v i d e o c y

Picture this . . .

By Patrick O'Grady
Mad Dog Media

  THE PILOT FOR VIDEOCY burst onto the digital scene on Jan. 23, 2006. A one-word response to The Decider's State of the Union address, it was a simple bit of video shot by and edited in a Canon PowerShot SD600 digital still camera, a Luddite triumph not unlike my infrequent on-the-cheap Radio Free Dogpatch podcasts, which to date have managed to do entirely without the yuppie plaything from which the medium takes its name.

  I futzed around briefly with Super 8 movies and video in college, then became distracted by the written word as I wandered around from newspapers to magazines to websites over the next a couple or three decades. What revived my flagging interest in talking pictures, you ask? A couple of video clips Herself shot of her mom's new kitty using a Canon still camera that's even less of a technological marvel than mine. Monkey see, monkey do. From tiny acorns grow the mighty oaks. One more way to get under people's ever-thinner hides. I fully expect an Emmy nomination in the category of Obscure Online Annoyances, should one ever be established.

  As always, your thoughtful comments, sage advice, purposeless ravings and gibbering lunacy are welcome — send those cards and letters to Videocy in care of maddogmedia (at) gmail (dot) com. And thanks for watching.

---

  Technical notes: Videocy's "pilot" and the first "show" were shot with a Canon PowerShot SD600 digital still camera and edited on an Apple iBook G3 800 (OS X v10.2.8, 640MB RAM), using iMovie 3.0.3 and Front End Convert Drop 1.1. from K-werkx, which magically transformed the Canon's .avi files into QuickTime flicks that iMovie could swallow without barfing. The first upgrade was a Canon ZR500 digital video camcorder; the next was a Flip Ultra Series camcorder, a nifty miniature toy that's drawing rave reviews from propeller-heads far and wide. Editing now takes place on an Intel MacBook (OS 10.4.10, 1.25GB RAM), using iMovie HD 6.0.3.

---

Return to Mad Dog Media