Resume

TELEVISION STATION EXPERIENCE:

WHBQ /TV – Memphis, TN                                    Director                          4/12 - present

 Stolen from WREG to direct a portion of FOX's 5 hour live morning show.  I provide shot blocking and strategy for executing newscasts for floor crew and anchors via rundown.  Direct and switch newscasts, run still-store, CG machines and operate studio equipment as necessary.  Remote set-up, lighting, sound and direction for multiple annual events  

WREG /TV – Memphis, TN                              Senior Director                          1/06 – 4/12

Hired primarily to direct Live @ 9 at Peabody Place and direct other newscasts as needed.  Live @ 9 also entails setting up and mixing live music performances. Trained new directors/TD's, created the majority of switcher effects seen daily and used by all directors.

KPTM /TV – Omaha, NE                          News Production Manager             10/01 – 1/06

Hired to direct the 9 O’clock News, supervise, schedule and hire directors, TD’s and tech crew.  Charged with turning around a rather lackluster newscast by calling tight, consistent and effect-intensive broadcasts.  Trained crew in studio camera techniques, tape playback, cg, audio, TD and directing.  Also served as art director and was responsible for the creation and implementation of all graphics, pre-production, news opens and virtual set elements. 

KMSP /TV – Minneapolis, MN                             Director                                7/99 – 9/01 

One of three directors to call a portion of Good Day Minnesota, an info-tainment 3 ½ hour morning start-up.  Conceived and executed policies regarding control room and studio performance and conduct, remote production setup and directing/TDing. Trained floor crew. Directed and produced interviews and other elements for following day’s broadcast. 
    * Left station when wife accepted a news position in Omaha, Nebraska.

KSAT /TV – San Antonio, TX                  Producer/Director/TD                        7/97 - 7/99

Primary duties included directing or switching fast-paced, effect-intensive newscasts and local sports shows (Instant Replay and The Spurs Report with Gregg Popovich).  Other duties included remote arrangement, blocking and directing, devising strategies for the implementation of new equipment, supervision and training of crew and creation of DVE effects. Also produced and edited commercials and promotional spots.

KSAT /TV – San Antonio, TX                   Studio Supervisor                             12/95- 7/97

Scheduled 17 staff members, responsible for interviewing, hiring, and training of production technicians. Supervised delegation of production tasks, inventory and purchasing of studio supplies, implementation of policies via the production manager. Also provided set design & construction, switched pre-production and CNN updates.

FREELANCE  EXPERIENCE:         

EDITOR

Kingdom Quality Communications, 2010

Edited and co-produced web site advertisement for KQ web site. 

Designed elements utilizing Adobe Photoshop, Premier and After Effects.

EDITOR

Watoto D'Afrika, 2008-present

Shot, edited and co-produced three music videos for dance troupe.  These videos are being used to procure financial support for a planned locally produced television program.

EDITOR

Bob Hetherington & Associates, 2009-present

Shot and edited two proof-of-performance videos for Peer Power, a high school level tutoring program.  Utilized Adobe Premier, Photoshop and After Effects to create a mass marketing tool

for franchising the concept to other communities both locally and in other states. 

Also created a web video in After Effects for the Alliance for Nonprofit Excellence.

PRODUCER/EDITOR

The Project Chef Group 2009-present

Co-owner, co-producer, shooter, designer and editor for a locally produced cooking competition television show.  Created entire look & feel, utilizing all tools in Adobe Production Premium.  Hour-long pilot is  being shopped to potential sponsors and investors.

TECHNICAL PROFICIENCIES:

GVG Kalypso  & 3000 Switchers     

Abekas DVEous & A-51 DVE

Pinnacle Flashfile & Lightning          

Ross Overdrive

ADOBE Premier PRO & AE

ADOBE Photoshop CS5                   

Word, Excel & PowerPoint               

VizRT

Chyron IFINIT! & MAXINE                       

News View, ENPS & News King

EDUCATION:

University of Denver – Denver, Colorado                                           

8/90 – 6/94     

Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Mass Communications and minoring in fine art.

Drunk In A Dumpster - Pt. 1

I received the coolest sonic surprise today.  Delivered to my door in a flat 12 inch by 12 inch protective shipping box.  The first LP from punk band Drunk In A Dumpster.  It's good I know the singer from our pre-kindergarten days or this audio treasure would have been scoffed at.  Even in punk rock circles, the name Drunk In A Dumpster feels cashed.  Several listens later, the name is growing on me.  Though we drifted apart by age 7, we have kept in touch sporadically over the last 35 years and I have been the grateful receiver of his musical offerings.  Also noteworthy, he and I have twin tastes in music.  We can both clear a room by acting the part of DJ at holiday parties.  What is interesting about this band is that they're a hardcore outfit, yet are in their 40's.  Crowd surfing might be ancient history for them, but I have to give respect where it is due.  These guys are still belting it out. 

