Post-Thanksgiving Watching

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and I spent the day with my family at my parents' house. It was a pretty relaxing day with delicious food and good company. I even managed to not overdo it at dinner!

I spent some time yesterday and today thinking about Thanksgiving from years ago. And I was reminded of two pretty awesome videos. Whatever your plans are today, you should take the time to watch these. You won't be sorry.

"The Peanut Killer" is a short slasher movie that my nieces, nephew, brother, husband, and I made on Thanksgiving Day in 2007. I'm sure the nieces and nephew are going to be thrilled that I'm posting it here, but seriously, it's a pretty decent story.



The other video is from 2008, and is about a special Thanksgiving festival. This video was made by Tweedee Productions, a video production company where I used to work. I think I helped edit this video, but I don't really remember. You may not want to be eating while you watch this one.




Enjoy! And now that Thanksgiving is over, I can start listening to Christmas music!

Annual Review

Yesterday I had my annual review at Tweedee. My official start date was September 6, 2005, so I just celebrated my 4th anniversary at Tweedee. This is the longest I've worked at the same place. My review went well, and I still have a job. *whew* I've learned a lot about video production since I started working here 4 years ago, and I still have a lot to learn. My bosses are great, and they continue to provide me with new responsibilities and positive feedback. I am ready to take on more tasks and projects, and they are slowly but surely giving me opportunities to grow professionally. I honestly couldn't ask for a better place to work or better people for whom to work. And now it's time for our weekly Brown Bag Theater - a good time to socialize with co-workers, watch some TV or a movie (today is The Beatles' "Let It Be"), and have lunch. You should join us sometime!

ELCA video contest

I haven't written anything on here for over a month, and I will try to get some photos of our trip to Seattle and Vancouver posted soon. In the meantime, go on over to the Tweedee blog to see what I wrote about the ELCA video contest.

Favorite Online Sensation

I had to write another blog entry for the Tweedee Productions blog today. You can read it here.

"My Favorite Madison Moment"

At Tweedee, we've been working on a video that has included interviews with some BIG NAMES in Madison. We've done 5 interviews so far with 1 left to do tomorrow.

We started with Suzy Favor Hamilton, former UW track athlete and 3-time Olympian.







We moved on to 2 UW Hospital employees. And then Mayor Dave.








This afternoon, we interviewed Ron Dayne, former UW running back and Heisman trophy winner.

Tweedee Productions Blog

I just wrote my first blog post for the Tweedee blog. Check it out!

Blogs

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been put in charge of getting 2 blogs for Tweedee up and running. The first one is for Tweedee itself. All 6 of us will take turns writing on the blogs, and it will be updated at least once a week. Check it out here. We started the blog, in part, because we wanted to get "Samie the Intern" episodes available as a video podcast on iTunes. However, we ended up needing to start a separate blog for "Samie" to do that. You can watch the video episodes on that blog OR you can open iTunes and search the podcasts for "Samie the Intern" and download them. If you didn't know this, I am completely in charge of "Samie the Intern." I schedule the shoots, come up with ideas (with a lot of help from Samie and my bosses), shoot the video, edit, and encode as a QuickTime movie for the Tweedee Productions website and the "Samie" blog. It's a pretty fun thing to get to do. I hope that you'll check out the videos, if you haven't already.

Pizza

Today, former Congressman Scott Klug has been in our office, working with our editor Steve on a project. I've met him before, and he's a really nice guy. He walked over to a nearby pizza place to get some lunch for Steve, and offered to get me some, too. I had just eaten the chili I had brought for lunch, so I declined the offer. When he got back, he asked if I wanted half a piece of pizza. I said no, thinking he was just being polite, and trying to keep on my healthy eating track. He told me that he only wanted half a piece, so there would be this leftover half-piece in case I changed my mind. Never one to turn down free food, especially free pizza, I ate the other half of his piece of pizza. Crazy! (As a former member of Congress, he had tickets to the Inauguration but decided not to attend due to the large crowds.)

Back-to-Back

I'm not big into name-dropping, but sometimes working in video production means that you get to meet some local celebrities. I always like the opportunity to meet these people, especially when they are down-to-earth. This week at work, I got to meet a couple of well-known Wisconsinites. I went on a shoot on Wednesday where I met UW men's basketball coach Bo Ryan. It was really quick - he was probably only there for about 15 minutes, but I got to shake his hand and run the TelePrompTer for him. He was a very nice guy. Then on Thursday, we had a shoot with the Wisconsin Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen. We've done shoots with him before, and he has become more and more relaxed with each shoot. On this particular shoot, he came into his office, and I asked him what he was drinking. He said, "Do you want some? I can get you some." I told him that I didn't want any, but that it smelled really good and was wondering what it was. He jokingly asked me what made me think it was his drink I was smelling. I told him that the only new scents in the room were him and his drink-- And he jumped in and said, "And you just knew it couldn't be me, right?" Then he laughed. So there I was, holding a boom microphone, insulting the AG. Oh, well. Just another day at the office. . .