The Timeless Art of Ethnography
Intern Isaac is all moved in at Stanford. After a lengthy cross-country road trip, Isaac has settled in to his dorm, made friends, and acclimated to the college experience. He’s just finished his third week of classes, which he has found to be difficult, but ultimately enjoyable.
He shot us an email the other day about one of his classes in particular – it’s a humanities course that focuses on the journeys and ideologies of four ancient and classical historians and philosophers. A major theme of the course is the ethnographic accounts of these historians. The focus on these ethnographies caught his eye, as we at MVP also have experience in the ethnographic field.
Ethnography is the detailed research and study of a particular culture or group of people. Isaac read Herodotus’ the Histories, which studies the interactions of the Ancient Greek and Persian empires, their geographical layouts, military conquests, and cultural interactions. Herodotus describes their cultures and customs in great depth, true to the ethnographic style.
2500 years later, these same ethnographic accounts are still in use. Here at MVP, we utilize ethnography to capture the behaviors, preferences, and buying habits of consumers. We capture, on film, the behind-the-scences actions of consumers for large advertising firms like BBDO in New York. Working with anthropologists, we use this video to supply useful information to these advertising agencies.
The medium has changed, as video has fulfilled the demands of a faster moving world, but the overall essences of the art is still the same. Centuries after Herodotus, the same ethnographic studies are in full gear at MVP.
Video, video everywhere…
At MVP, we have thousands of hours of recorded video. Not surprisingly, the question of the best way of storing this copious amount of video often comes up. It’s a tricky situation, one that can take a costly amount of hardware to store so much video if you don’t develop a smart process. Even more pressing is the possibility of a drive or other device crashing, erasing all of the data inside of it. This is why it is imperative to have a backup system, which stores everything a second time. After doing our research, we considered the best plan for efficiently and effectively storing the media that makes our business what it is. Much of what we learned could be valuable to the average consumer as well. So, let’s start with the basics, by reviewing a brief history of the evolution of file storage. We won’t go all the way back, how about just far enough for our eighteen-year-old intern, Isaac, to remember.
Remember: 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte. 1000 kilobytes = 1 megabyte. 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. 1000 gigabytes = 1 terabyte
1. The Floppy Disc: 1.44 MB. They’re extinct. If you’ve even seen a floppy in the last 8 years, you’re probably doing something wrong.
2. Zip Disc: 100 MB. A step up, but no giant leap by any means.
3. CD: 700 MB. In no way extinct, but very quickly being replaced by MP3’s . The world is online.
4. DVD: 4.7 GB. We use DVD’s frequently for sharing video, primarily with clients. For storage, however, it is largely impractical.
5. Flash Drive: 128 GB. Varying sizes, but 128 GB is fairly large. Terrific way for transferring media, not stellar for storing it.
6. External Hard drive: 2TB . Ahh, the external HD. Every computer has a hard drive inside of it for file storage. The external hard drive does exactly what it sounds like- it is another drive outside of the computer utilized for file storage. They come in varying sizes, but at MVP we primarily use 1 TB, 2 TB, and even 4 TB drives. To put the size of these drives in perspective, a 2 TB drive holds the equivalent of 1,422,222 floppy discs. By combining multiple drives, we have developed a system to edit, store, and backup the video very efficiently.
Our advice to consumers is to stay with this constantly changing evolution. We’re in the age of the terabyte, but fairly soon, we’ll undoubtedly be working with petabytes (1000 terabytes = 1 petabyte). If you’re a consumer, looking for easy file storage of documents, music, photos, and some video, our advice would be to purchase a 500 GB (half TB) external hard drive. They’re small, efficient, and can store a ton. Technology moves quickly, and is constantly becoming more efficient. Right now, however, a 500 GB drive puts you on pace with the technological evolution.
Nearing A Close
Intern: Serena
El final…o quizas, el principio. This probably doesn’t make a lot of sense if you don’t speak Spanish. It means,”The end, or perhaps, the beginning.”
Today I went on my last on-location shoot with Kirk to Coralville, Iowa for yet another project. Innovative Software Engineering. I was a PA on set, gaffing and transporting equipment when needed. Our main interviewee from Innovative Software Engineering was from the Canal Islands!
