Mike Cohen's Blog

No, that's not the name of a new company - but it sounds good actually.

I actually was thinking of the term "go fast boats" as used in the Miami Vice movie(it has been on HBO in a loop). Basically fast racing boats used for smuggling.

This week was a go fast production week.

Monday - Pack my gear, print Google maps of two hospitals and a client's offices in Massachusetts. Fuel up the Wagon Queen Family Truckster (Saturn ION) for a mere $30, and hit the road. I also hit the library to stock up on books for my wife and hit the supermarket to get her some provisions.

Lately my best friend has been a thermos bottle. I brew some coffee using a French Press, add a few spoonfulls of hot cocoa powder and little milk to the thermos bottle, then fill it up with the brew. This stays hot and comforting all day long. I pull over at every rest stop, or about every half hour, and have a small cup using the screw on lid from the bottle. By doing so, I guarantee that I need to stop at every rest stop for obvious reasons.

First stop Brockton Hospital to visit my dear Grandpa Izzy. After an hour or so of visiting, I hit the road for Burlington, MA. Checked into my hotel, a Candlewood Suites. I specifically chose this hotel because it offers a microwave, fridge, stove and even a dishwasher. Although only staying for two days, it is much more enjoyable to me to have breakfast in my room. The hotel has a little food pantry with non-hotel prices for cold cereal, milk, muffins, cookies, cans of soup, juices and the like.

Tuesday - Meet client at a local hospital at 7:30am, get changed into scrubs, get to the OR, setup my gear, plug my DV recorder into the video laparoscope, test the recording, then go to the cafeteria for some toast and mediocre coffee, then back to the OR for the case. Lately I have been shooting surgery with 2 cameras - one overhead, one on sticks.

After the case, I packed up my gear and went back to my hotel to check e-mail, make some phone calls and grab a sandwich. Then I headed back to Brockton to see Izzy for a few more hours and help move him to a nursing home for a (hopefully) temporary stay.

Next day was up to the client's offices for some tabletop product shots, lunch, and some more shooting and brainstorming.

Wed evening I drove back to CT, with a few stops for bad gas station coffee (I may need to start traveling with my French Press and a 12 volt water kettle for the car) and a stop at Trader Joe's for some raspberry jam and gluten free pasta. Got home, not really hungry, I watched this week's episode of New Amsterdam and part 3 of the fantastic John Adams miniseries. Check it out.

Thursday AM - Fire up the trusty laptop, plug in a USB hard drive with 300 gigs free, and capture all my raw footage from this week. While the tapes were loading, I did some more e-mails and did the dishes. Got to the office around 12:45pm and spent the rest of the day on correspondence for other projects, and started chopping up my video from this week. Oh, I also had a conference call at 7:30am!

Thursday evening at home, with the rough narration and script in hand, i cut the first edit of the promo, finishing around 11pm. I rendered an AVI out of Premiere, then used Squeeze to make a WMV file(scaled down slightly from native size - this project is 16:9 SD), uploaded that to our web server for the client to download and shut off the computer around 12:45am.

Friday AM - got to office around 10:30am - more correspondence and followup on other projects, reviewed some DVDs from a colleague, checked the progress on a 2500 DVD in-house duplication project (slow going) and then started preparing some digital stills and graphics for the next edit of the promo. Got home at 5:30pm, watched 2 episodes of Gene Simmon's Family Jewels then fired up the computer for hopefully the final edit of the promo. Final narration from the narrator arrived, new music requested, and some new graphics. Finished at midnight, plus the WMV render got me to bed around 1am.

Now it is Saturday at 9:50am, and I write this blog post while awaiting final edits, so I can make a DVD loop and get to FedEx by 4pm. It is about a 20 minute drive based upon prevailing traffic conditions and weather, so I need to burn the DVD no later than 2:30pm. Presumably i could take the laptop to go and finish burning as I drive, but that's pushing it.

Tonight, as mentioned in my previous post, is the 15 year reunion for my college tv station. Then the rest of this week I get to not drive anywhere besides the office. Joy!

Thanks for reading.

Mike

Once in a while, we get a post on the Business and Marketing forum here on the COW asking advice for education. For example, should I go to college, film school, Full Sail, or just buy some gear when I graduate high school and start working.

Each of these options has its merits and pitfalls, and everyone's experience is unique. And there have been successes and disappointments all around.

Here is a snippet of my experience.

In the Spring of my Sophomore year at the University of Hartford, a graduate student named Chuck called a meeting for interested students. He was proposing that for the first time, a weekly newscast be broadcast on campus. This was 1992. Prior to 1992, there was no cable tv on campus, but a system had just been installed and the campus tv studio received a modulator for campus channel 2.

We came up with the clever name STN - Student Television Network, producing the weekly Channel 2 News.

But this was April, so school would soon be out for the summer. My Summer internship in 1992, amazingly enough, was news intern for the Midday News at WCVB in Boston. Serendipity strikes again!

