30-Second Broadcast Television Spots
These are three of our 30-second shots that show in the Albany and Springfield markets. The first two are for Berkshire Orthopaedics, the third was made for the re-opening of the hospital in North Adams—so small a source of pride for both the town and the health system.
Public Access Television
Mistakes were made, but we get to do it again. This was the first episode of our public access television series where we went ‘on the road’. For the last, many, many years, this show was produced in a dark TV studio with two chairs between two shrubs, plants…pots of plants. We took the production into our newest operating room with a surgeon I know well. This gave us the opportunity to illustrate points with our B-roll but also have him be able to talk about the tools of his trade in his place of employment. There was a LOT more mechanical noise in the room than I thought, even having been in the room a number of times…that, and other lessons: LEARNED.
Healthcare Worker Appreciation Month ( Corporate Video examples)
These are two videos we made as a part of May’s month of Healthcare Worker Appreciation. One includes long-time employees who talk about their time of service and the community they feel a part of. The other is a pair of patients who give voice to how much they feel the health system has done for them.
One Shot at a Time
We moved to the Berkshires late in COVID, at a time when vaccine resistance was becoming more and more prevalent. Dr. Jason Ogiste moved from Manhattan to the Berkshires at about the same time. Here he encourages people to get their shots because he has seen things.
Using COVID for Good
COVID was horrific on so many levels. People died, and the world watched helplessly. The conditions brought on by COVID also made for an opportunity. We started COVID in the land of Zoom church, and it took me exactly one Zoom church to feel that it could not have been a worse way to make people feel at least okay. The format of Zoom church, at least at the outset, was a grid of faces all looking out, all equal, all flat. That's not church, that's not what's for that, that's not what people needed, ESPECIALLY then, isolated, living scared, living in a cloud of the unknown. They needed something more, something that tied them back to one another, something that gave them hints of normal, of the way things were, or the way they were supposed to be. We sought to give that. At one point, the service closed with a shot taken from a car driving from the church to the grocery store....people called in tears, THAT is what normal looked like, every Sunday we would finish church and all convene at the grocery store. Normal, that was the goal. We never made it, but we made some interesting things in the meantime.
These seem, what? awkward? rough? They are for a lot of reasons: user-contributed video on a huge range of phones, sometimes with minimal cooperation, filming outside in the wind, minimal light planning, minimal light. I cringe when I see some of the things we had to do, some of the things I did. But, I also learned SO much. A religious service has form, structure, rationality. The priest, my spouse, has a doctorate in Liturgy, things happen at certain points in time for specific reasons. In some ways, that made my life easier. In some ways, that strict structure gave me freedom. I came out of COVID changed, we all did, or most of us did. I came away with changed ideas about time, about emotion, about engagement.
These are rough and awkward, see it that way if you have to. But I learned a lot.
JuneneenthJuneteenth
The June 21, 2021 service may be one of my favorites, Juneteenth. We finished the service with a series of images from Gordon Parks of Black America in Washington DC. We also were granted permission to use a recording of Lift Every Voice and Sing from a gospel group from New Orleans called the Zion Harmonizers, founded in 1938. They just played in the 2026 New Orleans Jazz Festival....they are the real deal.The June 21, 2021 service may be one of my favorites, Juneteenth. We finished the service with a series of images from Gordon Parks of black America in Washington DC. We also were granted permission to use a recording of Lift Every Voice and Sing from a gospel group from New Orleans call the Zion Harmomizers founded in 1938 they just played in the 2026 New Orleans Jazz Festival....they are the real deal.
Opening Above the Clouds
A grand opening, starting above the fog bank covering much of Casco Bay, a slow pan around the horizon, Portland is there, Mount Washington, somewhere, and a drop down to the front door of the church. I might have been piloting the drone that day, I definitely flew it a great deal (legally). The ability to create smooth camera movements was an epiphany as was the ability to create those movements in places the eye doesn’t expect. Tracking shots that slide along the ground, smoothly, 9 inches from the floor, other tracking shots that reveal the altar with a straight rise to 15 feet above the floor, or a shot that traces the main aisle, where people would walk, but from 20 feet up.
Ending with Context
There were a number of times I went to various sources for content to use: public domain sounds, images, and, yes, moving pictures. I doubt most people realize how much content NASA has available, much less how much fun it is. There is not much that gives more context to creation than watching the turning of the Earth, than the rising of a comet in the distance, the slow slide of our world below us. That always provided a good ending to a service.