Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by dmcityview.com If such a thing as the “ethics of war” exists, the modern fringe is defined by unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as “drones.” Besides spying on people, keeping pilots out of the sky and being extremely efficient killing machines, drones have another trait — they’re really cool. Before you get upset and label me a warmonger, tell me, if you had the chance to pilot one of these overgrown remote-control planes from your backyard, would you? Two weeks ago, I attended the 2013 National Association of Broadcasters conference. One of the more popular camera toys I got to play with were remote-control helicopters mounted with high-definition cameras. Companies such as DJI, Rotor Concept, Freefly and many more filled the exhibit hall airways with innovations. While I stood in line with thousands of conference attendees, anxiously awaiting my turn to pilot a drone, I heard plenty of “oohs” and “ahs,” yet not a single concern ...

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 ...

This week the Foundation mailed out the first issue of its new magazine, "Forward," and coinciding with its release is the release of my first videos for the Foundation. As I've stated before, The ISUf's main purpose is to raise funds for Iowa State. For scholarships, for facilities, for endowed faculty, for programs, etc. "Forward" Magazine is meant to highlight the cool things ISU is doing and keep donors informed about where their funds are going. It's a pretty cool magazine. I'll probably produce 5-6 more videos for the next issue which will mail in June. Up to this point I've been doing a lot of prep and planning for upcoming projects and reworking previous video material for different purposes, but the last couple of weeks I finally got to shoot a couple of videos. The one above and this one: These videos, along with 3 others I edited from old content, are supplemental material to an article discussing the use of...

After 5 years in the news-media I am out. Forever? Who knows. But for the forseeable future I'm a Multimedia Specialist for the Iowa State University Foundation . The Foundation is a non-profit fundraising entity that raises funds for the University and helps promote its mission. My role is to produce multimedia content to that end; videos, presentations, advertisements and more. It's really exciting, I've had some fun calling myself the Foundation's in-house documentarian. Today I took advantage of the beautiful weather and used my equipment for the first time. Shot a building on campus. Not for any specific project, just to learn the camera. After that I took five minutes and shot the weather on campus. Not a perfect video, but for my first DSLR filming experiment, I think it turned out well.