Congratulations to the crew of In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman on completing Season 2! I can’t remember a funner on-set experience. Great crew – Josh Tallo (Wicket), Tyler Lang (Han), Nicole Crivlare (R2d2), and Gunnar Jebsen (Chewbacca). You guys were fantastic! Also thanks go out to Andrew Newport, Jon Ellison, Dan Kullman, Rob Aguilar, Greg Quedens, Ryan Van Ert, Tyler Bedgood, Hayden Jackson, Eric Bjella for their contributions as well.

here’s tyler and Nicole acting as sit-ins for one of our (many) 3 camera setups:

so, how do you feel?

I’m catching my breath over and preparing for a shoot in the UK in August. Can’t wait for Season 3!!!

Joe

Hello there – Hoffman media recently went on a quick U.S. tour with stops in Boulder, CO. and Pittsburgh, PA. A great shoot with Alan Chow providing some superb audio, and myself shooting some beautiful footage with our brand new Panasonic AF100. The camera performed beautifully as expected and the avc hd codec looks amazing. here’s a shot with alan and i in front of the Colorado mountains.

here’s our posse getting a quick bit at a diner in Pittsburgh. Blake our fearless producer and Kim our wonderful client are pictured here with Alan and I.

Hopefully we’ll have more shoots with our AF100 coming up, i’m liking that camera more and more. The other great thing is it is a back-saver, coming in a weight of less than 5 pounds, it’s a joy to work with – coming from a background of wrangling 30 pound-plus cameras around, this is a welcome change.

Joe Hoffman

Hoffman Media received delivery of it’s first DSLR camera yesterday, the much sought after Panasonic GH2 micro 4/3 camera. very excited to utilize it’s avc video recording capabilities to match with our AF100!

Heading to Boulder, Colorado and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this week with the AF100…maybe the GH2 will have to stow away in the camera bag.

Joe

Hey!

where to begin.

I guess I’ll start by announcing how happy I am to announce the arrival of my fantastic new baby boy Emmett last December. He has certainly changed my life in so many amazing ways. here’s a little peek at the guy just after he was born.

one of his first naps

I guess now I can mention my other little baby…a new show currently airing on the Oprah Winfrey Network called “In the Bedroom (cat noise here) with Dr. Laura Berman (another cat noise).” What a tremendous woman. I’ve hardly ever met, let alone worked with a more impressive person. Thanks Dr. Berman for everything. Also gotta shout out to willow — er, I mean Larissa, for without her this show would have slid off the rails a thousand times. Great crew, Jon, Nicole, Alan, Tyler, Rachel, Stefanie, Heather, Collette, Gabe, Mario, Marianne, Randy, Linda, I miss you all! (and i hope to see you soon). Here’s a little pic of Dr. Berman reading some V.O. in her office during one of her many OTF sessions.

"ahem... Me me me meeee"

read it and weep.

toot toot! what was that? oh it was my own horn.

MOVING ON

ok, so what ELSE have you been doing? ok, voice in my head, i’ll tell you! how about the NFC Championship game at Soldier Field?

wait a minute...is that a #*@%ing D600????

here’s me posing with a cup of coffee on a recent shoot for new documentary about…yeah, coffee.

i was bit jittery after this shoot. hope the footage wasn't too shaky. (overcaffinated)

i needed a haircut when that pic was taken.

thanks for reading…more updates to come. In the meantime, go Spartans, and go Tigers!

Joe

Howdy from Hoffman Media! Lots to update you all about. Our busiest summer yet included production for a new show debuting on the Oprah Winfrey network this January! stay tuned for details..

LOTS of new gear brought into the mix this year including 2 spankin’ new Sony z7u’s and wireless video transmitters and monitor from Titan.

pics to come from some recent projects and more details soon.

joe

Hello!

A lot has been going on since my last post…here to catch up on a few things we’ve been doing.

Roger Ebert

I was fortunate to participate in 2 shoots recently with Roger Ebert, Chicago’s legendary film critic. He is developing a new television show and announced a new computer program that will allow him to use his REAL VOICE through a computer, using his commentary from his recorded voice from his many years on “At The Movies” they were able to make this possible. I was lucky to be invited into his home as well as participate in this interview in Champaign that was concurrent with his film Festival.

