I shot video for the Hollidaysburg Area Public Library. It was a great experience in spite of - or perhaps because of - the many obstacles that I faced and the many mistakes that I made.

I don’t have a video camera, and I ended up borrowing three of them. Camera A had a battery that failed to charge. Camera B had a battery that charged but ran down faster than I expected. Camera C was my back-up camera, but I hadn’t even bothered to look at it until Camera B was recharging. It turns out that Camera C didn’t even *have* a battery. Fortunately, Camera B didn’t take long to recharge.

I didn’t look over how to use Camera B until the morning of the taping. I figured it would be a snap to use. Wrong. Thank heaven for my teenage sons, who showed me how it worked. I dragged them out of bed to help me, promising them waffles from The Dream restaurant. I kept the promise, and they helped me get some footage of waffle-eating that turned out to be unusable (no fault of theirs).

My younger son, Emmett, was my primary actor. He pointed the way to the Library … noted the huge dog painted on the building next door to the Library … leaned against the Library sign … goofed around beside the huge pencil in front of the Library … asked questions of the Library staff … walked this way, then that way, then back again … held up books and magazines … surfed the web on a Library computer … and pored over plans for the new Library building. My older son, Ethan, who was less available that day, appeared in a couple takes. He played the guitar that’s available for anyone to use at the Library, and he did a nice walk down the aisle beside Fiction.

I wrote a clever script for the shoot that turned out to be dumb because it didn’t fit the time allowed, the nature of the show or my feeble directing abilities. I soon saw that I had better just shoot stuff and hope that WPSU could make something of it. Keep your fingers crossed.

After my interview at the end of the day, I thought of many things I wished I’d mentioned, and I noticed that my glasses are crooked.

To sum up: A flawed and awesome (flaw-some?) day! I’m grateful for it. Can’t wait to see the show!

I shot a video on the Hollidaysburg Area School District with Linda Russo and Tim Gildea.  It was interesting to learn of the history of the various schools in the borough.  Check out some of my photos on the photo blog.

What a wonderful day in Hollidaysburg when we have the opportunity to showcase what a beautiful community in which we live.

We also have a number of human service/health care communities which are a resource.

We are pleased that Allegheny Lutheran Social Ministries(ALSM) is one such resource and proud to be part of the Hollidaysburg community for over 60 years. We provide skilled nursing and independent living for seniors in a secure communitym but we also provide in-home services to assist with maintaining independence. A well kept secret is that we provide services that span the generations from child care to senior residential care and we serve eight counties but our roots are in Hollidaysburg.

Our video highlights some of the history as well as the many ways in which “We touch lives.”

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of this program.

From start to finish, the WPSU folks were great to work with.  Kudos to Charlie and his staff, Dick, Chris and Pat for their hard work and putting up with all of us on Saturday for the interviews.  It was a very long day, but we all made it through!  Thanks to Ashear and Laura too!

We had a tremendous turnout from the community, which shows how much we truly love “our town”.  A special thanks to Adam and Jonathon Cruse who were advantageous in videoing different areas of the borough for the production.  They were patient and great to work with.  Thank you to everyone who helped make this video happen.  I am excited to see the final product.

A big thanks to John Seely from Jack’s Capitol Hotel Grille for providing food for the WPSU folks and others who helped with the production!  The scones were a big hit and lunch was fantastic!

I had a great day shooting footage of the Historic District.  The sunny weather was perfect for capturing the unique architectural details in the District.  Thanks to Adam Cruse for letting me borrow video equipment and for speedily providing an extra battery after the first one lost its juice. 

Hats off to Sarah Piper and the WPSU staff for working so hard, and providing us with the opportunity to showcase Hollidaysburg!