, when I get home and snap at my wife, she instantly knows I haven't had enough to drink that day. Know thyself, because your spouse surely does.

Keep a nice selection of teas at hand also. I especially like green tea, but flavored teas can be a nice breath of fresh air too. If you can find tea in a silk bag you know it's going to be good.

5. Exercise. For a while I was going to the gym before work. It took discipline to wake up early, make lunch, make a protein shake for after the workout, grab clothes and a clean towel and get out of the house by 6:30am. I did it for a couple of months last year. This year I think I'll do my workouts at home to save some coin, but still need to get disciplined. A good workout before work, for me anyway, does wonders for my energy and concentration. Last Summer I kept my bike in the car but did not use it enough. Lots of resolutions this year. I'm not getting any younger!

In hotels where I am staying for more than one night, I try to take a swimsuit and a t-shirt. Last October in San Fran I actually went for a swim after a long travel day - it really helps. In airports, you can pay for a bad airport massage, but the best thing to do is just walk around. After sitting in steerage for hours, why sit down in the boarding area if you have some time to kill. Walking around a big terminal like DFW or BWI with a camera bag over your shoulder is a pretty good workout. Again, stay hydrated. Don't rely upon the free cup of ice they give you on a plane. Buy the biggest bottle of water you can find, once through security of course, and drink it. And get the free cup of ice.

6. Stay healthy. This is always a challenge. Stress makes you more likely to get sick. Airplanes, hotels and gyms are full of germs. Despite your best intentions, you will eventually get sick. As I write this I am recovering from a nasty virus, no doubt picked up somewhere between FLL and BDL.

Not much to do except let it run its course and eat lots of chicken soup. Here's my recipe:

1 Pre-cooked rotisserie chicken (I like Costco) - you're sick, this is much easier than cooking a chicken.
Let the bird cool in the fridge a bit, then tear off all the meat.
Take the bones (not the body, just the wings, legs, thighs) and sear them in an empty pot.
After a few minutes, scrape the bottom of the pan and add enough water to cover the bones. Let this simmer for an hour. Skim off any flotsam that comes to the surface.

Meanwhile, in a larger soup pot, add finely diced celery, onion and carrots. I use a lot of all three. Over medium heat, sautee with some butter or butter substitute and some olive oil. Cover and let it go until soft. Then I add some sliced mushrooms and all the chicken meat, give it a good stir, then add a little water, and stir it again.

By now the broth should be ready. Place a fine strainer over the large pot of veg and meat, and pour the broth through the strainer so you just get the broth. You can either pull any remaining meat off the bones or throw them away - they have done their job.

Now you can add some salt and pepper, parsley and thyme if you like, and simmer for half an hour. Then dig in.

My wife likes dumplings - they are dead easy.
1 cup flour sifted. 2tsp double acting baking powder. Enough dry parsley so when you mix it all together you can see the parsley.
Make a well in the bowl of dry ingredients, crack an egg and beat it gently with a fork. Now fold in the dry stuff and then add just enough milk so the mixture is combined but as dry as you can keep it. You're not making bread here.
Get your soup up to a simmer then with wet fingers, drop dollops of dumpling mix into the soup. About the size of the OK sign you make with your fingers. Once all the dumplings are in, cover the pot and simmer for 11 minutes and 11 seconds. It's the steam the cooks them, not the boiling liquid (it should not be boiling anyway).
When the time is up, dinner is ready. Enjoy, and shake that cold.

Thanks for reading. I'm gonna get me a bowl of that soup.

Mike Cohen

Who would have believed back in say 1995, that one day we could have a pocket-sized device that makes phone calls, accesses the internet, plays videos, gets e-mail from many accounts, takes pictures and organizes your life? What is this, Star Trek?

Why yes, this is Star Trek. Nearly.

This week I upgraded from my very handy $50 flip phone to a Blackberry Curve. Why? Because the past 10 days of travel convinced me there is a better way to stay in touch with people besides hoping you have wifi in an airport or a hotel room.