My daily responsibilties at CVB were to be the producer's assistant. When I arrived at 8:30am, the rundown for the noon show was complete. I was to gather the tapes for stories which would be reused from an earlier broadcast, either the morning news or the previous evening's news. I was to write a cue sheet and order Chyrons for each story, and get these documents to the director, audio engineer and CG operator.

My next task was to cut new VO and VO/SOT pieces, either based upon stock footage, older stories or occasionally unused raw footage from the previous day. The editor actually did the cutting, but I was to make the editing decisions. I was a bit slow to get the hang of it, but it was excellent training. And it is quite impressive that the producer of a newscast in such a big market gives an intern such responsibility.

Again, cue sheets, CG, put tape in VTR room.

With stories cut, around 11am the scripts for the anchors began printing. I don't know if they still use these, but they had a 5 ply dot matrix form feed script. Each ply was a different color, one for each anchor, the producer, director and audio guy. I also had to make 8 copies or so of the final rundown and get this to various people.

One weekend I was lucky enough to hang out with a senior reporter for the day, helping him cover an apartment fire and a speech by George Bush the First - I logged the speech as it came down from the satellite, then we interviewed a retired general, I found stock footage from the Gulf War #1 and helped him cut the story in the online bay. 

At the end of the Summer, I actually had a pretty decent idea of how to produce a newscast.

Good thing, because in September 1992, our group began rehearsals for our first live show in Spring 1993. At the same time, my second internship at WFSB sent me out in the field every week with a different reporter. I have blogged in more detail about this previously.

Today it the 15 year reunion for STN, so I have been thinking about the great experiences, and the lack of sleep. Here are a few memories:

A weekly newscast doesn't sound so difficult. After all, some colleges have a daily newscast, and of course broadcast stations, even in small markets, do this several times a day. Well we were just starting out, everyone had classes, jobs, internships and girlfriends (well, not everyone), and we only had one editing bay, so stories would be cut whenever time was available, often at 3am the night before the show. We had an old ratty sofa bed in the editing room, and this was used many times (for sleeping of course!).

As News Director, I took on some of the more serious stories. One such story was faculty layoffs. The night before our show, I had to get an interview for my story. Knowing that the University President Tonkin was teaching nearby, I staked out the auditorium with a camera crew and got in his face as he came out fo the room. "Oh, it's you," was his first response, but he gave me the sound bite I needed.

When the Student Government gave us our initial funding, $15,000 bought us 2 S-VHS camcorders, tripods, microphones, an SVHS player for editing stories to U-Matic tape, an IFB system and some tapes. We relied upon the generous tv studio director for all of our other gear.

Since I left upon graduation in 1994, the university has realized what an asset STN had become, and funding has never ceased. In 1995 they upgraded to better SVHS cameras, and a few years later DVCPRO cameras and decks replaced the lower end gear. They now do remotes on campus, broadcast sporting events and get press credentials for major events such as the Presidentialinaguration, political conventions and the World Series.

Equipment aside, which is always changing, what I really took away from this experience is the ability to think on my feet, work against a deadline, work as part of a team, be a leader and manager, learn new skills and have fun doing it. Indeed, the same skills needed for any job in this industry.

If you are a prospective college student, current one, parent or someone who chose not to go to college, you will have your own approach to learning and honing your craft. This was my experience, and it was a good one.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

Twice a year we face "Convention Season." I doubt this would make an interesting documentary, such as Bee Season, but it defines work schedules, deadlines and Yahoo Travel's bottom line.

Every October I attend the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, as an exhibitor, along with my boss and other colleagues. Our goal at this NAB of Surgery, if you will, is to exhibit our medical education products, to network with clients, future clients and to support the AV needs of still other clients.

Every 3 years this meeting is in either San Francisco, Chicago or New Orleans.

I have a favorite activity in each of these three cities:

San Francisco - discover new restaurants.

Chicago - Discover new restaurants

New Orleans - Discover new restaurants

In San Fran, I usually head to the North Beach section, which has some great Italian restaurants. However right around the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Union Square there are a few good restaurants as well.

In Chicago, I try to go to McCormick and Schmick's for seafood. Granted there are branches elsewhere. Nearly any place in town is good. The last time there we tried brazilian and Greek food. 

In New Orleans we usually head for the French Quarter, however even before Katrina as well as now, there are some seedy streets just off the main drag. One must be cautious. The last time there, we discovered a decent seafood place right near our Loew's hotel, and we also visited Emeril's restaurant, which was a fantastic meal. At this restaurant, regardless of how many people are in your party, they have enough servers come to your table so everyone is served at the same moment. Nice touch.

One year, 1998, the convention was in Orlando. The Orlando Convention Center, on I-Drive, is much like all convention centers - sprawling and isolated from civilization. This one is especially so - you have to take the chartered convention bus to get there. The hotels booked for the attendees were all on the Disney property. While the hotels are nice, they too are isolated. For example, if one is staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort, and one has a shoot at the Dolphin hotel convention center, and there are no cabs around, one has to take the Disney bus to MGM studios, then take a water taxi to the Boardwalk hotel, then walk to the Dolphin. I could be mistaken, but it was a hassle. i took a taxi back. 

