This article is Sponsored by Atomos
Joshua Cruse has a motto: "Good stuff, quick." Josh is the senior producer with GMedia, the creative agency for Green Machine Ensembles at George Mason University. In addition to being Virginia's largest public research institution, George Mason University is also home to a collection of nationally recognized musical performance groups like the Green Machine Pep Band, the George Mason University Indoor Drumline and the George Mason University Winterguard. Here's how Josh and his team use video and a revolutionary camera to cloud workflow to tell great stories in no time at all.
Before GMedia
Before there was GMedia, there was an enthusiastic student with a camera and a passion for musical performance. Josh grew up as a musician, going from piano to percussion to pipe organ. "I was one of the youngest people I knew who decided to take up pipe organ in middle school," he says, laughing.
Out of that came the desire to capture audio, and then eventually video: "I was in a jazz band and I filmed a rehearsal … just filmed a bunch of B-roll and cut it together." He remembers the delight he felt when his bandmates saw the results. "People were just amazed," he says. "I just remember it was a special feeling."
When Josh got to George Mason University, he kept recording. "There was not a band video dude, for lack of a better term," Josh recalls, "I just was basically running around with a camera." These days, Josh works with a full team of students and staff to capture everything from quick candid shots to social media sizzle reels to end-of-year celebration videos.
"The social media part of what we do is in some ways the byproduct of our primary goal," Josh admits. While social media represents a large chunk of GMedia's output, the real power of video is in capturing the attention of stakeholders and funders.
"For everything you see on stage … there's countless hours of things going on behind the scenes. When we're able to show a little bit of that… [viewers] also get to know the people behind it," Josh says, "Just being able to help empower people to tell their stories, that's what I love doing."
Life before the cloud
Until recently, Josh worked within a traditional video production workflow, complete with all the traditional headaches. "We had a very typical workflow," Josh says, "and the result of that, looking back on it, is we were all exhausted." Josh and his team would spend hours waiting for media to off-load onto traditional disks. And that was after a long, full day of recording Green Machine performances. "It was a lot for one person to do in one location," Josh tells us.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.