lo-fi, hi-style » Presentations

My presentation at FUTUROOM

Kirk Mastin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:47:19 +0000

Lo-Fi, Hi-Style in Prague: Kirk Mastin Speaks at FUTUROOM.CZ from Lo-Fi, Hi-Style on Vimeo.

Straight out of the program:

Modern multimedia technologies

Multimedia does not have to stand for “expensive” or “complicated”. introduction of some state-of-the-art technologies and multimedia equipment that can increase the productivity of your team and improve your print or internet product. Easy, cheap, fast. Presentation of cost-efficient top-quality equipment that media can provide to their reporters for multimedia-related tasks. Presentation of technologies that companies can use in order to boost their communication with customers.

Speaker: Kirk Mastin (USA)

The sound is a bit out of synch and I would recommend skipping past the example video I play in my speech as I have a better copy of it on my website under “Canon XH-A1 vs. Flip Video.“

-Kirk

NAB 2009: TV Production in the Age of YouTube

Kirk Mastin — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:54:59 +0000

This year I had the fortunate opportunity to speak at the 2009 NAB Convention in Las Vegas.

I spoke specifically to the Broadcast Education Association at a panel called The Pedagogy of Television Production in the Age of YouTube.

What did I talk about?

What traditional broadcast journalists must learn from the film making vocabulary of YouTube.
How the traditional media is flipped on its head by the rise of the amateur.
How broadcast journalists can save themselves by being their own brand and marketing their work independently.

(This video contains an abbreviated version of my speech.)

*In the spirit of lo-fi content creation, this video was shot using a Sony T500 digital point and shoot camera.

-Kirk

Why equipment isn’t everything.

Kirk Mastin — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:56:00 +0000

The eternal question: how important is the equipment when you tell a story?

When I was in the fledgling stages of photojournalism I would blame my equipment a lot. If I only had this lens, or that camera body, or a certain tripod or whatever, I would be able to create photos like the big guys.

As I left full time photojournalism to live a more balanced life, I found myself drifting back to storytelling. Several years later here I am: a budding filmmaker/storyteller/content creator. Now that my aim is film, that big question comes up again: how important is equipment?

16 hours later I have answered in part my eternal equipment question.

I have to say my results surprised even me.

As you can tell, I’ve been using the diminutive Flip Video camera. And just like the constraints that Lars von Trier created in 1995 with ‘Dogme 95′ to make film more creative and real, I am finding the constraints of the Flip Video camera have made me a better film maker.

Because I have limited technical choices I am forced to concentrate on using what I already have in a the most creative way possible.

Yesterday I set out to film the exact same mini-film using a Canon XH-A1 and a Flip Video camera. I actually taped the Flip Video to the side of the Canon XH A1 to ensure that each shot was exactly the same. Both sets of identical footage were editied exactly the same way: down to the frame! I wanted no bias in this test.

Both cameras were set to auto everything (Flip Video is always this way) and only minimal color correction was applied in Final Cut Pro to make them both roughly the same tone. I even cropped out about 30% of the Flip Video footage to make it have a 16:9 aspect ratio like the Canon XH A1.