Reworked the blog template due to changes at Blogger. Still some fine tuning but don't worry, be crappy.

Wow. I just watched Smoke Break TV - Episode 3. The funny part was that I did not edit this program and I didn't see it even though I signed for it. Mike did all the editing. What a great job. My wife and I actually laughed quite a bit. Yea. Excellent job Mike!

I heard a rumor that the 3rd episode is ready. I did not edit it. I have not seen it and I won't see it until it is on the air. Should be fun, but I'm nervous. I still have to sign the papers. Trust is a wonderful thing. When you find people you can trust, then you have it made. I have some of those people, but most of the people I know I can not trust at all. Cherish the people you can trust. We'll see how the 3rd episode goes down.

Today I'm at Access Tucson printing the 2nd episode of Smoke Break TV. The second episode is probably less interesting than the first episode, but there are still some good bits. I had to pull together the 2nd episode quickly because we need to submit a new episode every 4 weeks or Access Tucson will cancel our time slot.

Things have been a little more difficult for the Smoke Break crew because there have been some job changes. We don't run into each other as often.

We have some exciting plans for future episodes, so keep watching.

We got our first viewer review.
Wanderings

Last night of Field Production class. We have spent 6 nights learning about how to use the field production cameras and editing. The field camera is really nice and takes great video. We also got to shoot some stuff for the class that we will use in the show.

At this point we have 5 promos for the show about ready to go on air. That will probably cause people to start to know that we exist. I have also bought a firewire hard drive and some other equipment so I can edit at home. It's worth it so I can stay at home and not need to drive downtown.

The worst thing about Access Tucson is that all programming is on DVCPro format instead of MiniDV. So I will still need to reserve time downtown to write the masters to DVCPro for submission.

We're still trying to get things together to put together some shows. At this point I think we have the makings of about 3 shows. Talent is sometimes hard to come by because we're all so busy. There was some conversation about Ralph joining the race yesterday that we should have gotten on video. Maybe later. The problem is that the best Smoke Break conversations are on actual breaks --- hard to video tape.

I purchased a copy of Final Cut Express this week to use on my iMac for video editing. Access Tucson has all of this software available in their building, but I figured the price was worth it to purchase it so I could stay home and still be able to edit. I'm learning it.

We have production times scheduled in the first quarter including studio time at Access Tucson and two weekend of field equipment checkout. Hopefully we'll have a couple episodes in the can by March.

The lottery for show times at Access Tucson is held in January. Wish us luck, or you will be watching the show at 3:30am in the morning.

Tonight we started shooting our first episode. 2 hours of work produced about 2 minutes of footage. Excellent. Binky, Idea Guy and I went down to Access Tucson and shot several scenes. We also signed up for some field equipment for two weekends in February. We have a bit of work to do to get the first episode on the air in March. It's crunch time.

So we have this guy at work that thinks Smoke Break TV is just a scam. Well, I had a talking with him and I adjusted his attitude. See the results ...

1. Waking up on a holiday and deciding to have a friendly game of football with your sons...$100
2. The smell of turkey dinner cooking just inside the house...$100
3. Being the first in line at the ER...$50 deductible
4. Having your photo on the Smoke Break TV BLOG...priceless!

Took the CG class tonight with Idea Guy. We had four people in the class. It was fun, if not a little basic. "CTRL-X does cut, CTRL-C does copy". I was impressed with the poor quality of the GUI in the software. They have spin edit controls that you need to click into and drag left or right to change the number. Cute, but not intuitive. After going through the program with the instructor, we divided into three groups. One person in the hall, one person in studio A and Idea Guy and I in Studio B. At one point the instructor called us the "rowdy group". Excellent.

A week has gone by since we graduated from our classes. My wife said to me last night that I should find another class so I will get out of the house two nights a week. Mike and I will be taking the Compix class for CG in December. We should have kick-ass graphics for the show. I still have not found time to edit some of our camera work, but will try to this holiday weekend. We need to extract some shit-packer talk. I still have not set up a personalities section to the site, but hope to soon. We need to hoist our personalities on the eager public.

Awww yeah! We just finished the class tonight, and we're now all certified, bonafide Producer/Technical Director/Floor Manager/Cameramen.

I don't know about the rest of these guys, but I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of tonight's show. The interview with Eva and Petrina was awesome! We couldn't have scripted that any better.

So, Smoke Break TV is now a political movement... Hmmmm! Oh, the possibilities...

i'm gay

4 of 6 classes on studio production are down. The last class was interesting. We spent almost all of the night in the control room. During our class, there was a live show in the other studio - Chick Chat. They had a call in number. We were going to call in, but our break ended. They also wanted us to sign up for volunteers. We could volunteer on Chick Chat - that's probably our style.

Dinner and conversation at Hotel Congress was uninspiring. Mostly about whether Quick Time Rules or Quick Time Sucks. (It rules.) I'm working on adding a personalities section to the web site. I also acquired a trucker hat from my dad. It's a seed corn trucker hat. I don't know if that is a desirable as a tractor trucker hat, but maybe if I'm wearing it, that will increase the desirability.

I won't bother to rerepeat the recap from Monday night. ;)

Today was a slow day for SmokeBreakTV planning at work. I don't know if it was because Mark wasn't at work today, or what? Greg was on a tear about work all through lunch. I was scared because he was closer to my peacemaker than I was.

I do have to say though that Mark conveniently missed a great meeting this afternoon. Gabriel's presentation to a room full of everyone but, oh, Documentation, Training, PS, and PM, and any other people he invited who decided not to bother showing up. (Granted, our own Idea Guy couldn't attend because he supposedly had Jury Duty. *cough*bullshit*cough*) Anyway, the room was far from empty and I still think there were more invitees missing than the number who attended.

Shit, this has nothing to do with SmokeBreakTV, does it? Oh well, it's still the stuff that drives us. It's still the energy that we're going to turn into creativity when we do start producing the show.

Yeah, today was a slow "show" day. Tomorrow's the next class though, so we'll have lots more to report soon. One thing we need to keep in mind tomorrow:

No "del Taco" for Greg before class.

We had a session on lighting on Monday, Wednesday we start doing some camera work. The instructor talked about how important lighting and sound was and how that really makes things look professional. I'm starting to see the value of doing a professional job making the show look amateur.

There are 9 people in the class, 5 from SmokeBreakTV. It is fun taking the class with other people from our group.

The creative juices are flowing. I didn't think about work all night. I'm a geek, so I took my engineer notebook to class. I wrote down three more bits during the class. I also got the eye of the teacher with my question about Billl Moyar's piece on cable access television and contract renewals. He. he. he. Good news is that Access Tucson (www.accesstucson.org) has a contract 6 years to go. The two gin and tonics afterwards really brought out my bright side. This should be fun.

I gotta get Mike to get on Access Tucson's case about online viewing. Real Player? Yea right. I don't like Real Player. Maybe Mike can Appleize them.

Mike is so slow in the head on how the Internet works. He needs more edumacation.

Tomorrow is our orientation class for using the studios to produce our show. This is the first baby step for SBTV. We're going to be taking a camera so you can go along for the ride.

Segment: The baby sitting saga to allow me to attend this class. It's very complicated.

Segment: Study on ketchup packet sizing and how the evil corporations decided to reduce the amount of ketchup in the ketchup packet to save millions of dollars, but force me to use 4 packets for one thing of fries

Segment: Mark's grass installation. We will need to do some taping since that happens on Saturday.

This is the first post of the Smoke Break TV Blog! Ooooo. Now, back to the Richard Cam.