Using your DSLR and available lighting!

Do More With Your DSLR I: Working with Available Light from Vimeo Video School on Vimeo.

You're out in the field getting ready for a shoot. Things are falling into place and right before your start to roll you notice that something is off with the lighting. External lights aren't an option at this point, so what are you to do? Vimeo Video School put together this helpful lighting check list to go over before you start your shoot. Enjoy!

Identifying your best tape!

This American Life host Ira Glass with some helpful tips about pulling your choicest quotes: "When I'm in the field, I'll write a list of favorite quotes immediately after getting the tape. Usually it's just three or four things, but when I'm recording all day, I'll take an hour or so at the end of the day and list everything I remember as great and as good. I try to keep the two categories very clear in my head: here's the stuff I know that kills, here's the stuff that's possible. It's surprising how often the story is simply the stuff I thought was great- that that initial list is the story. With just a few things from the "good" list, to fill a point out here or there."

Use that semicolon!

Get the scoop on how and when to properly use the semicolon!

Some words of wisdom from Ira Glass

ATMI students got to meet Ira Glass of This American Life, when he was in Anchorage April, 2010. Though most of us look up to him and consider him someone who has the radio thing down pat, he talked about how everyday he's worried he'll make a mistake and how he's still working to be a good radio producer.

ATMI WITH IRA!


Note: Thank you Kate Consenstein of Alaska Geographic for inspiring this post.

The luck charms that help us make good radio :P

Chris Brookes is known for making really good radio. And recently the website Transom.org featured his "Secret Ingredients to Great Features." We found his number two secret to ring true here at ATMI! He says that when he's producing he likes to have a talisman around. Talisman is basically an object that brings good luck.

"So my house is littered with 'feature talismans' – objects that once had power, but now are just meaningless objects. The features have the power now. Or perhaps it is just my ego that likes to flirt with this belief. It could be, as my wife says, that I just mess up the house with junk," Brookes wrote.

Is there something to it?! Maybe we owe the dogs, dinosaurs, Mickey Mouses and baby Buddahs of the ATMI studio a little credit?!

Give your project some perspective!

Wally Wood was one of the founding cartoonists of Mad magazine in 1952. He is known for coming up with a way to inspire himself to mix things up and be efficient. He taped comics to his drawing table, each with a different scene layout or way of composing a scene! He used these for his comic strips but these days people use them for inspiration for art, photography, video, etc.

He would also tell himself:

"Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up."

Wood's ex-assistant Larry Hama, who became an editor at Marvel Comics, thought Wood's advice to himself was spot on. Hama pasted the tips up in the bullpen at Marvel Comics. A bullpen is a cubicle style office where artists, journalists, etc might not have a permanent space but work where ever they can find a space at the moment. This is kind of like the ATMI office!

WALLY WOOD's 22 PANELS



NOTE: Special thanks to former ATMI member Andrew Aquino for pointing us in the direction of these fun tips!

Radiolab tells stories through sound!

THE SWEET SOUNDS OF SCIENCE
The New York Times has an interactive feature where you can explore the sounds WNYC's "Radiolab" has recorded/created to help them tell stories.

Here is an article to go with it! Be inspired!