Drunk In A Dumpster - Money $hot

LP reverse

When I opened the mailer, I was confused at first.  Inside a clear protective sleeve is what appears to be a garage sale LP.  Across the top reads "John McCormack Sings Irish Songs".  Below the title is a generic black and white photo of Mr. McCormack.  Scrawled in fire engine red nail-polish across the Irish crooner's face is DRUNK IN A DUMPSTER. To defile John's image further, the title of the record - MONEY $HOT - is hashed in black marker over his mouth.  The presentation lives up to the name of the record label - No Profit Records.  The reverse side of the cover faithfully lists songs scribbled in pen on a shred of brown paper sack and is adhered with God knows what.  Cheap.  Disgusting.  Inspired.

Circle Jerks - Skank man

The real treat comes when removing the sleeved record.  This is where the the money was spent.  The sleeve has two sides - a drawing of four spiky-haired miscreants getting plastered in a dumpster.  Barf, booze and beer bongs.  Reminiscent of The Circle Jerks' Skank Man - but more tongue in cheek.  On the flip - song lyrics and thanks to family members for putting up with the early onset mid-life crises.  Removing the emerald clear record from the sleeve is unexpected.  How could something so pretty be dry-heaved from something so punkishly filthy?  Leave it to the boys in the dumpster.

To be continued...

   

I Hear Voices - Just Not Mine

Chinese Toilet

What is my voice?  I don't perceive that I have one.  I write so infrequently (I did until I started this program) that my voice is an inaudible whisper.  My voice is better seen in my opinion than written or heard.  I've been working in the visual arena for so long that writing is as foreign to me as one of those Chinese bathroom stalls.  The mechanics are familiar, but there isn't the day to day comfort level I'd prefer.  Ask me to make an animation or a graphic, I'm on it.  That isn't to say I can't write.  I can.  I can write quite well if the need is apparent. My writing tends to be scattered though.  I am a poor speller as well.  When I read a recent article about the use of commas, rather the misuse of commas, I sunk my head in shame.  The author was talking about me.  In fact, I was dead sure he had just read my blog and was so disgusted that he had to put pen to paper.  In my undergraduate days, I took several creative writing courses which I enjoyed.  The writing bug, however, slipped away as soon as I took off my cap and gown.

Fast forward to now.  I'm sitting in front of my computer trying to figure out if I have a voice or not.  I suppose I like to pepper my writing with humor and the absurd to make a point.  I look above to the Chinese toilet reference and that becomes quite clear.  I also tend to write conversationally. I am not a fan of using bloated or flowery language unless it makes a point.  I don't think people who know me would describe  me as long winded either.  This trait comes across in my writing.  I tend to get to the point.  I surmise any future as a smut novelist is out of the question.  They met.  They kissed.  They had sex.  The end.

We're all in this program for different reasons.  Mine are simple enough.  I don't want to work in TV news anymore.  Interestingly, I know what I don't want to do.  The problem is, I have no earthly idea what I do want to do.  My adviser for this program didn't seem too worried about this.  He said that students who don't know what their emphasis is going to be usually find their calling during the writing course.  Here I am.  No epiphanies yet.  Sure, it's just the beginning of this course.  But on top of venturing outside my comfort zone with having to write and to write well...there is an underlying pressure to find my calling.  I can tell myself the usual, "it will happen when it will happen" or "stressing over it isn't going to do you any good" until the zombie apocalypse.  It's still there, underlying every key stroke like the odor of the Chinese toilet I spoke of earlier.  I like to come full circle in my writing too.

In the simplest terms, I want to get more comfortable with writing.  I want to be able to hear my voice.  Or at least have somebody to tell me what to listen for. 

Argument

I gave a lot of thought to what I should write about.  I guess it isn't worth stressing about, but I did.  Is this interesting enough? No, that's been covered too much.  I thought for a fleeting moment that I should continue with covering the drama behind the scenes of television news like I did in my 501 blog.  I’ve noticed that some of my classmates are wandering down similar paths from their earlier work.  I thought that while I have much more to say about TV’s shortcomings, I wanted to explore something else from scratch.

I decided on music, more specifically punk rock music, because I'm passionate about it. I've been more focused on baby-sitting overpaid television news anchors and my twin boys for the last few years and have lost touch with some of the newer things happening in the genre.  I selfishly want to follow this topic because there is so much to catch up on.  I want to review new records, some old ones, and get back in “the know”.  I want to explore what’s out there and try to become an authority on the subject.

