People often ask for a look at how we make the videos. When we were putting together the the "Electing a US President" video, I made a special point to take photos of the process. Here's how it works:

Every video starts with a script. If there is "secret sauce" it happens in writing the script because the script drives the video. We use Google Docs to collaborate until we feel like the script is close to finished. Then, we start looking at a thumbnail storyboard.

I draw the scenes for the thumbnail storyboard. It's our first attempt to represent the visuals.

After a couple of rounds of thumbnails and lots of talking between us, we make a list of all the elements that need to be drawn for the video. At this point, I start drawing and digitizing the images. Of course, with the maps in this video, I resorted to tracing.

Once the images are drawn and digitized, we set up a new storyboard using purely digital images. This way, we can manipulate sizes easily and see how everything fits together. Once we feel confident, we print out the materials and start cutting and coloring.

Sometimes, we leave things laying around and our dog decides to put them in his mouth.

Before shooting the video, we assemble all the materials and take them to the studio. We iterate at every point in the process. The script and visuals change every day.

Once production begins, we follow the storyboard and slowly lay out each scene. Often, scenes are revised on the fly. You can never really see how it will work until you see it on the screen.

Each video is different. Sometimes we go down a road, only to find a dead end. We are both prepared to throw away our work and start over if it doesn't feel right. It's painful, but necessary.

Sachi takes over control once we get to the studio. She runs each scene, the camera, lights, etc. She manages the voice-over and all the post production work. Editing is a huge part of what makes the videos work and those decisions are Sachi's. While she's doing that, I start this process over for the next video.

All these elements come together to create this video (on Vimeo, YouTube and dotSUB):

2008 is shaping up to be a interesting year to try out new things when it comes to digital photos. From photo transfer technology, to wall hanging, to photo sharing services, here are a few things I'll be using in 2008.

Eye-Fi

I consider Eye-Fi a magical piece of photo technology. It makes it possible for me to upload photos to Flickr (or other services) and to my computer directly from my camera using my wi-fi network - no wires, no card readers.  Once it's installed, you just shoot a photo and within seconds the photo magically appears on the web and my computer.

Update:  I use Eye-fi on my home wi-fi network - when I arrive home,  the camera starts uploading as long as the camera is on. I set it to upload to Flickr as "private" and then change permissions as needed.

For SD memory cameras, you just replace your SD card with the 2gb Eye-Fi SD card and load the software on your computer.  Once it's set up, the Eye-Fi SD card makes it possible to transfer photos automatically.  If you don't have an SD camera, you can use the Eye-Fi card with a Compact Flash adapter too. I first heard about Eye-Fi from Anastasia of Juxtaprose and this year, it was a Christmas gift from my Mom. Thanks Santa!

FotoflÅ??t

Last year I gave Flickr's photo printing service a try and was impressed.  I get so used to seeing photos online that I forget about how they look on a wall. Just recently I came across fotoflÅ??t - which takes photos and wall mounting to a new level. 

Two things I love about fotoflÅ??t:

1.  Frameless design and photo protection.  They print your photos on high quality photographic paper and then fuse it to 1/8" thick acrylic. This makes them low reflection, low glare and high durability. I printed some of our travel panoramas.

2.  Magnetic wall mounts.  Each fotoflÅ??t comes with a wall mount that makes the photos modular.  Once the mounts are in place, you can have a number of fotoflÅ??t photos and switch them out in seconds.

Right now, fotoflÅ??t is working directly with Smug Mug, a photo sharing service.  In fact, in order to use fotoflÅ??t I had to upload my photos to Smug Mug first.  This may change soon.

SmugMug

Either way, it gave me a reason to try out SmugMug and I'm impressed so far.  SmugMug is a bit more professionally oriented (and expensive) than Flickr, and I'm not a pro, but here are a few things I dig about SmugMug.

Photos really do look good on SmugMug.  Maybe it's the black background or pixie dust, but I love how my photos look there.

