Daily Archives: September 9, 2008

Soon after our launch, we owed Philip Anselmo a vacation (he transferred from another GateHouse paper), so I got to be The Batavian‘s reporter for four of five days (Ryan Sholin filled in for a day, too).

During that week, there were two fire in Genesee County — one was a fatal.

The first fire was in Corfu and no people were harmed, but three cats died.  I had the Canon HV20 and a Tripod with me, but no lav mic.  Time on scene was about 45 minutes (mostly waiting for the fire chief to grant an interview, during which I shot my B-roll).  Editing time was also about 45 minutes (I shot way more B-roll than I needed)

NOTE: I can’t get the embed code to work right in this version of WP and I don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out (eventually, I’ll convert this blog to Drupal), so I’m just linking to the video.

Corfu Fire.

The very next day, a teen-age boy was killed in a fire.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to the scene in the morning because of meetings at our corporate office.  I didn’t get there until about 3 p.m.  It was looking dismal for getting a worthwhile video.  Plus, stupidly, I had forgotten to recharge the battery for the HV20 and discovered it was dead.  I had to use the Flip Ultra.  The result is below (on scene for 30 minutes (mostly BS’ing with film crews from local TV stations, which is how I got the high school photo of the deceased) and less than 30 minutes to edit).

Fatal Fire.

I’m proud of this video. Check the comments on YouTube.  I think it shows you can do something worthwhile if all you have is a $150 camera.

Not directly related to Batavia, but we did a train-the-trainers video course recently, and I like this video I did about my hometown dairy (half a mile from my house).

Pittsford Dairy.

You can check out the videos Philip has been shooting for The Batavian on our YouTube channel. Continue reading →

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