volunteersAs I mentioned in my last post, I have been slaving over the laptop for the past week enduring the incredible frustration of frozen screens due to video input overload in order to work on editing a firefighting video.
Most probably don't know it, but youtube has been a great place for firefighters to put clips of action to the audio backdrop of music for years. Emotionally you all probably have seen clips of 9/11 etc, but there are thousands of home grown videos done by guys like me except with oodles more talent (and access to professional editing software, LOL!).
THIS is the guy who inspired me : http://www.youtube.com/user/mlesnick67
He works with the Manassass, Virginia VFD, a fast growing suburb west of DC and does an incredible job of not only linking great clips to music (I mean matching hard beats to the visual of a firefighter's boots hitting the ground while leaping from a fire truck) but to imaginative use of cameras (on the ground in the station as rigs roll out on a call, affixed to the wheel-well of a responding fire engine, a high angle shot from the bucket of an aerial ladder, GREAT stuff!)
Anyway, years ago, as a PI and a volunteer firefighter, my then brother-in-law, himself chief of a department in the same county as me, asked me to bring my camera south and spend the day filming a live fire house burning exercise to be used for training. Unbeknownst to my PI boss, I carried my (uh, I mean his) shoulder held Panasonic VHS camera (this was 1991 after all!) into a burning building. Not on the video, but my favorite, was the informative moment when someone stepped in front of me while I was filming the start up of a fire in a room of the burn house (we set pallets and haybales afire and rookies had to crawl into the house, find the fire, and knock it down). Smoke, and heat, rises. As a firefighter stepped in front of me blocking my shot, I raised up just a little bit, maybe 6 inches to shoot over his shoulder. But with the camera, I was the only one in the house with no airbottle or face mask. Clearly on the tape you hear me say "OH SHIT" as I suddenly dropped down again. The immense heat change in only those 6 inches, totally, immediately dried my eyeballs.
Don't try this at home, LOL!
So, without further ado, this is my video. It was shot on VHS and this video is me using my Sony digital camera to film the VHS while it played on the tv, thus the visual bars you see on some shots - electronic interference.
I shot over 50 clips then spent hours fine tuning their length and setting them in place. Then spent more hours putting it all into the Windows MovieMaking program which frequently chose to freeze whenever I tried to make changes. All of this you could care less about, I know, but now you know the rest of the story!
MY video, enjoy :