Nice options.  I like the new Picnik integration on Flickr better, but SmugMug provides a few options for online photo editing. If you become a power user (59.95/yr), you can even upload videos to your account.

Build a store. If you become a Pro user (149.95/yr) you can make SmugMug a platform on your domain. This means that I could use SmugMug to create LeesPhotoStore.com and sell my photos.  They keep 15% and handle support and technical details.

The SmugMug attitude. I love their story of passion, family, being small and living a dream.

So these are a few products I plan to use this year.  Maybe you have more?

(My Flickr account) 

I always wanted to be independent - I never, not once in my life, had the goal of working for someone else.  It's not in my genes.  In 2003 I founded Common Craft and in January of 2007 Sachi joined the company.  Since then, Sachi has been the real force driving our goal of having a truly independent lifestyle.

And it is ALL about lifestyle.  As I've written before, we make our lifestyle a huge priority.  Why choose to be independent if you can't create a job and schedule that works for you?  We've been trying to figure out what this means and I have a couple of examples.

Despite being independent since 2003, there is a part of me that feels like I need to keep normal business hours.  This is particularly true in the mornings - I'm compelled to get up and start work.  Even when we're up past midnight working - I still feel the need to be up early.  This makes no sense to Sachi.  She says things like "We're independent - you don't make that choice to conform to everyone else's hours. Work on your schedule."  Of course it may be that my schedule happens to fit with the corporate world.  On the other hand, I think Sachi is slowly becoming nocturnal - sometimes staying up till 3 and sleeping until 11.  But hey, if it works for her it's a very good thing for us both.

There is part of me that still wants a weekend and sometimes they happen.  I look forward to Fridays and part of me needs to have a Saturday like everyone else.  Of course, Sachi is the voice of reason and says things like "Why would you go on a Saturday with all the other people?  - go on a Tuesday when they're at work.  Do you want to fight for parking and stand in line?"  Of course it's a good point - we have made a choice to be able to avoid the masses.  Sachi often reminds me that we can exchange almost any day for a Saturday.

I find all of this so interesting and we talk about it constantly.  It's one thing to have a job that is independent of bosses and corporate structure, but it's yet another to use that opportunity to create a lifestyle that fits you.

If someone told me back in March of this year that we'd be making videos as our full time job in July, I would have said it was preposterous. What do we know about making videos? Such is the current state of affairs - we're booked through the summer doing paperworks videos on commissioned basis and feel 100% confident that this is the right direction for us.

Of course, having people paying us to make videos means we have to learn fast and make some investments in our equipment and software.

It was obvious with the RSS video that we 1) had little idea of what we were doing and 2) lacked any real hardware for making videos of reasonable quality. The RSS video was made with 75watt desk lamps, a built-in microphone, Windows Movie Maker and our Sony Handycam - and it shows.

Since that time we've been learning on a need-to-know basis. For instance, in between the Wiki and Social Networking videos, we made the switch to a Mac, Final Cut Express (video editing software) and GarageBand for audio. We also got a professional microphone and preamp. This was all-new territory for us both.

Since then, we've been focused on two important and difficult aspects of video: light and sound. Like most other situations, we tinker until we find something that works.

As a case in point, we became more educated about shadows recently. Creating enough light is easy, but the right kind of light is quite hard and we've declared war on shadows. 2000 watts of lighting makes a lot of shadows. We recently experimented light deflectors made out of posterboard and aluminum foil to help diffuse the light, but the war wages on.

Audio - I never knew it could be so hard. Here's a valuable lesson we learned: If you record something in a sitting and then, a couple of days later, try to re-record a section and add it to the original, it won't sound right. Consistency is the holy grail and until just recently, we had no way of creating a consistent sound. Now, thanks to some creative uses of bedding, we have our very own sound studio. Maybe one day we'll have an uber-studio like Jay.

 It's tiny and stuffy, but it works quite well for us. It reminds me of building forts in the living room when I was a kid. Remember how the forts would get all stuffy? It's same feeling.