This year is San Fran, so good times to come.

As of this writing we are approaching the Spring Conference season. First up is the SAGES (society of american gastrointestinal and endoscopic surgeons) in Philadelphia. I know there are some good eateries surrounding Rittenhous Square. The next week I'm off to Toronto for the Association of Program Directors in Surgery. I have only spent 2 nights in Toronto previously so this will be like the first time there.

All of these trips except Philly guarantee hours sitting in airports, airplanes and hotels. I have blogged about the enjoyment of all three experiences, and I try to ignore these aspects of travel. My sweet Dell Vostro laptop allows me to work or watch movies in any or all of these situations.

Philadelphia will be my first foray into train travel. I have taken the choo choo into New York a few times, but usually I drive to Philadelphia. During the week in question, I need to go on a Monday, have a day of meetings on Tuesday, come home, then return on Thursday until Saturday evening. I'll let you know how it goes.

The final mode of transport is of course the car. Much of my work is in New York, Boston and of course Connecticut. The best thing that ever happened as far as car travel is the iPod. Any MP3 player will do, and I have previously used the MiniDisc and a USB memory stick music player. but the iPod in my case makes a 2-4 hour solo car trip so much more enjoyable. Note to Apple's developers - please invent some sort of thought controlled iPod navigation - trying to use the thumb wheel while driving is actually more dangerous than using a phone. I know modern cars now have voice activated iPod navigation, but most people do not have new cars.

Well, I have to go burn 26 CDs to mail out Monday, so I can drive up to Burlington, MA for a few fun filled days of production.

Mike

PS - if you spend a lot of time listening to your music player, either in the car, plane, jogging track or at work, here are some of my favorite podcasts you may find interesting:

Hardcore History - the host, Dan Carlin, while slightly annoying to listen to for long periods of time, speaks with a passion about historical events.

Common Sense - also with Dan Carlin. In this show the gloves come off and he espouses his centrist political views. I can take about 10 minutes at a time.

Creative Screenwriting Magazine - the editor Jeff Goldsmith interviews the writers of the latest independent and mainstream films. Makes me want to dust off my half-written screenplay and get writing again.

Harvard Business Review podcasts - The title sounds synonymous with the Watching Paint Dry podcast, but there are some interesting topics, especially those featuring interviews with or lectures by entrepreneurs in the technology industries.

Physics for Future Presidents - basically an entire semester of lectures by UC Berkeley professor Richard A Muller - the professor puts complex concepts into terms even a President could understand (pick a President if you like). I have sampled many recorded lectures from Berkeley, MIT and Stanford. Many are poorly recorded and not edited for content, so you get lots of silence as the professor is trying to get his PowerPoint slides to work. but this one is fantastic.

Ok, now I'm done. Thanks for reading.

Mike 

In our last episode, we experimented with some HDV footage, converted into various formats including WMV HD, P2 and H.264, all with favorable results. The main point of this exercise, in advance of proposing any HD or HDV projects, was to educate myself about the various flavors of HD and HDV, within the confines and limitations of my current setup and gear.

The next day I received a sample WMV HD file from my client. I assume the file was made by a previous production group, however given the range of oddly conceived medical video devices, it could have been the original format, but this is not likely.

I actually found I could import the WMV HD file into Sorenson Squeeze and output just about anything else. The goal in this exercise was standard def FLV. This worked fine and various bit rates produced expected results.

The next test will be to play H.264/MPEG-4 via the latest Flash Player.

Interesting, aside from the Adobe site, Hulu and a few obscure personal blog type sites, there is not a lot of Flash HD content on the internets, leading me to believe worldwide adoption will be slower than the usual Flash update. Bandwidth and computer power among the masses could be the impetus for a slow vs fast rollout and adoption of HD Flash.

But HD Flash is an exciting development, especially since the reigning champ of online HD, Quicktime, is still not in wide use, at least among my clients. This is a shame, but that's life. We actually had one customer tell us they could not download the podcasts which are part of the online service they subscribe to, because their hospital's IT department does not allow the use of Quicktime.

Incidentally, check out Hulu.com - you can watch old tv shows, some new tv shows, clips of late night shows and selected movies (mostly starring Patrick Swayze and the Rock) for free. I can now get my nightly fix of all time favorite show EMERGENCY!

Mike 

My first use of HDV was last year. I shot a friend's wedding with a rented V1U in SD, but then shot some HDV footage to see what it looks like.

On my 19" home CRT computer monitor, it was not too impressive and the YouTube version did little for me except attract YouTube hits:

 http://youtube.com/watch?v=HB_C7PVR0oo

 Next came Oct 2007 when I was asked to rent a HD projector to show some XDCAM recorded surgery in an auditorium. This was surprisingly easy and the results seemed to have more to do with the camera used than anything else.

This week I was asked if I could convert WMV HD files to web video, presumably Flash.

Aside from Microsoft, I have not seen anyone else use WMV HD. COme to think of it, I once purchased the special edition of Terminator 2, which included a WMV HD disc. However due to some odd DRM efforts by Microsoft, I have never gotten it to play, and you cannot view the video outside of the outdated Microsoft player app.