I recently got plugged in to Spotify and have been hooked.  I can listen to things I wanted to buy back in the day and never did.  Likewise, there are plenty of bands to explore that I’ve never heard of and probably should have.  Another interesting site I was turned on to is Soundcloud.  I can listen to the latest that bands or individuals have to offer.  I know there are other outlets to discover.  My goal is to find and discuss them over the next 12 weeks.

Bio-Hoedown

"The television business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
                                                                                                   - Hunter S. Thompson

Where to start?  I suppose the beginning.  I was born in Ft. Worth, Texas to an out of wed-lock 16 year old girl and given up for adoption. My parents brought me to San Antonio and divorced about a year later.  I have no recollection of them being together, though there are pictures.  Sounds kind of like the profile of a serial killer, doesn't it?  Like a Cure song.  It gets better.  My mom met and married a businessman she was set up with on a blind date.  They married by the vicinity of  my fourth birthday and soon after, we moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  I spent summers and holidays in San Antonio and Albuquerque with my dad and his family.  Thankfully, I was tall for my age and my parents were able to trick the airlines into letting a 4 year old kid fly alone.  Try doing that today!

Hold tight!  We're about to play a little "moving-van ping pong".  We moved to the San Francisco area by the middle of my fourth grade year.  We spent all of nine months there before moving to Lincoln, Massachusetts just outside of Boston.  We moved to Los Angeles at the end of my sixth grade year.  At the end of my seventh grade year we moved across the pond to Lausanne, Switzerland.  I went to a British private school where there were just over one hundred kids in kindergarten through the 8th grade.  There were eight kids in the entire eighth grade class!  It is said that culture shock stings most when moving back to your own country.  This, I can say with some authority, is quite true.  We moved back to the states during the summer after my eighth grade year and weeks after arriving on familiar shores, I decided that I wanted to live with my dad in San Antonio.  I didn't want to do any more moving.  Thus began my High School experience.  Here's where culture shock comes in to play.  I went to a high school with more than 4,000 students.  There were 1,500 in the freshman class alone juxtaposed to my most recent eighth grade class of eight.  Mentally, I crawled under a desk in a fetal position and rocked back and forth repeating "take me to my happy place".

I survived, as most of us do and decided I wanted to go snow skiing for college.  As it happened, the University of Denver accepted me.  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.  I majored in film production and minored in art.  I skied.  I partied.  I went to rehab.  You know, the usual college experience.  I graduated after 5 years and moved back to San Antonio to look for work.  I found a part time position with the ABC affiliate running camera, meanwhile, I planned to write a few scripts and shoot a few shorts to craft a nice reel.  Here comes the kink in my scheme.  The television control room.  It looked like the bridge of the Enterprise!  I took one look at the video switcher and it was over...I knew I wanted to direct the news and play with brightly colored and flashing do-dads.

I got screamed at.  I almost got in to a fist fight with the sports anchor.  But, like prison (I hear only!) you have to hold your ground to gain respect in this business.   I bugged directors to teach me how to punch shows.  I learned the studio stuff to the point that I could change a lamp, prompt, floor direct and run camera blindfolded.  Perspiration, frustration, patience and most of all humor finally afforded me the title of director.  I spent every waking moment, much to the chagrin of my then girlfriend now wife, at the station creating new effects to use in the newscasts.  If interested, you can see a collage of my effects I put at the beginning of every resume tape here.  Keep in mind these are from 1998 - but I think they still hold up.

GVG Kalypso

With my resume tape sent to the far corners of the continent, I landed a director job in Minneapolis and so began my second round of "moving-van ping pong" and me eating my words.  I spent two years directing a morning show start-up in the "Minny-Apple" that was fun, but the diva factor was extreme.  Soon after the move, I married the girl of my dreams.  She is the yin to my yang.  Or is it the other way around?  After Minneapolis, we moved to Omaha, Nebraska.  There, a production manager job fell in my lap.  It was a job of many hats really.  I directed the newscasts, created graphics, designed animations, managed & scheduled the crew and got saddled with building sets.  Omaha is the birthplace of my twin sons also.  After interviewing for a job in D.C. for the show Around The Horn and being denied said job because I specifically lacked Kalypso experience, I made it my mission to find a station that had one and to learn it inside out.  After almost 5 years in Nebraska, we moved to Memphis, Tennessee where we presently reside.

Now, six years later, here I am writing a blog for a grad school program in Interactive Media.  I got my Kalypso experience, but I lost the fire.  I decided that TV - more specifically news - is a dying art.  Journalism isn't what it used to be.  Ethics and integrity have been replaced by contests and sensationalism.  My grand plan - be done with TV news and enter an as yet determined field where I can surround myself with like-minded and creative thinkers.  Hunter S. Thompson would be pleased as spiked punch to know his proclamation continues to describe broadcast news with laser point accuracy.  The future, with TV behind me, is indeed bright.