After filming testimonials everyone stepped outside dressed in their business attire. All the employees stood behind him as he cut a red ribbon with a golden pair of scissors to dedicate the site. Everyone cheered. The mayor gave a speech and others wished the new business well.
My time at MVP Video Production feels more like a beginning in a way. I have gained so much, in experience, knowledge, and confidence (and especially more confident as a cinema major! Talk about some major confidence) 🙂
I have been gathering photos from different folders on computers of the stills I’ve taken for my final project, and placed my favorites into one folder. I also gathered all my vlogs and the MVP Video Production “Thank You” video we created after the Corridor Business Journal voted the company the best video production company in the corridor.
Tomorrow is my final day. The end is near, but so is a new beginning.
I can’t think of a better place to have interned this summer!
8/11/11
Governor Perry at D.C. Taylor Co.
Kirk filming Gov. Perry
Interview of Phil Suess, C.O.O. of D.C. Taylor Co.
Kirk and Craig wait for Gov. Perry to exit his campaign bus
Eric filming Gov. Perry touring the D.C. Taylor Co. building
In Your Dreams!
Intern: Serena
“In your dreams!” It’s usually the dramatic phrase often rehearsed on TV when a character tells another that their hopes are improbable or impossible. But, I would ask, what are your dreams made of?
From one intern to another, I encourage you to challenge yourself to step outside any box you might create for yourself. My internship at MVP Video Production was all I dreamed it would be. But, I had to dream it first, and share that dream with my sponsor, Jeff. Your internship doesn’t have to look like everyone else’s, because you are not like anyone else. Yes, you want to make sure you are getting professional experience that will help you in your field, but what does that look like? Synergize with your sponsor because they may be able to take your dream even farther than you thought possible.
All this to say, I’m totally psyched about a new film opportunity I have with MVP Video Production. And it all came about because I finally asked to be a part of it–thus staying with my internship for a couple more days! It’s the season of elections and straw poles, and I will have a part to play in documenting this season with Jeff, Kirk, Eric and Isaac.
It’s more than I dreamed of. So, I just got to thinking, maybe I was dreaming too small?
Kirk and Eric set up the teleprompter in the studio and I got to practice reading off one. It’s an interesting contraption that lets you read on a reflective surface that is placed in front of the camera, so you are looking straight into the camera, but the camera cannot see the words you’re reading!
I’m also excited that I have an opportunity to think outside the box with my final internship project. I’m compiling an interactive DVD with these blog posts, a slideshow, and the intern vlogs.
Sayonara!
On Location at DC Taylor for Governor Rick Perry
It’s election season! As straw polls are made, debates are contested, and candidates vying for votes in the first caucus state campaign across Iowa, MVP is on the front lines of the excitement. Today, MVP will be on location at D.C. Taylor Co. in Cedar Rapids.
The commercial and industrial roofing company is hosting Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, who only yesterday announced his candidacy in the 2012 presidential election. Perry will be delivering a speech to the employees and visitors of D.C. Taylor, and MVP will be filming every second of it.
The tight itinerary of campaigning politicians will provide an opportunity for MVP to utilize our versatility in the field. With limited time and high demand to post quickly, we will be taking still images of the event and posting them on location to allow advertising agency, Henry Russell Bruce, to upload images of the event to the Internet in real time. MVP will also be providing a quick turnaround in video production, by shooting in the morning, and having the footage edited and posted later that same day.
Today is guaranteed to be an interesting day with a first-hand glimpse into the early political events of the election. It will be busy and exciting, but that’s nothing new for MVP!
The Lens is Mightier than the Sword
Our intern, Isaac, signed up for his first college course yesterday. Or rather, he ranked his preferences from a long list of courses and crossed his fingers. One in particular caught his eye and we began discussing it in the studio. The course focused on the effect that social media has on human rights and the new found voice of those who could not previously be heard. We thought back to the events that took place in Egypt earlier this year. Through the workings of Facebook and Twitter, disgruntled citizens organized and sparked a revolution.
This was not the first time such a thing has happened. Over the past few years, people around the world are quickly learning to fight injustice with camera phones. Suddenly, people had the power in their pocket to capture acts of violence or injustice and share them with the world in a matter of seconds. All they had to do was pull out their cell phone, record a video, and upload it to YouTube or Facebook for the world to see. The general public became their own journalists, publishing events that would otherwise go unnoticed.
