Here's a quick, behind-the-scenes sneak peek at what I hope turns out to be my next very successful project. Or, quite possibly this will just be a random image that will mean absolutely nothing.


Pictured above is Scott Holstein and McKenzie Burleigh. I've referenced Scott several times before. He was with me when I shot the gator footage, took pictures at the 850 launch party, took the picture of me after I got Lexi, was in the 24 Hour Film competition with me, and was a part of the How It Happened One Night documentary.

Assuming everything goes well, more to come in the next couple weeks. Otherwise, I guess this will be a Tales Never Told some day.

About a year ago, I began increasing my use of Twitter. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it and I guess after over 800 tweets, I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing with it other than making jokes.

One of my earliest followers on Twitter was a guy by the name of Michael Calienes. I'm not sure what possessed him to follow me, but he did. I had heard of him before through my work at Rowland Publishing. He's a local ad agency guy. He does some really cool stuff.

Somewhere in there, the economy tanked and businesses suffered and Michael got the idea to start something he calls the Conversation Factory. Every Friday, local Tallahassee business folk (and sometimes people from out of town are Skyped in) gather around a table for some sandwiches and chips and talk about business in a very informal way. I had been considering going, but between being busy and not the most social, I put it off. But finally, Michael directly invited me and I decided to take him up on the offer, but only if I could bring a friend.

That friend is Lexi, my Canon XL2 camera. She came along and I videotaped a majority of yesterday's discussion. It's a cool idea and I hope this goes a long way to helping area business people.

Here is the hour-long discussion distilled down to about three minutes. I shot it entirely handheld to try to capture the feeling that you're there as you watch it. I apologize if you suffer from motion sickness.

I recently did some minor updates to the Children's Campaign video from last year. There's a bit more editing to come, but this is how it will remain for now. It's not much different. It's actually shorter and has some minor edits like swapping out photos.

They're taking this video on a "Truth Tour" and there will be a stop in Tallahassee on October 6. I am making plans to attend that event. For more information, visit the Children's Campaign website.

While not directly related to the work of Stormspeed Entertainment, I was able to take part in Timberlane church of Christ's VBS this past week by doing some puppetry. Most of my puppetry of late, if not just having fun with the kids, has been for video work and written by me. These skits were not written by me and were not videotaped. I got to just be a "puppet robot" and have fun behind the screen giving life to a doll. Although, the writer in me did indulge in tweaking a few lines here and there.

My fellow puppeteers were great and they didn't make me feel like too much of an old man despite the fact that I'm over twice their age. I did do a little tweeting while practicing on the first night. You can go back through my Twitter updates to find them and read them.

While I have no firm plans as of yet, I'd be surprised if this foray into puppeteering didn't lead into some other more interesting things down the road.

The entire VBS was documented by Glenda Hayden. Here are a couple shots relating to the puppets:

I had a video shoot this morning out in front of the old Florida Capitol and then later on we went back to the Tallahassee Museum for some follow up stuff. We had a brief amount of decent weather but then the sky opened up on us and we got drenched. Thankfully all the equipment was able to take refuge in the Capitol building and was safe. I definitely recommend a hard case to anyone out there thinking about getting a high dollar camera. It's bulky and a bit cumbersome, but well worth having on hand for rain situations.

Thanks to Marc for taking the behind the scenes shot.