Oddly, the more expensive the hotel room, the more expensive and less reliable is the in-room internet service. The cheaper the hotel, the better the chances of free wi-fi. Makes no sense. Now when I am stuck in a non-cheap hotel, I can refrain from adding $12.95/day or more to my bill. In case you are wondering, medical conventions tend to be in nice hotels and it pays to be in the same hotel as all the action. Pushing a cart full of gear down a cobblestone hotel driveway at 6am in 100% humidity just to save a hundred bucks is not worth it.

Another inconsistency in travel is wifi in airports. My home airport of Bradley Field has free wifi. Same with Tampa, which was very useful during my 4 hour layover last week. Other places it ain't so. I recently received an e-mail survey from Southwest asking about paid internet service on flights. It seems they may offer in-flight wifi for $9.95. Might be useful on a cross-country jaunt, but most SWA flights are short hops. That may go over like the $2 can of soda already abandoned by other airlines.

My internet habit is pretty limited at present: Creative Cow, Digg (less so by the day), News, FB and of course e-mail. The Blackberry lets me do all of this without booting up a computer. Aside from sore thumbs, this will save time, save costs and save electricity. And if there is any truth to the effects of a warm laptop on one's lap, this may save the family jewels!

Well, I still need the laptop to write these blog posts, but the forums are easily accessible.

As discussed in an earlier post, I have linked up with all my old mates on the face book. One cannot turn on a tv news program or entertainment show without hearing about Twitter. It took me a while to wrap my brain around how Twitter is used and if it has any use to me. Turns out it is just another way to get connected to the world. If this blog and my other activities here on the COW are any indication, that can be a good thing. The more people who follow me are potential customers and/or colleagues. Just this morning I received a tweet from a fellow medical video guy in Norway. He keeps a blog about a lot of the same stuff that I do, and he read and posted a link to the article I wrote here on the COW. http://sterileeye.com/

This week I had to take a couple of days to recover from a nasty cold - probably from all that air travel. Between the Blackberry, web-mail and Thunderbird I was receiving e-mail in three places at once - a bit much mind you, but a good indication that not only am I connected - I might have over done it! But seriously, having a phone that also interacts with e-mail is brilliant indeed. Beam me up Scotty!

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

I have blogged before about the fun and not so fun parts of travel for business. Over the past few weeks I have combined business travel with some mini-vacations.

Standup comics like to make fun of the airplane safety lectures and airplane food (airplane food, what is this 1973?). I won't try to match the clever punchlines of Ray Romano or Jerry Seinfeld, but last week in Ft Lauderdale I had my own Seinfeld moment. My wife and I were visiting Miami for a conference at the historic Fontainebleau resort, to be followed by a few days with my parents in Del Boca Vista. We got our luggage at the airport (2 rolling suitcases, Lowel lighting kit, blue Porta-Brace gear bag, tripod tube and the trusty Rock-n-Roller hand truck, not to mention carry on bag containing two Sony cameras, digital still cameras and laptop. Went to the rental counter. I made a reservation weeks in advance to rent the car at the airport and return it in Miami. Sounds simple enough.

Apparently a reservation need not mean "reserved car." There were no cars available, and no idea given as to when there might be cars available. "It's Spring Break, sir, and people do not return cars on time." Mmm, hmm.

After about 35 minutes of waiting, along with about 20 other disgruntled renters, I approached a local non-national-chain counter. Royal Rent-a-car had cars available. Lots of them. Weird. I took one, a Dodge Charger, and we were off.

Later in the week I thought about writing an e-mail to the rental company, but many times, these customer service e-mails are dead letters. The company's website had no phone numbers listed aside from the reservation line, and no mailing address. I found it hard to believe that this international rental agency could not be contacted. Fear not, we now have a service, freely available, for finding the kind of information that does not want to be found – the internet! Too bad Tommy Lee Jones didn't have access to the internet back in 1993 – he would have found Harrison Ford in a heartbeat!

