Fire-Wired Blog

Rarely do I frame myself this way, but I am a "creator." I make content. Professionally my creations mostly are for the traditional medium of television, but I also make a LOT of content that goes directly to the internet. If you see a TV camera man around town with a heavy camera on their shoulder, following a reporter and a subject you immediately recognize that the hard work that person is enduring. Shoulder mounted cameras look impressive and heavy. If you turn and look at the reporter that's where opinions vary. Are they actually "working?" Prepare yourselves for a long one. Of course they are, but over time I've learned if people don't understand a role or a job they get frustrated, possibly angry, and denigrate a person they think has it easy. The above video was produced by Tom Buck , probably one of my personal top three favorite YouTubers. Every week Tom releases a video about audio and video production equipment, how they work, and how they c...

Update : As was expected, The 2020 Snake Alley Festival of Film has been delayed due to Covid-19 concerns. No dates have been set, but the hope is now for the fall. Seeing as the USA is not New Zealand (where they made the hard choices and have effectively eradicated the virus), I'd call that optimistic. I guess the old saying is right; you can lead a country to quarantine but you can't make it shelter in place. I'll update again when there is more share. I am excited .  Last fall, I got the lightning strike idea that I needed to adapt a story my Grandmother wrote as a child into a screenplay. That may sound slight, but this story is incredible; it is the story of my Great Grandmother Martha Adams giving birth during the German invasion of Belgium in World War I , followed by her braving the war, losing her husband, remarrying and moving to Illinois, and then personal trials galore up until her death in 1976. It is a story that would make Scarlett O'Hara say "Than...

Wading in the Boone River with Shane and Tiffany. Over the last couple of weeks I got a chance to dip my toe in a pool I’ve always wanted to swim in but rarely get to enjoy; public speaking. Not saying I want to become a motivational speaker or give weekend classes on video storytelling, but I’ve always enjoyed performing. I’ve acted, sung, played in bands, and now I’ve repped my employer, Iowa Public Television, to audiences five times in three weeks. For the past two years I’ve been working on a project called “ Iowa Land and Sky .” With the assistance of two very generous grants my team as well as a few instructional designers from IPTV’s Education department have been crafting special drone fueled ecological and geological materials for Iowa classrooms and broadcast. Getting my FAA drone pilots license in the process I’ve travelled all over the state to capture unique aerial shots of Iowa’s landscapes as well as tell very specific natural history stories. With my Education ...

10 years ago I learned about an awesome challenge called the " Script Frenzy ." The idea was for writers to take the month of April and write a 100-page screenplay or other creative project. While I thought the challenge event was an incredible idea I never actually participated before the  official project was sent out to pasture after the 2012 event... But then March 30, 2017 rolled around and I discovered the perfect story to frenzy onto the page and today I have a 101-page script. No this is not my first screenplay. But it is the first one I've gotten to the point of typing "The End" and still felt the absolute NEED to produce. I won't bore you with details of the screenplay other than it's an adventure-drama-romance set in Iowa's Loess Hills and loosely "based on actual events." As I've recounted on here   many times before I love cinema and a long term goal of mine has been to write-direct a feature film. Am I delude...

When I blog about my 9-5 I tend to talk about the perks; interviewing someone cool, filming something people might be jealous of, getting into sporting events free...   For the most part I get to do some cool stuff because of the nature of my work. Some things I get to cover I assume are going to be cool but end up being something entirely different. Welcome to today.   This morning I set up shop at 9:30 a.m. in the atrium of Howe Hall for a town hall meeting featuring the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. I was sent to film the event and the University's President interacting with him. Well the VP's people didn't want every camera man gumming up the works so during the time when Biden and Leath were together there were only 2 cameras allowed to film them, one from the news affiliates, one from the University. I let the College of Engineering guy take the University position. What I didn't realize was my choice doomed me to standing in p...