L.A. – Joe goes to Hollywood

hollywood sign

Updating a recruitment video for a tax consulting firm gave me the opportunity to hit L.A. for about 48 hours. And no trip to L.A. is complete without a visit to the In – n – Out Burger! Check out this menu.

pretty simple menu

Spa Commercial – I did the lighting, Jon Ellison worked the Jib, Hoffman media supplies the gear to visiting DP Skip Roessel. Cool shoot at a Korean spa in Niles, IL. Haven’t seen the final commercial yet. more happy clients! Here’s Jon Ellison operating the jib:

weightliftin'

Look at that beautifully lit scene with my kinoflo divas! and the hpx2000 is featured here also:

skip with the 2000

Some great projects so far this year, here’s to a great summer.

see you soon,

Joe

there is a lot of debate right now going on about how to transfer your p2 footage. panasonic just announce a simple p2 card reader which will be available in april for around $350.

to me, the best way to download p2 footage is still with a mac powerbook g4 and a lacie rugged firewire 800 hard drive. you can find a used powerbook g4 on craigslist or ebay nowadays for around $450, and the top models can still be fast enough to run the latest final cut pro.

So for just about $100 more than the panasonic p2 card reader you can get a reader and a laptop. panasonic knows this, and that’s why the new macbooks with the latest mac OS aren’t compatible with the usb-type p2 card adapters.

this is how we do transferring in the field.

Also, P2 is the official format of the vancouver olympic games – i wish i was there shooting!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks leading up to the holiday season…is there a day that sounds more ominous than Black Friday? I’d say it’s a bit of an exaggerative moniker, but then there’s the pesky business of people getting trampled at walmart. Hey, why not shop online this time? I think i’m going to skip shopping but possibly see “the Road” this weekend, the film based on Cormac McCarthy’s stunning postapocalyptic novel.

trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY

okay – so some recent shoots included a great day spent getting B Roll of Chicago for ABC’s Dancing with the Stars show. A beautiful sunny day. Just me, my camera, and my (adopted) city of Chicago.

This was a great shoot – the producers wanted Varicam, but were easily convinced (after a conference call with the post-production supervisor) to take the footage on a hard drive after being gathered by my beautiful HPX2000 p2 cam. I shot at 720p in 24p (the same specs they are used to with the varicam) and the footage looked great. The great thing about shooting tapeless is I was able to make an archived copy for them in case anything happened to the drive in shipping. If your expediter loses your tapes, you can get royally effed. P2 acts like a security blanket. Great format for making backup copies. Thanks to Rich from Editone for hooking me up with this gig.

Miley Cyrus, what can i say? She puts on one helluva show (for the, ahem, kids!)

she can change outfits really quickly. i think she had a different outfit for each song. great crew of backup dancers kept things interesting, and i had “party in the U.S.A.” stuck in my head for a few days. Miley had invited a group of special needs children and their high school cheerleader mentors to the show and brought them onstage for her final song. Thanks to Aaron Britton of ABritton Productions for having me on as his second cameraman. Look for this one on the show that someone just announced is ending in 2011. Here’s a shot of Miley and Me in 2007. Miley looks a bit 2-dimensional here…hmm…

ESPN! Got to go to Green Bay, WI. for the immortal cheesehead Brett Favre’s return to Lambeau. If you’re familiar with Kenny Mayne, you know he is the funniest reporter at ESPN. Here is Kenny getting ready for his live report:

Other shoots included a trip to the Cleveland Clinic where i learned Walnuts are good for you, a shoot with Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher, an interesting shoot where Jon Ellsion and I rigged up some security cameras to show a fire-retardant foam sysytem that replaces sprinklers. we rigged them to the ceiling above the foam spray and ran cables to some DvCam decks in another room. Didn’t want the equipment (or ourselves ) getting foamed like we were on “Double Dare.” Here’s a shot of of me attaching the security cam (Jon shot the monitor) :

Who likes those ghost hunters shows???!?!? I shot for one of them – got to do some spooky lighting for the interview, which is always fun. here’s a shot of the lighting setup:

Enjoy your turkeys, turduckens, and tofurkeys.

I took a trip to Hudson, NY this summer to shoot two travelogues with Potttery Barn’s best designer, Mr. Jeffrey Moss. (editor’s note: see blog entry from july 6th, 2009 “Upstate New York – Pottery barn”) The results of our efforts can be seen here: http://www.potterybarn.com/stylehouse/?cm_type=fnav —- The videos are titled Hudson, NY part 1 and part 2 under Jeffrey Moss’s “On Assignment” section. Enjoy! also check out the other design videos from Jeffrey’s trips to napa valley and sonoma. Those were shot by the talented Mr. Jonathan Ellison.

In other news, I just ordered a sectional couch from pottery barn. It’s orange!

joe