A quick search on my favorite search engine revealed the phone number for the executive offices of the elusive rental company. I called, left a message, and within 24 hours received a call. I explained my situation, and rather than a heartless apology, I received a $75 credit towards a future rental and a number to call before I rent a car with them in the future, to ensure there are cars available. This is great customer service. Or perhaps the executive office understands that customers need to be treated with respect. You never know when one of your customers might blog about a bad experience on the so-called internet!

The conference went great and my wife and I had some time to get to know each other again. We then proceeded to Del Boca Vista, slept not on an old sofa bed but on a new pillow-top mattress, enjoyed some early bird specials and had some good conversations with my folks.
When reservations work well, life is good. When things go in another direction, you need to have a backup plan, and don't let bad experiences deter you from future travel. Indeed, inefficiencies seem to be part and parcel with air travel. Things are getting better, as you will read in a future post entitled "Welcome to St. Louis Spaceport. Please maintain control of your gravity boots."

Stay tuned.

Mike Cohen

Sorry, I could not come up with a clever title. It is what it is – a blog about social networking. There was a thread on the Business and Marketing Forum a while ago about using Social Networking for business - I think the jury is still out, but check out the thread.

The original social network – people in a room talking to each other – has been replaced with web-based "talking."

I recently had a chat with an old high school friend on the current popular soc-net site, we'll call it MugPamphlet(they know who they are and get plenty of press), and mentioned that I enjoyed talking to her. She replied that she never considered e-mail or chat a form of talking. LOL.

MugPamphlet had replaced MyArea (sic) as the king of social networking, that is, a web-based means of communicating with everyone you know in a more efficient manner. No doubt in a year or so a new soc-net site will emerge and the whole world will switch to that.

The cool aspect of the soc-net flavor of the month is finding old friends, not so much keeping in touch with current friends. Granted, in the world of social networking I am considered a geezer (over 30) so I have more old friends than current friends. However all of my electronic friends are people who I knew in person before "knowing them" electronically. This clearinghouse of electronic friends is more a convenience than anything meaningful. I would never sit down and send a "status update" via e-mail to everyone I "know." It is just nothing useful. Imagine if I sent a daily e-mail to everyone on my address book telling them what I am up to? Boring!

"What's that, there is such a service to send brief messages to everyone you know? Really? Who would want to use that? The President you say? Hmm, I'll look into that."

Rather, sites like MugPamphlet and its inevitable replacement, are ways to conveniently keep in touch with people you know, or in many cases, people you used to know. In my case it has not been a way to make new friends. Certainly you can see who your friends are friends with, but unlike in a room full of people eating weenies in blankets, I am reluctant to strike up a conversation with a friend of a friend without an introduction. People do it however. There is one guy on MugPamphlet who is friends with everyone working in production in New England. I've never met him but my buddy the boxing commentator says he's ok!

Posting photos for all to see is fun, and playing games is another way to pass the time. Oddly, I now e-mail immediate family on the currently popular site, rather than using traditional e-mail. In a way, this site is morphing into AOL – an all-in-one internet within the internet. Do not discount the usefulness of services like AOL – I met my wife on there! Useful indeed!!

Now let's switch to social networking that actually accomplishes something useful. I will coin a phrase: Useful Networking.

My favorite Useful Networking, or "UseNet" website, is of course this very site you are now reading, CreativeCOW.net. While the atmosphere is indeed social, and usually cordial ;) the interactions here on the COW are most often Useful.

Ring, Ring. Excuse me.

"Hello? Yes this is he. Mmm, hmm. Really? You don't say. Oh, I see. Ok, thanks for letting me know. Bu, bye."

Sorry for that interruption. I have just been informed that UseNet is an existing term, stemming from the original pre-world-wide-web function of the internet.

I shall have to revert to the more long-winded Useful Networking phrase. Is this what you kids call a MEME?

So while blogging and forum posting and article writing and tutorial reading on the COW is in fact some of the most useful time I spend online, it is remarkably social. While I have never known any of the other forum hosts, posters or bloggers "in real life," I consider these men and women my good friends. In many cases I have much more in common with my fellow COWs than with my old chums from high school and college. On social networking sites, once you get over the honeymoon phase of "Wow, Joe Smith, what rock have you been hiding under for the past 20 years" you are left with reading Joe's status updates such as "Ate hot dogs. They were great" or "Timmy used the big boy potty. Hooray!" Important, but not very useful.

