A busy Thursday

Bruce is out shooting at the Veteran's Administration, Gonzo's shooting at the Bolger Center in Bethesda for the IRS, Carolyn is making steady progress through all the paperwork and invoicing and Chris is digitizing the HD footage Gonzo shot over the weekend and making DVD clones.

Working on a job that came through the lovely ladies at Maslow Media, Bruce is shooting with the Panasonic SDX900 at the VA and, as always, is being ably assisted by Michael Coleman.
Well, he would be ably assisting if he weren't taking photos with the iPhone and sending them here to Visual Edge HQ...

Gonzo has the Sony DXC-D50 with him and is shooting DVCAM on a job that came through the equally lovely ladies at Crews Control. I'd post some photos, but he and audio tech Rob Shire got there at 6:30am this morning and have somewhere in the region of 15 interviews to complete today. As you might imagine, they don't have a lot of time for blogging right now.

We'll be posting some footage in the next couple of days showing off the new prime lenses we have in-house. Using them with the Letus Ultimate we'll have some footage from both the Sony EX3 and the Panasonic HVX200. Stay tuned...

Gonzo at Ground Zero

Gonzo was up in New York this past weekend, shooting for the Knights of Columbus. The subject was Al Fuentes, a retired New York firefighter who was one of the first responders on September 11, 2001. When the North Tower collapsed, Captain Fuentes was buried and trapped until rescued by his fellow firefighters.
The shoot came through Lumen Catechetical Consultants here in DC area and the producer on the shoot was John Landers. The shoot is another PSA in a series that we're working on for the Knights and we'll post it at www.visualedge.tv when we're done editing it. Gonzo shot with the Panasonic HDX900 and used a second HDX900 during the interviews. In the meantime, you can check out the two previous spots at the Multimedia page of www.visualedge.tv

Live Blog! Kinda...

So, Bruce is out shooting right now with the Panasonic Varicam for ESPN. The job came through Jill Woo at EyeMagic (who is enjoying the sights, sounds and, more than likely, the wine in Florence...) and Bruce is shooting b-roll for the upcoming NCAA hockey finals.
They are currently at the Air and Space Museum, as you might be able to tell from the pictures above and below. The other fellow in the shot is ESPN producer Jim Reed. We'll be updating throughout the shoot with photos, courtesy of our roving photographer, Michael Coleman. It's really quite amazing what he can do with an iPhone...

Well, they've moved on to the Capitol now. The green screen is to matte in elements when they throw to commercial breaks or sponsorships. Bruce has the portable jib working in the shot below.
We do have to thank the National Park Service and the DC Film Office for their help with permitting for this shoot. So...thanks!

The crew's at dinner right now but then they're heading to the White House. Can you feel the excitement?

It's Bruce Liffiton at the White House!
As you can see, they're still shooting -- it's currently 8:52pm EST. I'm not sure what's worse: the fact that I think this is cool or the fact that I have nothing better to do right now. Either way, I think it probably speaks to a sad and empty life.
Due to the Secret Service's very understandable refusal to allow generators on Pennsylvania Avenue, and our reluctance to wander down that particular street with a bulky belt on, Bruce is using the 1x1 Litepanel to light the green screen. The unit is powered by an Anton Bauer Dionic battery on the back -- it's really quite a fantastic piece of kit.
And that's a wrap, ladies and gentlemen.
10:36pm and the crew is done for the night. Thanks for staying with us, BIG thanks to Michael Coleman for the shots from location and I hope y'all enjoyed the updates. Come back soon and check out www.visualedge.tv for all the gear mentioned here tonight.

Friday round-up

It's been a busy week for Visual Edge. We've had a fair few rentals, quite a few shoots, received some new gear in-house and celebrated a holiday created solely by the brew-making industry. Job done.

HD CAMERA RENTALS
The HD cameras have ruled the week, with the Panasonic HDX900, Sony HDW730 and the Sony Z1U being the most popular. That's not to say the SD cameras didn't represent themselves well -- the D600 Betacam just won't stop working. In addition, the Panasonic HD1400 decks have been out extensively.

SHOOTS
In addition to the jobs already mentioned, Bruce worked on an Animal Planet show, Dogs 101, with the wonderful team from Powderhouse Productions -- that was shot using the HDX900. He also shot for EFX Media, based out of Arlington, VA, using the Panasonic SDX900 and then today he was shooting for The Colbert Report's Better Know a District segment on Capitol Hill. Running camera alongside Bruce was Bill Donald, audio tech was Michael Coleman and our intrepid Production Assistant was Kristen "Nepotism" Liffiton. As you can see below, Stephen was thrilled to be working alongside her:
Finally, Gonzo's up in New York on a two-day, two-camera shoot for the Knights of Columbus. We'll post the details when he gets back.

