WGBH Finale...'The Auction'

Well, it has been a quick 12 week 10 episode adventure! It absolutely flew by with some much happening at the same time. We even taught a class called 'How to Create a Web Series' for the Learning Annex in NYC. This class was taught live but is available as a download directly from them.

For this last episode 'The Auction', we had a great time flying down to Philly to catch the Stack's auction which held one of the rarest medals ever produced in the United States, the copper version of the 'Columbia' medal. It was really cool being able to hold it (in its case!) and see it up close and feel the weight of it. Sure we have seen it up close before and in person but this seemed a little different. These medals were made to commemmorate the voyage of the ship Columbia, pass out during the travels and give to dignitaries. What you didn't see were some of the other cool stuff that we were able to catch a close up of as well that included a bar of gold and old padlock from a sunken ship!

Once again this was very guerilla style production with a small, inconspicuous camera and some wireless lavs. The lighting in some spots was horrible, the camera was focusing on wrong spots, and of course the audio had its issues...but we managed.

One of the newest tools in our arsenals is Izoptope's new RX2 noise reduction software. This version does wonders and is my new goto tool for removing unwanted sounds from tracks. I am not talking about standard hiss reduction here, we are talking beeps, sirens, and drones throughout a track! You can really dial in the tone you want out and get great results with out having all the artifacts typical after a noise reduction pass. Of course the regular tried and true process is doing multiple passes but I am amazed how well this new version works. I still use Sony Noise Reduction as well for background hiss as I have gotten that down pretty pat for getting rid of hiss and what not. I have used waves in the past too but am able to achieve similar results with the combination of these tools...and save some money :)

So it's on to the next phase for 'Hit and Run History' but I will continue to post about the projects they do and possibly post a few "how to's"from these webisodes.

later.

ga