Hello. I am......

[Gene Hall]

.....Gene, a high techie by day and a mad video jockey by night. I have shot a lot of tape of nature, dancers, and now I'm starting to shoot more in the city streets these days. I use an NTSC XL-1 and do native DV NLE on a PC. I started this NLE video "hobby", now turned obsession, in 1997 on a 133MHz P1 machine with an AV Master card and boy oh boy am I glad to be working in DV today!

I call what I produce, "Video Wallpaper", because I project it on the wall at ecstatic dance events in the Massachusetts area. At these events, I run several decks, a laptop, and a live camera into a couple of mixers, push a lot of buttons to get live keys, fades, mirrors, etc, and blast out a 12 foot wide video image (how can 4.57 dpi resolution look so good??).

I'm glad to have surfed through this forum today and I'm looking forward to learning a bunch and sharing what I can.

[Rik Sanchez]

Gene,
welcome to the boards, over here I've lots of the video projecting like you, it's great seeing our video displayed hugely across the walls. Recently I've done a lot of solo stuff, mainly shooting club events and running my video feed through several monitors and projects, recently started using a wireless transmitter to the send the signal to other floors in the club, no more long cables to roll up. That's great you are using a live feed, lots of VJ's here just set up shop with a laptop and run movie loops and cg the whole night, I'm sure your live feed gives a more real time effect.

When you shoot on the streets, ever get hassled for a shooting permit by the police? I've head about some cities like L.A. and NYC requiring permits when shooting, especially shooting with an XL-1 will bring lots of attention. Luckily here they are so used to video cameras that everyone just assumes I shoot for TV and just leaves me alone, that is until I start filming the police, then they get nervous and start asking questions, so I've learned not to film the cops.

read about a video exchange forum where VJ's from different parts of the world exchange footage, one guys sends a tape to another guy and vice-a-versa. Making all that footage takes a lot of time so VJ's are in constant need of new material. If I find that website I'll post it in this thread.

look forward to exchanging ideas/advice on the boards with you.

btw, when I started helping my friend with the club video, that was back in the day when the Sony VX-1 Hi8 3ccd was the top of the line, we ran at least 5 decks,hi-8 and VHS and two cameras with a videonics mx-1 mixer and an old panasonic mixer, plus for the big gigs we also threw in a video toaster and matrix with 6 projectors and at least 5 monitors, the equipment all still works.

[John Locke]

Hi Gene,

Welcome to the boards! I was hassled virtually every time I tried to shoot when I lived in Korea...either by officials, or even by locals waving at me not to shoot. Even the old retired guys who sit and watch parking areas, wearing their military-looking uniforms, white gloves, and with a whistle constantly poised on their lip ready for action, would hop out of their chairs and stand poised to do battle if I dared to shoot the parking lot. Funny since I was just walking by. But XL-1s are almost unknown in Korea, so having a foreigner walking around with one has the same effect as putting on a Barney suit and trying not to draw attention. Paranoia is just part of the culture there (as is evidenced by the "Watch out for Spies" posters on the subways). You can see it on the faces..."Why is that foreigner filming us?! Up to no good, I'm sure!"

In Seoul, I had a local guy turn and notice that I was filming one day...just a normal guy, not an official. Even though he obviously wasn't in the frame, he came over with his newspaper stretched out to block the lens and said, "Hey, what are you doing?" I was filming a popular shopping street and was set up on a far corner, not near enough to any one thing to bring attention to it. I explained that I was just filming this popular shopping area to show a friend back home. He said, "You have no right to be here. You go home." That pretty much sums up my Korean filming experience.

Like Rik said, Japan is no problem at all. Video cameras are common, and people are just more laid-back in general. Plus, they enjoy being photographed and filmed. I'm enjoying the freedom here. To show the contrasting attitudes between Korea and Japan, I was shooting in a park in Tokyo when an old guy in a park caretakers uniform came over to me and started speaking Japanese and motioning for me to follow. "Oh, great!" I thought. I followed, wondering what violation I'd committed. When we got to a little bridge, he stopped and pointed down at this school of huge, colorful carp. He looked at me and said one word..."Fish"...as he gestured for me to shoot. Then he folded his hands behind his back and stood there looking down at the fish and smiling. He seemed happy they were getting the appreciation they deserved.

Rik,

This may be considered off topic, but I'll go for it anyway....what wireless transmitter/receiver are you using? And did you get it here?

[Rik Sanchez]

John,
here is the link to the place I bought it at, it's in the states but I just bought a batter pack for it, it's on the accessories page, it take 8 AA size batteries:

http://www.concealedcameras.com/catalogue/trans_rec.html

they also ship transmitters to Japan, I asked them, it's not the greatest one in the world, cheap price, but is decent, although when I tested it on my camera, if a move around a lot the signal will at times get a break in it, for important stuff I'm always wired by cable when we are mixing camera feeds, but for walking around a club, it should be okay. Glad I got a battery pack for it, before I only used it to send the video from a deck to another floor or across the club without having to use a 40 meter cable, on a shoot tomorrow I can send my signal to a small monitor so my friend can monitor the shot, before we always had to run a cable out of my camera to the monitor, now it's one less cable we have to worry about. oh yeah, I also got a C size battery pack so I can power the receiver with it, I just have to now get a battery pack for my small sharp monitor, here is a link to the pack I had in mind:

http://www.nebtek.com/5inch/NEB50Xl%20page.html

then I can have a field monitor without cables, I hate being tied to cables, it feels like a leash.

[Gene Hall]

Hi,

Rik, John thanks for the welcomes.

Rik that sounds like a cool rig with the toaster and all. I'm just using what I can buy one piece at a time. It would be great to get that link to where the VJs share some of their video with each other. The production part is the killer for sure.

I've only started shooting in the city-scapes, and I'm an American in America, and so far I've picked some pretty safe public event kinds of situations so I've not experienced the lens-police or photo-phobes in full force yet. Thanks for sharing both of your stories about that with me. I liked the fish story, John.

Take care and see you around the boards.

[Rik Sanchez]

Gene,
I forgot to post the link, here's one I found, http://www.vjcentral.com/ I was reading through some of the posts there, they have lots of good stuff there, if I find anymore websites on VJ's I'll post those links on this thread.