Primary video destination: Christie microtiles!
 

Although I'm certain that many folks become videographers by way of a serious interest in photography, but probably not for the same reason as me! Last semester we moved into our long-anticipated new Biological Sciences building, whose main lobby came with a nifty 60-square-foot Christie microtiles digital display (see below, if I can upload the image). Only a handful of universities have such a display, and as far as I can tell they don't really take full advantage of them (announcements, games, etc.). I proposed putting together short video segments on specific research projects pursued by our faculty and students, and especially on interesting aspects of the local flora and fauna. Yikes! That's a lot of content to be generating, and updating. Another complication is its location, which makes audio often problematic (as in, potentially distracting classes and definitely driving faculty members crazy with too much repetition, as we learned with the 13-minute movie that we put together for the ribbon cutting and that was the only thing that played on the tiles for weeks until I replaced it with, sigh, a PowerPoint slide show!).

We've had a fair bit of technical (and political) challenges in getting this system up and running properly, but we're just about at the point where the keys will be handed over to me. Meanwhile, I've assembled some basic video equipment, and spent just enough time using them to be humbled at how little my photography instincts have served me in making videos! I only just discovered this site, which I plan to pore over for quite a while, but I'm sure to have lots of questions. For now, though, my most immediate question is, as a videographer, have you made videos specifically for noisy sites (or sites where audio really couldn't factor as prominently as usual)? If so, how did you handle this constraint (opportunity)?

Cheers,

Alan