Read more articles about lighting and video/film production at my Indie Film Blog.

This is not the right way to shoot a green screen, but I needed to work in a hurry.

I found an opportunity to convince some business folks on the benefits of an in-house studio space with a built-in pre-lit green screen. I wanted to make sure the execs knew that we already had the technical capacity to shoot and composite green screen work and that we only needed dedicated space to make an efficient system.

In an earlier post called Record Your Voice for Fun And Profit, I had mentioned my recent purchase of an Olympus VN-960PC Digital Voice Recorder. My goal was to replace my dead micro-cassette recorder and possibly find an inexpensive solution for recording audio content that I could post on the web and maybe even sell as part of an educational audio series or audio book.

On my indie filmmaking blog I posted an article reviewing my new Porter Case camera case.

If you travel frequently with equipment and lots of bags, check out the review of this camera case that comes with a built in hand-truck.

Recently I took a car trip from New York City (my home) to Michigan (my birthplace.) For those who’ve never made the trip, it takes 10 hours if you don’t hit traffic or stop too much - and I was travelling by myself. I use to pack books-on-tape and plenty of CDs to fill the time. Last year I got a Palm Tungsten T5 that can play back MP3s in addition to all the regular PDA functions. The trick now is to pick a good selection of stuff to listen to and load it onto the T5.

I had to make a very difficult choice recently. Unexpectedly, I received approvals to purchase a new High Definition video camera and had to hastily put together a purchase order for a new camera package. We’re talking about a budget in the low 5 figures, so I had the money to buy whatever I wanted and I was the person deciding what was needed. But, the choice was hard to make.

Let me start off by saying, “I Love Jamba Juice!” A fruit smoothie with a couple protein and vitamin boosts is my favorite way to start the day. They’ve even got a few combos with green tea for a little caffeine kick. But, at $5-$6 a piece, they are a special treat and not a daily habit.

This week’s big project was creating a DVD of promotional highlight videos to be distributed to the members of a corporate board of directors. The videos were all previously edited projects, so I just had to create a menu and get all of the clips linked up. I used Adobe Encore DVD for authoring the DVD and Adobe Photoshop CS2 to create the DVD menu and the label for the disc. The real fun started when I had to run 50 copies of the finished product!

I’m preparing myself for the next wave of video production. I decided that it’s not worth my while to invest in any new hardware/software that is not capable of handling HD. While there is still going to be a while before most people can view an HD image on their home TV, I want to make sure I don’t have to buy all new gear when I want to make an indie film with the potential for a film-out or HD projection in a theater.