Alaska: Getting There & Day 1

Because I had a complimentary ticket on Alaska Airlines, I was limited on choices for my departure. With the tight window for travel, I ended up with only one choice: flying out of Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. Alaska Airlines also flies out of Newark, but that was not an option on this trip.

I had a 5pm flight to Seattle, where I’d connect on to Anchorage. Given the three hours or so that it would take to drive to National, I decided to meet up with my friend Ed in Baltimore, for lunch. Ed’s an old newspaper guy, and is currently the managing editor of the daily record, a business newspaper. Ironically enough, Ed and his family had just returned from an Alaskan cruise.

National Airport wasn’t hard to find or navigate through, but the Alaska Airlines ticket counter was all by itself, in a hard-to-find corner. Walking the entire concourse almost got me sweaty enough for the full TSA search that I had on my Philadelphia-San Diego trip.

The flight to Seattle took off a bit late, but was otherwise uneventful. It actually landed early, which gave me time to buy a real sandwich before boarding the flight to Anchorage. Unfortunately, that flight left late and arrived late.

There was no midnight sun when we arrived in Anchorage, although it was about 11:45pm local time. So, same as in so many other cities, I got the car and drove to the hotel. Given that my body clock registered 4am, and that it was dark, and I’d never been to Anchorage, getting to the downtown Marriott was quite simple.

Wednesday morning came pretty early for me, what with the body clock thing. After breakfast, the gym, and some email work, it was off to Anchorage. The downtown is pretty small, and very tourist-driven. I took a bus-trolley ride through town, just to get oriented. Later on, I took some time to but the items I knew I’d have to take home. I did meet up with the President of the Alaska Professional Videographers Association (Karl Augestad) for lunch, then it was back to the hotel to prepare for the meeting.

My presentation was well-received, and the meeting drew more than their typical number of attendees. The association generously provided me with a couple of very nice parting gifts of smoked salmon (see photo, with Karl), and one attendee gave me jarred salmon that he had caught. It had been a pretty long day or two, so after the meeting it was time to walk back to the hotel (that was convenient) and call it a night.

There were two more days in Alaska, plus an interesting trip back to Washington. Those stories will be coming up soon.

South to Alaska?

I know the cliche uses "north" as the correct direction for reaching Alaska. In order to get there using the about-to-expire ticket that I have, I needto fly out of Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. Since that's south of here, I've got to go south to go north. Well, west and north.

I'm off to Anchorage to do a presentation to the Alaska Professional Videographers Association (APVA) on Wednesday. So it's a 3-hour drive to DC, a 5-1/2 hour flight to Seattle and a change of planes, and another 3-1/2 hour flight to Anchorage. That's about 12 hours if travel. Fortunately, there's only a short scheduled layover in Seattle.

That gets me to the Anchorage airport about 11:30pm local time, which is 4 hours behind the east coast. It's a long day of travel (it'll be worse coming home), but it's a first: no outside organization has addresses the APVA before. And another first is that I've not yet been to Alaska.

It should be an interesting couple of days. I'll try to keep current.

An Attempted Scam

I got a call this afternoon from a translation service, telling me that they were communicating with me on behalf of someone deaf or hard of hearing who was using one of those special machines. Whatever. He’s asking about video for his daughters wedding on 9/1, in Philadelphia. After a brief “conversation” through the translation service, I was asked to send information via email. As you see below, I did that.

His reply, however, is the classic scam spiel. I've shared this with as many industry professionals as I could. My original email is at the bottom.

************************************************************************************

From: daniel collins [mailto:danielcollins777@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 3:24 PMTo: Steve@SteveWernick.comSubject: special favor needed from you

Dear Steve,Thanks for your response and kind effort,the quote you have provided is okay and i will like to book and make total payment with my credit card,i will like you to know at this point that i also hire the service of a African Traditional dancers who does not have a credit card machine to run my card for his payment,i was billed $3000 for this service and i have been able to send $1000 to him via western union money transfer and i do not have enough raw fund on me at present to pay his balance than paying with my credit card so i will like you to add up the remaining $2000 to your charges and charge my credit card details for the sum of $6000 and forward $2000 to him in return via western union money transfer at the nearest location,the excess fund will be for the western union charges and compensation for your time and effort i want you to get back to me with a response and let me know if you are okay with this arrangement so i can forward my credit card details for the payment,thanks for your co-operation in advance,stay blessed.RegardsDr Collins
Hi Daniel,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your daughter’s wedding. If you haven’t yet done so, please visit our web site at www.videoccasion.net. We have sample videos and more information there.

Our standard programming always includes two camera coverage for both the ceremony and reception. The videos are all fully edited, and you’ll receive three identical copies. My intent is one for the bride and groom, and one for each set of parents, but how you divide them is your decision. Our pricing, if the wedding is in the general Philadelphia area, is $3495.00.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. If you have access to Instant Messaging, you can find me at WernickSteve on AOL IM.

Regards,
Steve Wernick
Videoccasion, Inc.

More Adventures in Travel

This week I’m in the San Diego area, shooting video for a corporate client. We’re shooting interviews in three cities (Princeton, NJ and Evanston, IL are the others) that the company plans on using as part of their effort in recruiting college grads and MBA-types for their world-wide offices.

The company booked the air travel for me, and that became a bit of an adventure. First, we had the administrative error of flying me out of Philadelphia, but then returning me to Newark, NJ. Driving home after than would have been a bit of a challenge. Then we had the airport challenge.

I was booked on United, flying from Philadelphia to Denver, then changing planes there for the final part of the trip. As I usually do, I checked in at United’s web site the night before my trip, and printed a boarding pass.