I have read of some COW members giving clients WMV HD files in lieu of a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc.

Using a minute of test footage shot with our V1U, I captured it into Premiere CS3 using the HDV 1080i60 project setting. This, of course, saves an MPG file.

Playback at 100% just about fills one of my 2 22" LCD computer monitors, and playback is almost smooth off a USB connected SATA drive. I do have a SATA card in this computer, so I will test playback with the drive actually connected via SATA.

Ok, so with my HDV footage (1440x1080 for those keeping score at home) I exported a segment as a DV-AVI file, which comes out letterboxed in a standard 4:3 AVI file.

Next I exported the same HDV segment to WMV HD. The preset WMV HD settings in CS3 are 1080 24, 1080 25 and 1080 something else, another version of 24, perhaps 1080p.

Not sure how this would affect the original 1080i60 material, I changed the WMV setting to 1080i30.

So now I have a WMV HD file to play with. I imported that into Premiere and exported it from the HDV 1080 project as DV-AVI, letterboxed. The end result is very aliased and unusable, even as web video.

So I made a new project, SD-AVI settings, imported the WMV HD file, resized the clip to be letterboxed within the SD frame, and exported this as DV-AVI. The results are like night and day - very smooth playback with no jaggies.

It seems there are so many variables with this workflow, some trial and error is to be expected, as there was back in 1999 when we were doing lots of Sorenson 3 encoding!

As a final experiment, I opened my HDV project, and exported my segment of original HDV to P2 DVCPRO 1080i (1220x1080?), and imported this MXF file into Premiere. Playback of the MXF file is actually smoother than the HDV original within the HDV project. Likewise, in a P2 1080 project, the P2 MXF made from the HDV plays better than the HDV file in the P2 project.

Converting HDV to P2 DVCPRO HD appears to be similar to capturing HDV directly to ProRes or AIC as is possible on the Mac. On the PC however one can only capture HDV to HDV without a card. Perhaps a better analogy is converting HDV to Cineform.

All this being said, I have an Intensity card which I have not installed yet. This card will capture HDV straight to one of several Blackmagic codecs. Presumably one would then export an edit back to HDV to go back to HDV tape, or export to SD-DV to go to SD DV tape, or likewise export to DVCPRO if one needed to make a broadcast master.

The Intensity will play out in real time via Component and HDMI. My HDV deck has component inputs, but I do not know if this accepts HD component and converts on the fly back to HDV during recording, or if these component inputs are SD. The manual is nonspecific. Likewise, the HDMI port on the deck appears to be output only.

So many mysteries awaiting answers in the forthcoming post: Fun with HD: Part II. Date and time to be determined. 

This blog post will focus on what we can learn by watching different genres of television.

Specifically, what do I learn from watching television? And what can I apply to my career?

Network Drama Series

A series I have watched every season is 24. If you can get over the absurdity of one guy doing all of these extraordinary things in one day (such as driving anywhere in LA in less than an hour), one can learn some useful techniques.

For example, most scenes have a master shot, generally a wide shot, as well as a B camera on shaky-cam closeups. You occasionally see another shot of the same scene but from farther away, to suggest someone else's perspective, or usually to suggest that there is something shady going on.

I have several shoots per year where we are in an OR or a trauma room. We give the "actors" a scenario and suggested dialogue, then we roll 2 or 3 cameras, sometimes hand-held, sometimes locked down, sometimes on sticks but following on a medium shot, sometimes up high on a wide shot. Then we make some suggestions and shoot it again, sometimes the whole sequence, sometimes just the parts we need. Sometimes just with one hand held camera. Then of course the insert shots as needed, usually an on the fly decision.

Cooking Shows

Aside from my girlfriend threatening to move back home if I forced her to eat burned chicken ever again, Jamie Oliver is the reason I got interested in cooking. Luckily I learned how to cook and my girlfriend became my wife!

Jamie Oliver's original Naked Chef shows were shot in his home kitchen with 2 handheld cameras - one on a wideshot, on on closeups. You sometimes could hear the producer asking him questions, giving the show a very unrehearsed feeling, and you really felt like this was a regular guy cooking in his kitchen. We also got to see him visiting his local produce, butcher and fish sellers and pick out the ingredients. As the seasons progressed, Jamie's home kitchen seemed to evolve. One such kitchen was difficult to discern whether this was his actual apartment or some fake kitchen. Regardless, his shows continued to be enthralling, with a very casual production style.

His recent show, Jamie at Home, is more of the same, but with some unique additions. For one, Jamie now has a country house with an amazing garden. Each episode is dedicated to one ingredient - and he cooks something in the backyard, something in the kitchen and something out in the woodshed on a wood stove. Very rustic. This show is shot with a wide shot, a closeup, and an extreme closeup camera which does sweet subtle little dolly shots of an ECU of whatever he is doing - chopping veg, plating his food or dressing a salad. I wonder if this all happens in real time, or if they pause the action to get these ECU shots.