On the other hand, while my COW friends I have only known for a short while, in most cases, everything they say is of utmost interest to me and to others.

In summary, Social Networking is not a new concept. Cave paintings and shamans telling stories around a campfire were certainly social gatherings, and once other tribes became involved, there was some rudimentary networking. I know I have just paraphrased the opening montage from Amazing Stories, but you get my point. Humans will always network with other humans, individuals and groups alike. Whether this happens in a room full of people or a website or some future thought-powered neural net, social networking will continue. And one day, decades from now, a bunch of like minded people will gather in a room eating weenies and wonder why nobody thought of networking in person before.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

As a kid, I had two dream possessions: Batman's utility belt and a Stormtrooper utility belt. Basically the same thing - a belt with useful gadgets. Turns out the Stormtrooper belt was an extension of the Jedi utility belt, but let's not get too geeky.

Fast forward to the present. I recently spent a week on travel, with essentially 5 different video shoots. When I pack my gear for travel, I try to keep as lightweight as possible, but I also try to take everything I could possibly need. In a word: gadgets.

On this trip, a blue Porta-Brace bag was my gadget bag. I packed it tight with gadgets large and small, including some I have not yet had a chance to use.

XLR cables. You can never have too many audio cables - either to use individually or to link together for longer runs. On this trip, I spent 3 days in an auditorium take a feed from the house sound mixer, so longer runs were not needed. However I also did an impromptu 2-camera shoot with 4 live mics.

Field audio mixer. I picked up a low-cost Azden mixer a while ago, knowing I would need it eventually. For the aforementioned panel discussion, I thought about taking a AC powered Boehringer mixer, but no matter what I did with it, I was getting a noisy signal into the PD-170. I posted on the Audio Professionals forum here on the COW, and got some great feedback, but I could not solve the problem. The original plan was to have a moderator and 4 panelists. Thus I needed my 4-input mixer going into 1 XLR channel on the camera, with a 5th mic going into the 2nd XLR on the camera. With the Boehringer problems, I was relegated to the Azden 3-input mixer, leaving me with 1 more mic than XLR inputs.

We will call this the Hot Dog Bun Problem.

It is well-known that hot dogs and hot dog buns come in different sized packages. 8 hot dogs vs 6 hot dog buns. Thus you always have too many or too few of one required food component. Same goes for the mics.

My solution was sitting right in front of me. My 2nd camera for the panel discussion shoot was a VX-2000 - our much-loved original 3-CCD DV camera. The VX has 1 mini audio input, which takes either Line or Mic level. However XLR mics can be plugged into the VX via an adapter, but with inconsistent results.

We have a Sennheiser wireless mic kit, which has both an XLR and a mini output. Mini plug into the VX - crystal clear signal. Problem solved. When the actual shoot date arrived, one of the participants was not available, so I was down to 4 participants - all mics went into the PD-170 without incident. Sometimes serendipity prevails.

Speaking of the wireless mics, the kit also came with an XLR transmitter, which can be attached to any input - a hand mic, such as for news stand-up reporting, an XLR or in this case, an audio mixer. For the last day of the conference, I wanted to move the tripod elsewhere in the auditorium to avoid the inevitable heads in the way. However all of the XLR cables were engaged in the panel discussion setup (I setup at 7am for the 12pm shoot). Also, I had the levels and setup with the PD-170 all perfect, so I took the VX to document the conference.

I grabbed the trusty, yet never actually used before, XLR wireless transmitter, plugged it into the output of the house mixer, and voila - the most crystal clear audio feed into the VX I have ever heard.

Another problem solved by taking my bag of gadgets with me. You never know what you might need and when you might need it. But if you know what you might need at some point in time, and you have those things available, when you do need them, you can calmly reach into your bag of tricks and make the magic happen.

Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen

Cue announcer.