When I attempted to check in at the Untied kiosk, in terminal D, I was told that I’d been switched to USAirways, and to go to terminal C to check in there. No big deal, I thought. So I walked back outside, in the hot afternoon sun, dragging my suitcase, with my backpack full of gear weighing me down.

USAirways, remarkably, had a pretty short line at the kiosks. However, once again, I was not able to check in. The customer service rep told me that I had to go back to the United counter and get paperwork from them showing that my reservation was indeed transferred, and then come on back. Oh and that plane is scheduled for 4pm, not the 4:30pm that would have been the departure time with United.

So it’s back to the hot sun hustle between terminals, deal with a United customer service trainee, and her trainer who was clearly having issues with the transaction. Then it’s back to terminal C, where the line is longer and the clock is ticking. I sort-of cut the line, but I’d been told to come right back to the counter. Finally, my papers are in order and I’m off to the security line.

What happens when you have to take several trips between terminals, in the hot sun, with plenty of stuff to carry, and under time pressure? If you’re me, you work up quite a sweat. And someone dripping sweat while going through an airport security line is probably pretty high on the list of red flag behaviors. And I got flagged. That meant full pat-down, and swabbing of all my carry-on gear.
In the end, I obviously got through. The USAirways flight was direct, non-stop, which is always a better way to fly. And although I was in a middle seat, between a father and daughter returning from Switzerland, the fact that I arrived in San Diego about 2-1/2 hours earlier than I expected made up for that inconvenience.

I've Been Busy

This photo represents the entries from the competition that we’re hosting at The 4EVER Group. They all had to be sorted into the 15 different categories in the competition, and that was after each label had to be removed, and replaced with a control number. These videos will be shipped off to judges, and they’ll select the ones that will go to the final round.

The judges are all professional videographers, and they’re all volunteers. Judging in the upcoming opening round is done at the judge’s own location, and does take a considerable amount of time. We then all get together in one location for the final round, which takes the better part of four days and nights.

Videographers are deadline-oriented people. We accepted entries for eight weeks, but about 80% of the entries showed up on the two business days prior to the deadline. No fewer than 39 packages were delivered to my door on the day of the deadline.

The next couple of weeks will also be pretty busy. I’ve got a wedding, along with a corporate shoot that will take me to Evanston, IL and Carlsbad, CA. I’ll try to keep up with this blog throughout.

One Wedding, Two Firsts

After nearly 24 years in the video production business, it’s rare that I have the opportunity for one new thing in a day, let alone two. That’s exactly what happened on June 23, with a wedding at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia.

This particular wedding was referred to me by Sheila Corbett, who is a full-service consultant (http://www.elegant-events.net/). Although this was the first wedding where we worked together, I wasn’t counting that fact. This was the first Persian wedding we’d ever recorded, and it was also our first event recorded in High Definition (HD) video.

The photographer (http://www.alwaysandforeverphotography.com/) promised to supply a couple of pictures, and they’ll be posted as soon as I receive them. (UPDATE: They're posted!) It really was a visually interesting wedding, as the bride and groom sat on chairs placed on a riser, with a spread of various items in front of them. Some were clearly non-religious, like the two stuffed animals, and the honey was part of a ritual, where each dipped their little finger in the honey, to share with the other. And with much of the wedding ceremony in Farsi, well, I just hope there was nothing said that we need to bleep out.

Overall, they had a beautiful day. The weather was perfect, so all of their outdoor photography/videography will look great. It turned out that their Persian ceremony was not also a civil wedding, so they scheduled the civil ceremony for earlier that same day. So I guess they were married before they were married.

Oh, yeah, that HD thing. We were using Canon A1 cameras, on loan as part of the Iron Videographer competition. We ran three cameras during the ceremony: manned camera on a tripod at the back, my camera was hand-held at the front of the room, and an unmanned camera facing the bride and groom. As usual, we ran two hand-held cameras during the reception. With only about 60 guests, it was a remarkably fun party. I’ll post a short clip on our main web site (http://www.videoccasion.net/) after we’ve edited the full wedding.

The cameras were fairly easy to use, especially given how thick the manual was. The few adjustments we needed to make (setting the input for external microphones was an important adjustment) were simple changes found in the menu. Both of us had used the camera before, which certainly helped. Still, the cameras offer something like a zillion things that can be adjusted, tweaked, or refined, and it’s easy to make a mistake if you're not careful.

Cheers to Ghazaleh and Jahan, who had a wonderful wedding day.

Wedding Industry Interviews

For some time now, I’ve been the host of podcast interviews that are found at The 4EVER Group web site, www.4EVERGroup.org. Generally, the content has been directed to professional videographers, as we spotlight the personalities is, and tools used by, our industry.

Because of the ridiculous new book about weddings (no plug for her!), we’ve started to branch out with our interviews, and include other wedding industry professional. When I was recently in California, we had the opportunity to do our first non-videographer interview, and that was also our first Vidcast.

I interviewed a wedding planner named Jeannie Savage, and her company is Details Details (www.aboutdetailsdetails.com). She’s a big proponent of professional video, maybe in part because she didn’t have a video at her own wedding. In the interview, she explains about two really crucial moments that happened (an extemporaneous toast from her father was one) that she just can’t remember fully, as her wedding was five years ago. In addition, she realized what a valuable memento the video would have been for her own children.

Anyway, if you want to take a look, please follow this link:
http://www.elysiumproductions.com/jkh/4egvidcast1selfcontained.html