On the other end of the spectrum is Everyday Italian. I am not so sure what dishes are being prepared, that is, the presenter is eye candy enough. This show is shot in a real house, which the producers take over for the entire season, using the garage as a prep area. The show is shot film style - One camera on a wide shot, all the way through. Then they do everything again to get closeups of the presenter and closeups of the food prep and cooking and plating. Shows like this have been called "food porn" because of the extreme closeups of moist luscious food, the sensual description and handling, the obvious shots of Giada licking her lips, looking at the camera in a flirtatious manner and the use of extreme closeup sound - you hear every nuance of the food being cut, chopped, squished and beaten.

I'm feeling a little excited, aren't you?

So how can I learn from these shows? Surgical education uses aspect of the wide shot, closeup and extreme closeup, highly descriptive audio and retakes. Well, most of the time surgery does not give the opportunity for retakes, although it has happened.

Nursing education and other hands-on training, however, is often done with mockups and simulation, so wide shot, medium, closeup of the same actions is the norm. Granted this is the norm for most production, but the application and technique differ based upon the subject matter.

My job entails the following types of trips. I will describe each one in brief and include some memorable experiences.

Overnight Trips

These are generally trips somewhere to shoot one or more surgical procedures. I leave Hartford or LGA mid-morning, or at the crack of dawn if it is a cross country flight. We used to travel later in the day, possibly doing some work on the ground before leaving. However,lately the airlines seem to have improved their baggage losing capabilities, probably due to some new bar code software, so I like to allow extra time should a bag become lost.

Feet on the ground, rent a car, find hotel (thankfully Google Maps have made it much easier to not get lost. Back in the Mapquest or Yahoo Maps days, I found myself getting off the highway for .2 miles then back on the highway, then a slight left onto the same highway, then exit onto Main St for .2 miles, left on Spitbrook, right on Daniel Webster (someone in the Boston area will get that one). Now I just print out several Google map views especially in downtown areas with lots of one-way streets (Seattle, for example).

The rental car maps are usually useless, and way too small to read while driving.

Find the hotel, check in, immediately plug in camera batteries, laptop, iPod, cell phone. Most hotel rooms do not have enough plugs. Short of carrying a powerstrip, I sometimes unplug the TV, a lamp or plug something in in the bathroom.

If I am lucky enough to be in a major city, finding a decent restaurant for dinner is not a problem. If in a secondary city, the mall is sometimes the best bet. Olive Garden is better than nothing...and those breadsticks!

Inevitably I cannot sleep in hotel rooms. I avoid hotels advertising Sleep Number beds - I find those the most uncomfortable beds ever. A trend lately has been pillow top beds, lots of different pillows and high threadcount sheets.

On a recent trip, the hotel was doing construction, and the hotel smelled a bit odd. I complained, but the clerk did not offer any consolation. One night my room really stank. I do not like the smell of aerosol air freshener, so I made a pot of coffee using the free in-room apparatus and coffe grounds. I let this simmer for an hour then shut it off. The smell of freshly brewed coffee was a big improvement.

The next morning is usually up at 4:30 or 5am, get to the hospital by 6 or 6:30, then wait until the first case starts. Assuming the city is east of the Mississippi, I schedule a flight home around 8pm, and land in Hartford around midnight. Feet on ground, get bags, shuttle to valet parking, 45 minute drive home, sleep.

LGA at midnight is not so fun, so first coffee, then 2 hour drive home.

Multi-day Trip

Multiple days on a shoot is usually something besides surgery, such as interviews, documenting a meeting or on-site editing. All of the same principles apply, however it is less rushed, and there is more time to discover multiple restaurants.

Convention

Conventions mean we have a booth at a trade show, such as the American College of Surgeons convention, held in San Francisco, New Orleans or Chicago, repeating each city every three years. Convenient, as I know the dates I will next be in each city years in advance.

The travel day usually gets us there on booth setup day. We take a taxi straight to the convention center and proceed to our empty booth. 50% of the time, the freight shipper is either late or held up in the off-site labor yard, or some such thing. If this is the case, and we do not have our crates, we can grab lunch or see if the hotel rooms are ready.

Assuming the crates have arrived, and there is carpeting and electric service installed, we setup the booth. This takes about an hour to setup the folding displays and signs, and another hour to set out our products, catalogs, brochures and setup our video kiosks.

 Once the booth is ready we can check into hotel. However at some meetings I also provide AV support to various clients, deliver DVD loops to other booths, or attend educational committee meetings to discuss ongoing projects and new work.

Conventions usually have one or more hotels associated with special room rates. These tend to be nice hotels, such as the Paris in Vegas, the Sir Francis Drake in San Fran and the Hyatt in Chicago. At the Paris, for whatever reason, I got a free upgrade to a nice room.

On this same trip, I also stayed at the Flamingo for a few nights, as the Paris was sold-out. Here, for whatever reason, the only room they had for me was a suite. It was a shame I had to switch to the Paris, although the rest of the Flamingo was kind of dated. 

An advantage of arriving in Vegas a day early was the ability to attend NAB.

