Monday 22 October 2012

TBD - what is this?

"To Be Designed (TBD) - Detroit" - kind of leaves you wondering what it was all about, right?

Put briefly, the charge of this global group of 16 was to "Design the SkyMall catalog of the future."

Here is a link to a trailer that was put together shortly after the 3-day event at the University of Michigan's Detroit Center.  The clarity of hindsight tells it better than anything that came out in advance:  http://vimeo.com/51318314   Seriously: you should watch this.  It's less than 2 minutes long.

My role was to talk to some of the principal organizers in advance of the event, think about what people might want to do over those 3 days & nights and then figure out what kind of gear to bring to the site to make sure we could do those kinds of things.

We thought of a lot of things that might be wanted (on-site editing, green screen video, moving camera product shots, super-slo-mo video, 3D stills & video, interviews, general documentation) but found that most of what we did was to document the conversations as best as we could with pictures & video, constantly download all the media cards, and set up and shoot interviews with the 16 participants.



So, on Sunday September  30, 2012, I showed up at the Detroit Center in Orchestra Place on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, MI with a van full of gear to load in and organize things as much as would be possible prior to the start on the following day.

Inside was (partial list):

- 4 Canon DSLR kits
- 4 Canon VIXIA VF-30 video camcorder kits
- 2 green screen chromakey backgrounds
- 12+ lights
- 10 tripods
- 1 Cineskates camera dolly
- 1 MacPro tower with 2 24" LCD monitors
- 1 CASIO high speed video camera
- 1 FUJI WS-3 3D camera
- many AC power bars
- bags of cables, tape, labels, etc.
- several carts to move it around and to be used for setup

The first day (Monday) was spent at the Henry Ford, as one of the participants happened to be the Curator there.  It was great to get a chance to go back into their archives and look around.