My Latest Masterpiece

For my "day job" I'm an Audio/Visual Production Specialist. I'm a videographer, editor, and motion graphics animator. It's something I've been thrown into. I enlisted in the Marines to be a still photographer, but they made me a videographer instead. Instead of protesting (which may or may not have done any good given my prior experience as a still photographer) I thought I'd take that opportunity to learn something new. I never thought it'd take me this far. I've learned more than I ever dreamed and continue to challenge myself more than I could if I had been strictly a still photographer. I'm very lucky to do what I do, and especially to have been thrust into it. I've known all my life I wanted to do something with the visual arts. Ever since I remember I loved to draw pictures. I remember after I learned you could earn a living in the visual arts, I would sell my drawings to my relatives for a quarter each. I'm sure they felt obligated to buy them. I've come a long way from drawing in the church pew and hawking my scribblings.

Anyway here's a taste of what I do:

About the video. It's an opening to a conference for my agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. This year the conference was held in Disney World, and around 3,500 people attended. It was quite the production. Along with producing this opening video and all the posters and graphics, my shop was responsible for running video cameras during the plenary sessions to be displayed on 30' screens (sort of like you'd see on awards shows on TV). This video played the first day right before our director, a 3 star Air Force general, spoke. The opening and closing graphics were done in Adobe After Effects and the piece was edited in Apple's Final Cut Pro. I had never even opened After Effects just a month before starting this project and I was able to pull out these animated graphics consistent with the theme of the conference.