Pretty...model!

Cool lights too.

As described above, finding a good restaurant is a key component of preparing for the next day, which is spent standing in dress shoes wearing a tie. Luckily, convention cities are teeming with restaurants.

Obviously, many people who visit the COW visit Vegas for NAB frequently. If you want a unique dining experience, check out Sensi at the Bellagio. It is a bit hidden, but worth the walk. The kitchen is encased in glass and stuck in the middle of the restaurant. If eating by yourself, or with others, you can sit at the counter, and make googly-eyes at the sous chef throughout your meal, and possibly see your own food being prepared.

 In his book Heat, Bill Buford advises:

If Short Ribs are on the menu, get them. Short Ribs cook for hours ahead of time and are usually well worth it. 

Another memorable convention was the year New Orleans was secretly replaced with Orlando. The Orlando Convention center on International Drive is actually quite a long bus ride from the Caribbean Beach Resort on the Disney property.  Walking back to the hotel mid-day to pick up a package is out of the question, unlike in New Orleans or San Francisco. So that aspect was not so good.

However I did discover Ohana, a unique restaurant at the Polynesian Resort. Check it out, especially if you are there with your kids or significant other.

A final memory was a small meeting we held in Jackson Hole, WY. This was a continuing education course for vascular surgeons, consisting of 2 full days of lectures and panel discussion. My job was to videotape the proceedings and to provide AV support to the speakers.

Held at the Teton Mountain Lodge, this was quite a nice venue. My room, as it turned out was in the Best Western next door, luckily on the ground floor of this elevator-free hotel. The room was your basic hotel room. Luckily it included a free sample of an adhesive blister bandage, which I required after taking a hike in inappropriate shoes!

Dinner (here I go again) the first night  was at the hotel with the faculty, and was a buffet of various cuts of Elk and other four and two legged creatures. The next night we were guests of the course's chairman, who lived on a ranch nearby. If this is how the other half lives, sign me up! The final night we ate in downtown Jackson, and once again Elk was on the menu. Not quite as tasty as buffalo but still a treat.

In summary, travel can be a hassle, especially with airline procedures, long security lines and delayed flights, not to mention sleeping in imperfect beds. Once on the ground, a carefully planned shoot or meeting can proceed with success.

However there are also opportunities to make the most of your personal time while away. Exploring new cities, taking in local attractions if time permits and enjoying new and familiar cuisines can make the time away enjoyable. 

Thanks for reading.

Mike

PS - If you ever have the chance, check out the Omaha Zoo, the Des Moines Botanical Garden, Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa and the Little Rhine Steakhouse in San Antonio - the best steak ever! 

While I have never traveled as much as I did in 2000, my job continues to send me on a few different kinds of trips.

Recently I received a new laptop, with the hope that time spent locked in a metal tube 5 miles up could be a bit more productive than reading the latest Harry Potter book. Oh yeah, we are out of new Harry Potter books, which is a good thing because those things are heavy.

We selected the Dell Vostro. For the price it is a good value. Core 2 Duo, 2gigs ram, 160gig 7200rpm hard drive and thankfully, Windows XP Pro. Loaded up with Premiere 2.0, Photoshop CS3, Encore 1.5 and other useful software, this thing has paid for itself already.

Here are a few other useful programs I have installed.

Audacity - this is an open source sound editor. Very useful for recording temporary narration (scratch tracks).

Bulk Rename Utility - just google that to find it. A handy little app which does just what it says. I primarily use this when dealing with PowerPoint files. Inevitably we are sent long Powerpoint presentations to integrate into a video. Time permitting I redo the slides in Photoshop or Premiere, however sometimes with some tweaking the slides can be used straight out of Powerpoint. Powerpoint exports slides as slide1.bmp, slide2.bmp etc. So open the handy program, set it to change "slide" to "projectname" and in one keystroke it is all set. Then you can import the files into your project. 

Another useful application is for digital camera stills, which always seem to be named DSC10034.jpg. Same thing, change "DSC100" to "projectname_" and you suddenly are much more organized.

Video Inspector - this little program will open just about any video file and attempt to tell you what it is. For example, the extension .MPG can be any number of formats. If you just open a MPG file in Windows Media Player, it may play but you get no useful information about it. Video Inspector (there surely are other useful similar programs, probably 100's) tells you the dimensions, the bit rate, the audio format and the codec, if known.

Filezilla - If I am on the road, or just in my living room, I need access to various servers. While Firefox has a FTP plugin, I like using FileZilla. Self explanatory. It tends to time out on the display, even while a transfer continues.

Pidgin - If you must use IM, this is a much less obtrusive app than AIM, which tries to install un-needed stuff and makes noises from embedded ads.

The best feature of this computer is its long battery life. Two batteries gets me cross country, or very nearly.

Most important software is of course Premiere Pro. My first trip with this computer, back in early December '07, was in the midst of editing a job for a client, who was anxious to see the results of the shoot we did a few days earlier. On the flight down to Tampa I managed to get most of the first edit cut, with some further tweaking at the hotel, and then each day for the next few days. I render a medium res WMV file out of Premiere and post it to our password protected client website for easy download.