This week we are holding a medical conference - live from the Miami Beach. We started planning this meeting 18 months ago.

Many doctors, both presenting and attending, giving lectures, doing panel discussions and showing videos.

What's all this have to do with Video Production? Let me count the ways.

5:30am

Woke up. Felt pretty tired. Too much Sake maybe? The ocean view room (iMac in every room!) helps get me motivated.

6:30am

Arrive in Fontaine Ballroom. This ballroom previously hosted Elvis, Sinatra and the rest of the Rat pack. It is a natural conclusion that a surgical meeting would follow in those foot steps! We have a video conferencing vendor, Stratosphere, managing our live surgery feeds, and the in-house AV crew running sound and projection.

8:00am

We prepared in advance a 3 minute roll-in, featuring an aerial shot of Miami Beach, courtesy of iStockVideo.com - followed by a brief intro to our three day program, and thanks to our sponsors, all narrated by Dave Calabrese, our local narrator in Oxford, CT. After the video, the moderator takes the stage, welcomes everyone and off we go.

We also prepared intro slides for each surgeon - basically static text and a headshot over a digital juice jumpback. We play that as the moderator introduces the surgeon. Then we switch to the live feed and everything works great...sometimes.

First case from Chile is ready to go live. The operating rooms send video and audio over ISDN to New York, then the feeds come over the internet to Miami. We send video of the moderator at the podium and our local mix-minus audio back to the OR. "Hello, Chile, come in? Can you hear us? Mork calling Orson, come in Orson?"

No audio. Go to the tape backup. We have an unedited mini DV tape from the same surgeon, whose colleague is here in the audience with a wireless mic to narrate. He does this for about 10 minutes while we troubleshoot. Turns out the catering department unplugged some cables last night when they were dressing the table. Obviously! Ok, we have audio and go live to Chile. This is a regular sleeve case - staple and remove the 2/3 of the stomach and get out. Took about 45 minutes. All the while we had live commentary from the local moderator, the surgeon in Chile and questions from audience members.

At the conclusion of the case, we punch up the intro video for the next surgeon, then switch to a live shot of the operating room floor! Nice.

9:00am

The next surgeon in Chicago is ready, we switch to his feed, and off we go again.
This image is much better - not sure if this is due to the shorter distance compared to Chile or just luck. IMHO the very fact that we can have two-way video and audio in real time over the internet is pretty amazing. Reminds me of the scene in 2001 where Dr Floyd talks to his daughter over video phone from the Pan Am Spaceport before he heads to the moon to check out the monolith.

10:00am

Coffee break. One of the most important parts of a conference, especially one involving lots of standing up and early mornings is the coffee break. The Fontainebleau has a standard layout for coffee, tea, cream, milk, sugar, cute little jars of honey, lemon wedges and to-go cups. Meanwhile we punched up the next feed from right here in Miami. We went live to Miami as the crowd (300+ people) trickled back into the ballroom...in Miami.

10:28am

Right now, we have a split screen between Miami and Chicago, so we can flip flop back and forth. The switch happens in NY - we have an open phone line going so we can relay the moderator's spoken cues back to control in NY.

While all this is going on, i am trying to get two WebEx meetings scheduled for tomorrow, which we plan to show live before our audience. One presenter is in Mumbai, the other in Leeds, UK. The time differences give us two options - do testing during a limited time window, or stay up late and get up early. My colleague Jake is back at the plant in CT doing these tests and keeping in phone contact with the two presenters. He and I were text messaging at midnight last night trying to coordinate times for testing today. Regular working hours are 24/7. Hey, that could be a cool tv show. Events happening in real time over the course of 1 day.

10:32am

Ok, I just learned that the tv show idea has been done already. Never mind!

10:43am

Never discount the usefulness of having an internet connection. I have Firefox, WebEx, Skype, Powerpoint all running something important.

And the most important app of all:


This is like the Land-o-Lakes Butter box. Me blogging about me blogging showing a picture of me blogging. There is about a 2 minute delay between the photo and the time it was taken. Life does not get too much more exciting than this!

sorry - computer network interruption - I guess this is correctly termed "cow-itus interruptus."