One Chapter Ends, Another Begins

Writng Sample:  I wrote this for my blog - www.visionmixer.net that I started for 501 but have continued when time permits.  This was written about 2 weeks ago.

Guess what loyal readers?  I have a new job.  No.  Not out of TV.  Not yet – look for that in the coming years.  No, I decided to hang up my headset at what humorously has been described as “The Grande Dame of Memphis”.  WREG TV is officially in my rear view mirror.  And, while I have gained a number of, what I hope are, life long friendships, the place that is WREG is what I would describe as a life-sucking vampire that can turn good people into party-line following, self-important megalomaniacs.

Interestingly, it didn’t start that way!  I loved my job for the first couple of years!  Sure there were issues galore, but I was proud of the work we were doing and the crew that was placed in my charge.  It happened when the New York Times decided that they needed to spend more time focusing on their print media and get out of the TV news biz.  That’s when “it” happened.  WREG got gobbled up by Local TV, LLC, a company formed by an umbrella investment company – Oak Hill Capital Partners.  In addition, and to further downgrade the group, Local TV and Tribune Company (a notoriously bad employer in TV circles) formed a partnership.  It was agreed that Tribune would be providing “management services” as well as providing, under their interactive wing, platforms for web sites (Wikipedia).  This, coupled by some very poor staffing and strategy decisions by the News Director signaled the beginning of the end for Memphis’ Grande Dame.

I decided to leave primarily due to the News Director.  Though the company comes in a close second.  My decision stems from an incident that happened at the beginning of 2012.  After the installation of the new set – there were some new shot positions that were new to the production nomenclature.  On this particular morning, I sat down to direct my show – which, if you are familiar with directing, is a challenge.  Directors usually look at and block shots for their shows prior to executing.  Not in this case – I’m seeing it for the first time as it’s airing.  There was some confusion as to where one of reporters was supposed to stand.  The floor crew, looking at their rundown, saw one thing.  The script for the reporter said another.  The producer in the booth had no idea which
was correct.

I called the producer in the news room during the break and asked which position was the correct one.  To which I got the snottiest response coupled with expletives which I presume was an attempt to make me feel stupid for asking.  I tried to tell him to get his ducks in a row – and before I could finish, he started yelling at me and slammed the phone down.  Now – keep in mind – I have cameras in the studio (which is a working news room) and I watched this unfold.  He then gets up in a huff and runs toward the door to the control room.

There is 1 minute left in the commercial break.  As he rounded the corner, I firmly raised my voice before he could get a word in.  I told him that I was not going to debate him about this now.  That we could discuss it later, we were 50 seconds from air and that he could get the fuck out of my control room.  That was it.  He sulked off and unbeknownst to me wrote a nasty email to the News Director telling him that I had used profanity.  I found this out when my supervisor called me after work to find out what happened.

The following day, I asked this producer to join me in the control room for a face to face.   I was particularly uncomfortable with the fact that he had sent an incriminating email to the news director.  I asked him why he had broken the unwritten golden rule – what happens in the control room, stays in the control room.  I also told him to watch himself, that any blow-up, any miss-step – I would report.  Interestingly, he was atypically silent during this meeting.  Later that afternoon I was called to a meeting with the News Director and my supervisor.

Another meeting with the News Director and the much anticipated “stop cursing like a sailor” personnel letter to add to my already voluminous file.  He asked me to go over the events.  He asked me if I had the show’s interests at heart during the exchange.  To which I responded yes.  In fact, I added, it was the show’s interests that were entirely on my mind.  This Producer, I went on, was coming back to the control room for one reason.  To start a fight.  I knew that a knock down drag out was coming.  He was just mad that I shut him down before he got a chance to let me have it.  I told the News Director that I would do it again if the factors were similar.  I could tell he didn’t like this.  I could also tell that he didn’t like that a director had the huevos to stand up to one of his producers.

He then asked me about the face to face I had earlier that day with the producer.  He asked if I threatened him.  To which I said I had not.  I simply said that I would be watching him like a hawk.  That was it.  I left the meeting pissed off, I got a crisp new letter for my file and an assured reason for getting an insulting 1% raise for the 3rd year in a row.  It was only after the fact that I found out that this producer had actually recorded my face to face with him.  It was then that I understood the producer’s unusual silence during our meeting and why the News Director had asked if I threatened him.

I can’t work with or for a News Director that encourages this kind of behavior.  This producer recorded, what I thought was, a private conversation.  The News Director knew about it and used the information therein as leverage during my meeting with him.  It’s a real shame that Tennessee is one of the few states where at least one person has to know their conversation is being recorded.  I’d be blogging about lawyers, courtrooms and punitive damages instead.

With that, I close the chapter on News Channel 3.  Likewise, I open a new chapter at FOX.