Given the generous internal hard drive, I was able to use Premiere's Project Manager to create a manageable version of a long-form project and shove it on the laptop also. On my Tampa to Phoenix flight (5.5 hrs) I worked on this video. Granted, my arms are normal length and American Airlines' seats are designed for tiny people, so doing anything besides simple cuts and static titles gets a bit carpal tunnelly. However the 10 minutes of edited content allowed me to make up some lost time on this project.

Finally, while it is sweet to be able to cut video on a plane, or in my hotel room, the laptop also allows me to take work home when necessary. Prior to the new machine, I would take a portable hard drive home and work on my home computer. However, when you move a Premiere Project from one machine to another, it has a hard time finding files.

So here I am, sitting on my sofa, finishing up a project. Much better than sitting in the office on a Saturday evening!

Yes, it's Saturday evening. We're having lamb chops. Stop by if you're in the neighborhood.

Thanks for reading.

Mike

If you're like me you have a million things to do. Oddly, none of those things happen to be writing blogs, but hey, I ticked off 7 items on my to do list today!

As outlined in previous posts, in addition to shooting and editing video projects I also am a project manager.

When I realized that 50% or more of my days were being spent project managing, I did some research on ways to improve efficiency.

For a while I listened to a project management podcast by Cornelius Finchner

http://www.thepmpodcast.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=35

He has some interesting ideas and conversations, however he also spends a lot of time on preparing for the PMI exam and certification, and a lot of things related to being a full time enterprise level project manager.

Having culled all I could from these podcasts, I turned to this great new thing which apparently existed even before the oh so revolutionary Internet: a library!

My local library in Woodbury, CT not only gets a lot of great new books on business subjects, it also has great organized stacks of useful resources. Having flipped through several of the old classic books from Tom Peters and some of the new classics from guys like Jack Welch, I stumbled upon one of the "who moved my cheese" style books, the On Time on Target Manager. This is what I call a 1 hour book, because you can read it in 1 hour or so, and it is written as more of a parable than an actual story.

The simple lesson from this book (skip this paragraph if you do not like spoilers) is the following:

Do things for the right reasons, in the right order, with the right people, and want to do what you do.

Ok you can start reading again if you skipped ahead.

Brilliant, yet simple. Oh sure, it sounds too simple, but when your To Do list resembles a take out restaurant menu, it can be overwhelming to keep your brain focused on the most important tasks.

Long before I read this little gem, I had been making to do lists. However these lists are often just a collection of unfinished, difficult to finish projects, rather than tasks.

Therein lies the difference - differentiate between a project and a task.

For example, here is a fictional Project To Do List:

1. Paint house

2. Clean garage

3. Organize tape library

4. Find the crystal skull

Obviously I will never check off any of these tasks in the short term, especially if this is a daily list. A list like this can be written on a marker board, well out of my line of sight.

A better to do list, let's say for the week, should be:

1. Assess condition of shutters - if they need to be sanded, take down and put in garage.

2. Sweep garage floor. Clean up recycling. Get rid of t-tops from old TransAm.

3. Setup excel file for tape library. Get buy-in from boss and co-workers.

4. Take weekend trip to Chile rainforest, contact local tribesmen, meet long lost son.

See what I mean? Divide and conquer with an overwhelming list makes it less overwhelming.

So lets say this 2nd list is my weekly to do list, then each morning I can make a smaller boiled down list. You may say, I can manage off the less focused list just fine. But in reality, I at least find that my brain can more easily deal with smaller manageable tasks. Plus I get a kick out of crossing out or checking off items with a magic marker. Maybe we really do learn everything we need to know in kindergarten!

Monday

1. Remove shutters from east side of house

2. Move clutter to one side of garage

3. Make a list of fields for the tape database

4. Check last minute airfares to Santiago International Airport. Find bullwhip and leather jacket. Make list of former girlfriends.

So how does this all relate to the price of eggs?

Huh?

I know I talk like an old man!

Let's use a real world example:

Project List

1. Nursing Video - complete 1st edit

2. Whipple video (that is the actual name of an operation, look it up) - 1st edit

3. New Nursing DVD library - prepare for sale

Again, this may be the list of important project milestones, but you can't check off anything on that list after anything less than a few days or weeks of work. We humans need the occasional instant gratification. Hence the popularity of scratch tickets and tiny bottles of booze in hotel rooms (or so I hear).

Let's boil down this list to a week:

1. Nursing video - complete first pass editing raw footage to script, rough titles, intro montage

2. Whipple video - digitize raw footage, edit down to 1 hour or less

3. New Nursing DVD library - make DVD masters, packaging, labels, post-tests, catalog images and website.

Maybe, if nothing else comes up, I can do some of this. Remember, I am combining video production and project management tasks. While I frown upon multi-tasking, if you can set parts of your day aside for different tasks, that may be ok, but it may differ for everyone.

