Fire-Wired Blog

Today I decided there was no way around it, I had to advertise my distaste for Facebook, on Facebook. I've mentioned in the past my feelings about the king of social networks, but after getting a slew of non-family friend requests I did decided the best way to keep from hurting peoples feelings was to lay it all on the line. Facebook is a HUGE "time suck." Before I laid 300 friends to waste last fall I was just as bad as your average tween, checking my phone every couple hours for what's happening in the socialsphere. I guess it's good for brands, organizations, businesses and what not, but it's not for me. This company wants all your private information and they want to flip it for a buck. I don't want my face showing up in the sidebar ads, I don't care about edgerank, beacon, socially crafted advertising, sketchy t.o.s. and I don't want to give you something without getting something in return -not unless I can interact with you in the rea...

If Apple is truly the lion of the computing industry right now, than it seems only fitting that its most recent iteration of OS X is the thorn in its paw. Thanks to less-than-stellar reviews, one going so far as to claim OS X 10.7.3 was " Apple's Vista Moment ," I held out as long as I could to upgrade my MacBook Pro . And if it wasn't for new software requiring the operating albatross, our laptop would be roaming the computer jungle issue free as a graceful snow leopard. Everything I was worried about is true ; Preview windows takes 5+ seconds to buffer files. Finder searches, formally instantaneous, seem to have been refashioned in an homage to Microsoft. Pointless screen animations abound for fullscreens Launchpad and Dashboard continue to be a waste of computing power. Quicktime video playback is choppy. Upon upload, Preferences are rewired for no reason what-so-ever. There's plenty more to list -I could write 500 words on Finder windows alone- ...

When you start a new job inevitably you get asked what you miss most about your old job.  Easy, writing music for kids. In December of 2009 CRI started producing a show for kids aptly titled "Kids Show." Jon Hoffmann, the shows producer came up with a long list of cool segment ideas, one I threw in the pot was music videos. I teamed up with my coworker A.J. Hodgeman and started working on some song possibilities under the moniker PB & AJ . First we tackled the standard public dominion tunes ( Old MacDonald , ABCs , Hickory Dickory Dock , etc) but that well ran dry rather quick, so we had to come up with our own songs real quick.  Of the 11 songs/videos we produced the children's standards were the most popular but not my favorite. Below, in no certain order, are my favorites. I do wish the child's play could continue but sometimes you trade one hobby for another. Where I used to write kids tunes and produce music videos, now I make absurd short films . May...

What you see above is the finished product of four months of work, a dozen interviews, a bunch of b-roll shots, and meetings upon meetings. A seriously large project and done for an audience of... two people. Hey that's what happens here in the world of higher education fundraising and stewardship. This project was almost like producing a documentary into the way private giving has impacted over 100 students at ISU and thousands of people around the world. Quite a cool project for my first big assignment. I worked with a team of 10 people building everything we wanted to touch on and figuring out who we needed to feature. I really wish I could share it with you but thems the breaks. I'm really proud of the finished product and I hope the donors enjoy it.

No ever gets out. So what do you do? You run. A short filming Starring Brian Hogan, Andrew Stephen Pratt, Tim Denner - Directed by Patrick Boberg & Brian Hogan - Produced by Patrick Boberg. My latest short film as promised. Why did we call ourselves the Boberg Family Trust? Too ridiculous a reason to discuss here . Considering many of my video projects for work do not get released on the internet, you may be seeing quite a bit more of my extra-curricular video work. Hope you enjoy it, leave me your thoughts in the comment section.

Take Five guys, six hours, a camera, a boom mic, stir and what do you get? A 5 minute suspense-thriller we dubbed "The Chase Begins." If you've checked out my personal blog  before you know I'm a bit of a film fanatic. I've reviewed films, I've scored them, and FINALLY! I'm making them. Since January I've made two short films with my longtime friend Brian Hogan. In January we made " Master of Puppets ," an absurd dark comedy showcasing the seedy underbelly of the puppet world, and just this weekend we shot the afore mentioned  "The Chase Begins." What was the impetus? Our mutual starving artist actor friend, Andrew Stephen Pratt , was back in town for a couple days from NYC, so of course we took advantage of his talents and grabbed my camera. Without giving too much away I'll say the movie is pretty much a long chase sequence. I doubt I'll ever make a feature length film, but right now, I'm in love with short, g...

Recently this video came across my gReader . It's a couple years old but I love it. Of course because of the client headache story arc, but also because of what it says about people dealing with "creative" situations. Everyone likes to believe they are creative and when they are given a project to let that show, they strike. And while people feel they are creative, they generally worry that others, and definitely unknowns, are either not creative or need some hand-holding. Sometimes creative license leads to great things, sometimes bad things, sometimes project leads are so uncomfortable in the group mindset they micro-manage the project to death. I think we all know how painful that can be. Prior to my new job I've always worked in media production environments. Coworkers have always been some variation on my talents. The Foundation is much more of a classic work environment; numbers, clients, budgets... I am an outlier as employee talents go. I rarely deal ...