It happened in Iran in 2009 as protests sparked up during election season. In Japan after the tsunami, the first videos seen by the world were from people on the ground with camera phones, before journalists could get there. The conflict in Libya was no different, and even the current riots in London are most thoroughly documented by bystanders.
Whether it be an authoritative injustice, the aftermath of unforeseeable events, or any other circumstance that could quickly go unnoticed by the world’s quickly moving attention span, those who need to be heard are realizing that the lens is often mightier than the sword.
Schindler’s List
Intern: Serena
I have two days left at my MVP Video Production internship. And, I had two movies left to watch on my AFI 5 of the Top 10 Challenge. So, last night I decided to watch movie #8 on the Top 100 List: Schindler’s List.
Steven Spielberg’s 1993 retelling of Oskar Schindler’s story was like watching a heart-wrenching memoir. The black-and-white movie felt more like a documentary at times, it was the simple horrors–like when a train filled with Jewish women are taken into a large shed with pipes on the ceiling wondering if they are about to be poisoned, or when “Schindler’s Jews” were placed on a train, and the camera shows close-ups of the alarm in their eyes–that made the movie memorable. Spielberg did not exaggerate the tragedy to make the movie more exciting. Simply showing the reality of the situation was enough to make it a horror.
The part of the movie that moved me the most was towards the end ::SPOILER ALERT::
The war had ended, and the Jews were free. Before fleeing, Schindler looked at the six thousand people he had kept alive, and looked at his possessions. He began to realize that even the gold pin on his coat could have saved two more lives. He saw the impact of saving just one life. It makes me think, I have the same power. I could spend $20 on a DVD, or I could give $20 to feed 100 kids. I could save a life and I’m making choices every day. In the end, Schindler did save more lives because the descendants of those people wouldn’t have been alive if he hadn’t done what he did.
This part of the challenge helped me realize that it’s okay to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone when it comes to movies. I had put off watching this movie for about a week because I was afraid it would try to use shock therapy to get people to see how gruesome this part of our world’s history is. But, the story didn’t try to cover every terror of the holocaust. It told the story it purposed to tell. Schindler’s story.
It is worth watching. We’ll see what I think of my last 5 of the Top 10 Challenge: The Godfather.
8/10/11
A Matter of Matte Boxes
Intern: Serena
This week I learned how to set up a matte box, and it’s only Wednesday. Kirk explained that the matte box is a piece of camera equipment that shields the camera’s lens from glare. It has the same effect of putting your hand over your eyes on a bright day.
In my opinion, the matte box is the most elaborate and difficult piece of camera equipment to set up because there are about 15 parts that come with this particular kit, and the camera must be placed on the tri-pod just right for the matte box to even fit on the tripod.
I also finished editing my third vlog post on the vocal booth. I plan to upload the video to the MVP Video Production YouTube site this week. Even though the topic was on sound, the audio was my biggest challenge. I’ve learned much about lighting (i.e. you need it!), and hooking up the audio to the camera–for example, you have to let the camera know if you are using an internal mic (the mic built into the camera), or an external mic like a boom–the hardest part of the audio is making sure it sounds good.
So, in this vlog post I did my best to avoid doing an impersonation of Lina Lamont from Singin’ in the Rain!
Still learning!
8/9/11
Friday at MVP Video Production
Intern: Serena
It’s Friday! And I’m here at MVP Video Production. It’s the end of my 8th week here. I can still remember the day I was interviewing for the position! Today I finished editing my third vlog post on audio!
Before this internship began, I didn’t know how to even operate a camera. Now I am confident to set up a shot with sound, lighting, and how to white-balance as well!
Coming in on a Friday allowed me to do more research on a new blog post on the new HTML5. I began writing this blog with an attempt at explaining what HTML is, how it’s a format and not a codec, the early differences between Adobe and Apple when it came to HTML5. Then I realized that trying to understand and write about concepts I’ve never heard about isn’t a great way to inform others. So, I thought, “why not lead others to trusted sources?”
Sometimes the best way to learn is not to teach, but to be taught alongside someone.
