This past week, the crew at 702.tv produced two videos (well, they produced a ton of videos, but two I wanted to share on my blog) that I think will interest folks outside of Las Vegas.
It seems like for as long as I can remember people think our team has been pushing the envelope. Well, to be honest, when you typically work at a newspaper, it doesn’t take a whole lot to push things.
🙂
But we posted a video (that also ran on our over-the-air television show) that even made me queasy.
The title of the video says it all: Live Lobster Sushi.
I have always had a soft spot in my heart for high school football.
Back in Kansas, I covered the Osage City Indians for my high school newspaper, The Pow Wow. Yes, it’s still called that, and no, it doesn’t have a proper Web site. 😦
I helped put myself through college at Emporia State University while writing football gamers for the newspaper I had wanted to work at since I was in the third grade — The Topeka Capital-Journal.
And once I got into “new media,” that love of high school sports continued. Sometimes the high school sports coverage we produced found an audience. And sometimes it didn’t.
In our team’s first full year at the Las Vegas Sun, we probably went just about as all-out as you could possibly go in our coverage of Las Vegas-area high schools — live scoreboards available on the web and via text-messaging, gamers for nearly every local high school, big/cool photo galleries, a stats page updated weekly for nearly every varsity player and team in the area, and probably some of the slickest game-highlight videos produced on deadline by a local news organization.
When the season was over, as proud as we were of our efforts, we knew we had to do things differently in 2009 — our overkill high school coverage didn’t get nearly the traffic or the advertiser attention we had hoped it would.
We also knew that we hadn’t marketed it very well, as our newspaper’s president and editor Brian Greenspun has pointed out to us numerous times. (I also should note that because of our unique JOA here in Las Vegas, running lots of “house ads” in our newspaper isn’t an option, so marketing is a challenge for nearly everything we do.)
This summer, we continually talked about how we could/should do really spectacular coverage of the local high schools, but do it much more efficiently, with a bigger bang for our buck and in a way that people would notice.
We also knew we had a secret weapon: Ray Brewer. (BTW — check out this sweet caricature of Ray from Sun illustration god Chris Morris.)
Ray is a true Las Vegas local. He was born and raised in Las Vegas. He even graduated from UNLV.
Ray has been covering high school sports in Las Vegas since 1996.
When the editorial staffs for the Henderson Home News (a weekly newspaper owned by the Greenspun family) and Greenspun Interactive were merged earlier this year, Ray essentially became our team’s sports editor, and it was one of those moves that immediately made us better.
This guy has a true passion for high school sports. If you don’t believe me, just watch this video from Thursday night’s episode of 702.tv:
http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/assets/swf/mvc_video_0.9.swf
Yes, the animal is moving while they eat it.
This video was shot and edited by Scott Den Herder, and the reporter on the story was Las Vegas Weekly managing editor Ken Miller.
Another video that ran last week also was interesting to me, but for a completely different reason.
Videographer Evelio Contreras and 702.tv entertainment reporter Emily Gimmel put together a package on the VIP pool at Green Valley Ranch Resort.
I have always had a soft spot in my heart for high school football.
Back in Kansas, I covered the Osage City Indians for my high school newspaper, The Pow Wow. Yes, it’s still called that, and no, it doesn’t have a proper Web site. 😦
I helped put myself through college at Emporia State University while writing football gamers for the newspaper I had wanted to work at since I was in the third grade — The Topeka Capital-Journal.
And once I got into “new media,” that love of high school sports continued. Sometimes the high school sports coverage we produced found an audience. And sometimes it didn’t.
In our team’s first full year at the Las Vegas Sun, we probably went just about as all-out as you could possibly go in our coverage of Las Vegas-area high schools — live scoreboards available on the web and via text-messaging, gamers for nearly every local high school, big/cool photo galleries, a stats page updated weekly for nearly every varsity player and team in the area, and probably some of the slickest game-highlight videos produced on deadline by a local news organization.
When the season was over, as proud as we were of our efforts, we knew we had to do things differently in 2009 — our overkill high school coverage didn’t get nearly the traffic or the advertiser attention we had hoped it would.
We also knew that we hadn’t marketed it very well, as our newspaper’s president and editor Brian Greenspun has pointed out to us numerous times. (I also should note that because of our unique JOA here in Las Vegas, running lots of “house ads” in our newspaper isn’t an option, so marketing is a challenge for nearly everything we do.)
This summer, we continually talked about how we could/should do really spectacular coverage of the local high schools, but do it much more efficiently, with a bigger bang for our buck and in a way that people would notice.
We also knew we had a secret weapon: Ray Brewer. (BTW — check out this sweet caricature of Ray from Sun illustration god Chris Morris.)
Ray is a true Las Vegas local. He was born and raised in Las Vegas. He even graduated from UNLV.
Ray has been covering high school sports in Las Vegas since 1996.
When the editorial staffs for the Henderson Home News (a weekly newspaper owned by the Greenspun family) and Greenspun Interactive were merged earlier this year, Ray essentially became our team’s sports editor, and it was one of those moves that immediately made us better.
This guy has a true passion for high school sports. If you don’t believe me, just watch this video from Thursday night’s episode of 702.tv:
http://media.lasvegassun.com/media/assets/swf/mvc_video_0.9.swf
(All summer, Emily has been putting together packages on the different resort pools across Las Vegas. And if you’re just joining us and can’t figure out why we’re shooting pool videos, please read this post that explains the 702.tv concept.)
Anyway …
What makes this video so interesting to me is how it was produced.
It was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II, a still camera that shoots video, which was just recently released. The camera is predominantly used by Greenspun Interactive’s still photographer, Justin Bowen.
But Evelio wanted to take the camera out for a test drive.
So, what did he think?
First off, the video looks great. Many of us in the office feel the clip has kind of a film-like quality to it, and Evelio said he loved its cool depth of field. He said that depth of field made shooting with the camera very fun.
He loved it.
Evelio told me he wonders if this camera could possibly be what many shooters might use in the future — a small, high-quality camera that does video and stills well. He said, as a videographer, he felt the camera’s size made it more welcoming for interviews and access.
I’ve been told that the big knock on the Mark II camera is its audio capabilities, which aren’t really broadcast quality. For this piece, Evelio got around that by using another camera (the Panasonic P2s that we typically use for 702.tv) to capture the audio.
Anyway, both of these videos were really interesting (at least to me) … just for different reasons.
+++
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Rob Curley 