A vacation montage with my good friend Eric:

A day in the Village with new friends:

I produced, shot and edited this (on assignment) as part of an ongoing Daily Beast series, My New York, after the Newsweek/Daily Beast merger. The series profiled prominent NYC residents in their favorite city spots, and aired on NYCTV25 as well as taxi cabs. My biggest challenge was trying to fit the piece into the 2:30 TV time limit, and I wish I had been given more time to let the edit breathe.

I don’t pretend that this is the most newsworthy or hardhitting of pieces but I do think it’s a good example of my shooting and editing skills. I filmed with a Canon 7D, a Canon 50 mm F1.8 and 24-105 mm F4.0L. I wasn’t allowed to shoot the actual performance other than the curtain call so some footage is handout broll. The footage with Chaunteé in it is mine. I did a little grading with Magic Bullet Looks, not much, as the theater lighting already helped my footage pop.

The Newsweek multimedia team was nominated for two GLAAD awards in 2011; one was for my 2010 video “Kicked Out But Ready to Go Back”. That piece looked at a soldier who had been expelled from the military under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but was eagerly trying to get back into service any way she could but doubtful of a DADT repeal. This was one of the last pieces I shot using a conventional video camera (and honestly, the piece that made me make the jump to DSLRs. I look at it and think “If only I had shot that on DSLR!”). It was also one of the few pieces in which I used my own voiceover. I prefer to use other people’s VO, if only because I can better judge the good takes.

James Franco gave us a little Web video gold at the 2011 Newsweek Oscar Roundtable. One of six actors invited to the candid discussion, Franco sat down with Natalie Portman, Michelle Williams, Nicole Kidman, Annette Bening, and Colin Firth. The treasure? Revealing he had made a sex tape at age 19. When it comes to creating video traffic, you can’t get more golden than that.

I produced the two-hour discussion with my NEWSWEEK colleague, Sarah Frank, as well as a former Los Angeles Times video producer, John Vande Wege, and one freelance soundman.

You can see all 11 of the 2011 Oscar Roundtable videos we edited here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0A116AF271D82C08

During the 2010 midterm elections I put together a quirky little mashup of midterm election news. MSN linked directly to it–a coup on two fronts. First, MSN never linked to any video but their own (they have big ad commitments to serve). And, second, the behemoth usually only linked to their own or MSNBC’s political pieces, not other sources.

The video ran up several hundred thousand views on the Newsweek site in only a few hours. Again, I had intended to use someone else’s VO but had to scramble last minute.

In addition to doing “buildout video” at Newsweek–video that accompanied traditional print stories–we launched a few weekly series in an effort to build up a return audience. We often teamed up with writers who had particular expertise on a beat in creating these series. In this instance, an entertainment reporter wanted to do a celebrity interview series based on the premise “7 Things You Don’t Know About Me”. I took the idea and translated it into video, first in a makeshift studio I lit with Edison bulbs. And then afterward in our new Newsweek digs, where we updated the old bulbs with fluorescent fixtures–a nod to our shiny home. Here are two examples of that ongoing series. They aren’t the most famous of the people we filmed–which included Hugh Jackman, Julianne Moore, Diego Luna, Gael Garcia Bernal, Ian Somerhalder and more–but they are perhaps the most charming of my edits.

I grew up loving Ken Burns documentaries—the history, the lush visuals, the richly woven narratives bursting with American pride. Many of my early pieces for NEWSWEEK were more polished historical documentaries influenced by Burns’ style. Most of our video was also produced as accompaniments to written pieces at that time. For the release of the director’s “The War”, Newsweek.com published diaries kept by a World War II vet during his German captivity—many of which were written on the backs of paper wrappers from cigarette packs. I jumped at the chance to bring the written word to life in a video profile of the former soldier, while paying homage to the famed documentarian. While my shooting has improved with DSLRs, I still look back at the editing on these videos as a prime example of my storytelling skills. The series was designated a 12th Annual Webby Honoree for Documentary Series.

I executive produced this series, meaning I helped come up with the plan for the videos, then managed the production and post-production of the videos. There was a very short turn around time on this project (they were still filming a few days before the magazine article went to the printers–and the videos went up) so we sent one producer to document and send back tapes while the rest of the team–two producers, two interns and myself–edited pieces back in New York. My favorites from the series are by Lee Wang (“Truth and Reconciliation”, “Mind of the South”), an amazing producer who shot the entire trip then rushed back to edit some more, and an edit by the talented Ira Spitzer (“Merchandising Racism”).

The below graphic is broken and the videos are only available on YouTube now, but here is what it looked like:

“I did stumble across a few interesting segments that I wouldn’t have found on my own. I like the quick-hit quirk of Newsweek’s campaign-trail dispatches, especially when contrasted with Time’s fluff about Deepak Chopra and ‘Favorite Movie Kisses.’”

He chided other magazines for their lack of expertise and polish and warned that they were tarnishing already beleaguered brands.

The series he’s referring to was our “On the Campaign Trail” videos, in which we followed the presidential contenders around the country for much of 2008. We showed little slices of campaign life, an insiders guide to the horse race, and did unedited interviews with the candidates. It was a very cool gig–a front row to history. I’m proud Newsweek could be AdAge’s one bright Web video spot.

http://adage.com/article/mediaworks/magazines-sites-add-video-expertise/125262/

I was honored to receive a News and Documentary Emmy nomination in 2007. It was Newsweek’s first–and the first of any U.S. magazine.

For the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, the Newsweek editors did a big cover story about the conflict as told through the letters and words of its heroic dead. I spent a day filming a family in Kentucky who had just lost their father to an IED the previous month. As you can imagine, the family’s emotions were raw, the grief palpable, the hurt and loss etched on the children’s faces. But the mom wanted to make sure their father’s story was told–I think so the father would always be remembered as a hero.

It was also the first project I traveled for while at Newsweek, and one of my first videos ever. I shot, produced and edited the video over a couple days, and composed my own music as well on Garage Band–back before the company paid for music rights. True one-man band production!

In addition to an Emmy nomination, the series was awarded an MPA Digital Award for Best Online Video Series 2007, a MIN Best of the Web award for Integration with Print 2008, a 2007 Deadline Club Award from the NYC chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a NY Press Club Award for Exclusive Online Content.