This was an enjoyable profile to shoot, but posed a bit of difficulty in the editing. The reporter and I shot about a half-hour interview walking around the farm and forest. He won his award for sustainable forest practices, something that’s extremely difficult to show in a short video. There was no planting or logging going on. What was happening was Christmas tree season. So I had plenty of nice b-roll of the Christmas tree business, and a story that had only marginally to do with Christmas trees. I spent a lot of time whittling down the interview to the bare essentials, and wrapping the experience of the tree farm around the subject’s audio.

A quick-turnaround daily video of a local event held by U.S. Submarine Veterans to remember the anniversary of the World War II attacks on Pearl Harbor. I’ve been doing lots of interviews and narration recently, so I decided to go with a natural sound only approach.

I went out on Friday night thinking this video was just going to be a basic story about the sights and sounds of a Friday night fight at the Coast Guard Academy. When I got there I found a much more interesting story.

On Veterans’ Day, we cover a lot of assemblies and orchestrated event with songs and speeches. One of my colleagues brought this observance to my attention as something a little different. These four vets play the pipes and drums at monuments in Mystic, Westerly, Pawcatuck and Stonington, and don’t expect anyone else to be their. It’s their own personal tribute, and it goes on with or without an audience.

Every election day, I look at the swaying fields of campaign signs and the horde of candidates wishing me good morning and wondered, do all of these displays really help anyone make up their mind. This became the subject of Rick’s and my latest video column:

There’s this intersection in New London with one of those interminable traffic lights. Every day when I leave work, I pull out of the garage and sit at this red light in a line of traffic. 99% of the time, there is no crossing traffic while dozens of cars line up waiting for it to change. My pal Rick Koster has been waiting at that light for many more years than I, and he’s come up with some good ways to pass the time in this latest video column.

Back in the summer, Rick Elissa and I took the Buford’s Pancake Challenge. We figured it would be a one time thing, but we started receiving all kinds of suggestions for other ungodly amounts of food that we could attempt to eat. The most awful of them was the three pound “Hall of Famer” burger at Michael Jordan’s 23.sportcafe.

This is the first of what will hopefully become a regular high school sports feature profiling athletes that we cover on the weekend.