10:56am

While we are switching in NY between operating rooms, we are switching on-site between the video feed, a DV deck (my beloved VX-2000 actually), a Powerpoint Safety slide and occasionally a black screen!

But there is more switching going on at each hospital OR. Right now we are watching surgery from Miami. We sometimes see the overhead view, sometimes a camera pointed at the surgeon, sometimes the laparoscope (inside the abdomen - the patient's abdomen, not the surgeon's) and if you want to get closer we can also see inside the patient's stomach (what's left of it)).



(PIP view coming down from the hospital - inset is a scope down the gullet, the main image is inside the abdomen)

This is where the value of in-house media services people in hospitals is most important. Each OR has its own video capture and transmission system - no two are exactly alike. Thus, you usually have very few people in the hospital who know how it all works. The in-house resources, mentioned in my article, Surgical Video: The Cutting Edge, are especially important on days like today. Thanks for your good work!

11:33am

Things have been running smoothly. Time for bathroom and coffee breaks - one leads to the other.

We are just about done with the current case - not sure if this is Miami or Chicago - actually, while I was out of the room we switched to another location in Florida.

Another task I have is to collect powerpoints from about 40 people for Friday's events. We have 3 concurrent sessions with lectures and panel discussions. My 4 gig flash drive mysteriously went missing, so I am using the 1 gig micro-SD card from my cell phone. I have won the award for world's smallest flash drive. I guess that's a good thing!

1:21 pm

Had to pause the blogging. We had some down time between cases, so we showed some unedited surgery off DVD - call it a tape delayed live surgery. Things were going great until the movie Heidi randomly started playing.

Anyone get that?

Seriously, I am handed DVD discs of surgery, recorded in the OR using proprietary recording systems. As described in previous blog posts, these systems do a good job recording video, however you cannot play the DVD in a DVD player. That would be like not being able to play a video tape in a video deck. "I have a VHS tape here, but you need to play it using a microwave oven." A DVD by any other name should smell so sweet. (that enough pop culture references for you Ron?)

You need to open a folder within a folder within a folder within a folder to get to the 4 gig MPG2 file. Luckily VLC player plays this with ease. The moderator narrates live, then asks me to fast forward to the next important point. Let's call this live editing.


Having never seen the video before, I need to randomly advance the video using the slider bar, estimating, based upon experience, where the next important part of the operation may be.

Video conferencing can go over ISDN or IP. Some of our hospitals today are using one or the other. The current case uses IP. The only problem with IP is you are using the internet. Internet traffic picks up around mid-day, presumably because millions of office workers around the country are logging onto the internet simultaneously to check out the latest wacky videos or to see if they won that used Wii controller on eBay. Thus, the current IP-based feed, even though it is coming to us via ISDN, is a bit choppy.

1:45pm

Yet another task is to document the meeting, not necessarily for post, but for documenting. We capture on mini-DV - mostly pointed just at the moderator. We also have a DVCAM tape of the live feed, so we could marry the two together at a later date - TBD. Primarily we will have the video transcribed and send the transcript to someone who will summarize the meeting and determine what the consensus actually is.

3:28pm

Business as usual has continued so nothing new to report for a while, not to mention lunch buffet. Just enjoyed a nice cup of tea to get me through the home stretch.


Just finished the 3rd to last case - transvaginal surgery - look it up.

Another good reason to attend a meeting like this is networking. I can interact face to face with people who I normally, and sometimes exclusively, talk to only via e-mail or the phone. Clients, customers and colleagues.

I should mention that I brought my wife along to this meeting. We got nice ocean view rooms so she gets a quick little vacation on the tail end of an awful New England winter. For the three people who may not know this, the Victoria's Secret fashion show was held here back in November. Have not seen any lingerie models yet(aside from my lovely wife of course ;) ), but there are still two days to go. Lots of eye candy in this hotel! I am of course talking about the furniture and interior design.