Here is a sample Monday list:

1. Nursing video - edit at least 5 minutes, rough in shots and temp titles.

2. Whipple video - digitize 2 hours of tape, more Tues

3. DVD Library - author 1st 2 titles on DVD, burn master discs - 2 more on Tuesday, pull stills for packages.

Ok, things are looking more manageable.

Some weeks the lists are not so organized. Lately I have been using brightly colored sheets of paper and a Sharpie, but I try different techniques. Oh, also I like pretty colors. And books with lots of pictures!

A neat work environment is certainly a goal. We can dream...!

In summary, if you manage a lot of projects and do some or all of the work on those projects, the key is to find an organizational system that works for you. If MS Project is something your organization uses, I am sorry for you. Actually it can be a good program if you do not micromanage every task, and if you have the time to manage the project files.

If you are lucky enough to have a scheduling person in your group, learn to follow the schedule, and avoid interruptions.

Avoiding interruptions, however, is another blog for another day.

Mike Cohen

Hi. My name is Mike. It has been 3 months since my last blog post.

All: Hi Mike.

I have missed all aspects of the COW. I receive my Business and Marketing forum e-mails, but frankly have had little time to read these, or browse the forums or the blogs.

Well, dammit, I pledge to find the time. Here is a little review of what has happened these past 3 months, and why I have strayed from the COW's fertile pastures.

Ooh, that last sentence may have come from a Mike Huckabee speech!

LOL

Early October 2007

With the looming medical convention in New Orleans I have these key projects to finish:

1. Planning for live surgery event Oct 25. Drive to NY to check out the Florence Henderson Theater. Actually it is the Florence Gould Hall, although sometimes it is referred to as the Elliot Gould Theater. Contract with a prominent video conferencing service for lots of clams as Fred Flintstone would say.

2. Wrap up DVD on colon surgery. A hand drawn flowchart saves the day. Encore 2.0 lets you view the project like a flowchart, however I have never gotten Encore 2.0 to successfully build a project without an error, and in some cases the project file becomes corrupt altogether. So using Encore 1.5, a roadmap is the key to avoiding confusion.

It is at this point that I start wearing a hat to work every day, due to the incongrous patches of baldness thanks to the above project.

Oh well, it was a learning experience.

2. Next project is, get this, a DVD on colon surgery. This one is a bit more complicated, as each of 25 surgeons has his or her own chapter, including a Flash interface, video, narration, illustrations and a companion printed book.

Mid-October - Medical Convention, New Orleans

I had not been to NOLA since 2004. The convention center and tourist district are largely unchanged. During the taxi ride form the airport we see a lot of homes with tarps on the roof, and the French Quarter has many many abandoned homes and businesses.

The Loew's hotel however is quite nice, with one of the nicest indoor pools I have seen in a hotel.

A Few Representative Pics from this trip:

My last day there while walking around the French quarter, I called to check on my grandma Hilda. News is, she isn't going to make it. Her first words upon learning this, "Mike is going to miss talking to me." 36 hours later she was gone.

Over the New Year's holiday I started going through my home video collection, cataloguing all my videos of my Grandma Hilda. I feel so lucky that she permitted me to interview her on camera several times over the past 10 years. I recommend doing this with anyone you care about and will miss when they are gone.

Late October, 2007

Time for our big live surgery event. Four hospitals in NY transmitting live cases to the Florence Griffiths Joyner-Kersee Gould Henderson Hall. I find this funny. Two hospitals had full iSDN connections, two had only marginal IP bandwidth available. The ISDN feeds looked good, the IP not so good. We filled the time with some pre-recorded HD surgery. We rented a Panasonic PT-DW10000U HD projector and some XDCAM decks. Of course playing HD surgery after IP surgery is like viewing the Mona Lisa in person compared to using a ViewMaster. Actually, ViewMasters usually look pretty good, so make up your own metaphor.

The next day we rented out the historic Hudson Theater adjacent to the Millenium Broadway hotel. This day consisted of about 40 PowerPoint lectures, panel discussion and a presentation over ISDN from London (cha-ching$).

I couldn't resist taking this shot:

With this big event over with one could focus on the coming tasks for the rest of the year.

Early December, 2007

Fly to Tampa, FL. I have not been here since 2000. Little has changed, although I never actually visited downtown. While the Courtyard is a nice hotel, it is centrally located in a ghost town. Walking at night just a few blocks to a great cafe was like a Twilight Zone episode. You know, the one where a salesman finds himself alone in a strange town...like every episode! Next day I was to shoot 3 surgeries, however the patients were put to sleep before consenting, so I was stuck with the 3rd case of the day, which turned out to be a bad case to videotape.

Next day fly to Phoenix to shoot 4 new videos. This shoot went great. Word of caution, if someone recommends going to a little town with lots of cute antique shops, run the other way and don't look back. Aside from the dozens of what I would call junk shops, Glendale, AZ actually has a great German beergarden and restaurant called Haus Murphy's which made the trip worthwhile. It was also the winter festival, which was a lot like a New England winter festival without the snow.

Well, here we are in 2008 and looking forward to wrapping up some lingering projects and starting some new ones. Now if I could just shake this cold...ACHOO!