All in all, a good week with a fun shoot at the end. We'll post or link to the Colbert segments when they air, which will probably be in a few weeks. As for next week, we start with a bang: Bruce is shooting DC b-roll for ESPN and Gonzo's going to be running around the National Shrine/Catholic University area on a multi-part shoot with the USCCB. Stay tuned and please pop over to www.visualedge.tv for more information about all the gear mentioned above.

UPDATED: New gear and meeting the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania

First of all, Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all. Visual Edge had a couple of interesting things happen today -- we received our new set of 35mm prime lenses and Bruce got to meet President Barack Obama. Any objections if we start with the meeting of the 44th President of the USA?

Bruce was booked through Eyemagic to work on an ESPN shoot at the White House. Shooting with Ken Woo, Bruce took along our Panasonic Varicam and they proceeded to shoot a piece with President Obama as he filled out his bracket for the 2009 NCAA men's basketball tournament. Yes, the madness has reached the White House. Please, no obvious jokes...
The segment is due to air March 18 at noon on SportsCenter on ESPN and we'll either embed or throw a link to the piece once it goes live on ESPN.com. By the way, Bruce says the President was very nice, shook everybody's hand and there is a photo with him and the crew -- if they send it to us we'll put it up.

The other good news today was receiving our 35mm prime lens set. The four lenses (24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm) are modified 35mm still lenses with 32 pitch gears added, an 80mm front pressed on for use with matteboxes and the click-stops removed. They can be used with any DoF adapter, such as the Letus Ultimate we already own, and will also work when we get the B4 relay lens in-house. Peter at RP Lenses - www.rplens.com - put the package together for us and we're looking forward to putting them through their paces over the next couple of days. We'll post a review and some images in the near future.

UPDATE: As promised, here's the shoot with President Obama as he picks his bracket for the NCAA tourney...

What's 32 degrees, damp and dark?

The scene outside the Treasury Department last night, that's what. While most sensible people were catching up on their DVR shows or knocking back a few in their favorite bar, we were out shooting host segments, wraps and bumps for a Fox News documentary.

We were joined by an excellent crew and two very nice people from Fox, producer Rachel Feldman and host Bret Baier. Despite the cold, the light rain that lasted until 8pm, every plane ever made taking off from National Airport, a horse and carriage with jingling bells (seriously, who's taking a carriage ride in DC in March?!) and a fair few people who thought it was funny to yell "Woo-hoo!" as we were rolling...we got the job done.We shot with our Panasonic HDX900 and the camera was mounted on a Jimmy Jib provided by Cocklin Film & Video. Light and grip was provided by Annapolis Mobile Power, Potomac Light and Grip and the Washington Source and the teleprompter system came from Telescript DC. As for the crew, we had Don Aros, Kenny Harris and Patrick McAllister in lighting; Steve and Anne Cocklin with the jib; Ethan Spencer running the 'prompter; Michael Coleman providing audio and iPhone trivia; Chris Cardno as on-site Production Manager and foot traffic wrangler; and Bruce Liffiton as Director of Photography.

The show airs tonight (March 14, 2009) at 6pm on Fox News Channel so if you have a chance to check it out please do so. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go and warm up.

It's our first time. Be gentle.

Welcome to the Visual Edge Productions blog. Actually, this is going to be more of a news site, giving us the chance to post photos, videos and stories about the shoots we've been involved in and the gear that we have in-house. If you'd like to see what we have, please head to our main site at www.visualedge.tv and you can check out the gear, download manuals and build the camera package you need for your upcoming project.

In a nod to the conventions of most blogs there will be some funny/lame YouTube videos posted at some point but we promise to keep them few and far between. Unless it's chimps in suits. That's always funny.

So, what are we up to at the moment? We're prepping for a shoot for Fox News that will take place outside the US Department of the Treasury, so if you happen to be wandering near the White House tomorrow feel free to stop by and say hi. We're also working with the good folks at WebMD this weekend for one of their webcasts and then next week...well, it's not confirmed yet but it should be one of the cooler projects we've worked on in quite some time.

There are some new additions to the Visual Edge inventory. We now own the Letus Ultimate depth of field adapter, which allows the use of 35mm lenses on boTh the Panasonic HVX200 and the Sony EX3. We also just bought a 64GB P2 card for the HVX200 and HPX2000, giving extended record times and reducing the need for frequent data transfers in the field. Call or email us for further information.

That's it for now but we're planning on updating this pretty regularly so check back when you can and we'll see what cool stuff we can find for you.