3:34

Now finishing the 2nd to last case. This one from San Francisco has the best image quality yet. They have a proper broadcast camera on a jib, plus the usual laparoscopic view. Nice.

One more case from New York and we are home free, for tonight. Probably will have another hour to get setup for tomorrow, sort out and clone the Powerpoints for tomorrow and maybe have a swim.

4:25pm
This last hour went quick. Did I pass out? No, the tea was not spiked. Not yet.
I think this will do it.

As always, thanks for reading. It has been fun.

Mike Cohen

This isn't the first blog on time management I have written and it won't be the last.
But I think it is important to talk about this topic, since so much of the conversations on the COW focus on craft, technical jargon and troubleshooting - all important in their own right.

I used to keep a book on Time Management on a shelf next to my exercise bike. Actually the book is still there, but the bike is buried under a lot of laundry. At least I always know where to find a sportcoat and slacks for a meeting! Those handlebars make a great clothes rack.

Really, the best way to learn time management skills is by trying to manage a lot of different tasks, projects and priorities. And making some mistakes - call them tactical errors in time management. Just when you think you are being efficient, you realize you are forgetting some important milestones.

Thus, organization is key. This sounds obvious, but depending upon how many balls, bowling pins or chainsaws you are juggling, the task of organization itself can in fact become a chore to keep organized and one that requires time management skills just to keep up with the organization.

On a really busy day, it can seem like you blink your eyes, and it's over. That can be ok, assuming you were busy working on important stuff. That is not ok if 8 hours passed between when you closed your eyes and when you opened them! So from a time management point of view, you need to make sure you are working on important stuff.

Isn't everything you do at work important? Possibly. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, we need to define what important is.

Is sorting out e-mails for 3 hours important? Sure, but is it important RIGHT NOW? Probably not. In other words, you may have 100 seemingly important tasks, but only 10 of them are important to do in the next 8 hours. Task number 53 may be a lot of fun, but will it help you check off item #7 on your immediate needs list? Didn't think so.

Delayed gratification is a phrase I use from time to time. Task 53 may be a lot of fun, but why do it right away? Save #53 for a time after you have completed #7 - a much more challenging and no doubt important task. Then reward your good work with #53.

I shall forever call this the 53-7 Principle. Move over Pareto, there's a new Meme in town!

Conquering the 53-7 Principle.

So let's look at your list of 100 tasks in order of actual versus perceived importance. For the sake of the servers, I'll pick the salient highlights:

1. Finish the annual sales figures
2. Plan the product launch stage show
...
5. Train the new guy to handle all DVD projects
...
10. Hire writers for the sales training seminar
...
15. Research options for new HD cameras - XDCAM vs P2
...
20. Give facility tour to local cub scout troop.
...
100. Really, you came up with 100 tasks?

Ok, I have made this pretty easy - the higher numbered tasks are fun - presumably 16-19 are right up there in entertainment value. It may be tempting to say to yourself, "Self, what a great job you have. You get to read web pages about HD cameras and call it work. Let's do that."

In reality, you can do that at home or on the weekend. Given a list of X number of tasks, in order of importance to the business, always focus on the first half. We'll call this the Point-5 Rule, that is, divide by two and discard the 2nd half. Obviously the second half may not be exactly half, you may have a bigger half and a smaller half (I know) and the discarded half will get done in time, but focus on the first half. Like Calculus, the closer you get to zero without actually getting to zero, the harder it is to get to zero. I think I used that actual explanation on my GRE. Hence I did not go to grad school! In other words the fewer important tasks that you have, the harder it is to divide them into halves. Everything may in fact be important.

If everything on your list is important - I mean vital to the survival of humanity - then thank you for your excellent work Mr. President. My regards to the First Lady.

Seriously, if everything on your list is important to be done in short order, then you still must exercise some combination of delegation and prioritization. Time management is as much about getting work done as it is about keeping yourself functioning. Multi-tasking is one sure way to defeat good time management.

As important as all of your overlapping tasks seem to be, you must do one thing at a time. It is as simple as that.

Thanks for reading.

Mike