Video Experience

I have long-standing connections with video production.

Video as a Student

I can remember when my high school first got a video camera and recorder. It was back in 1972 or 1973 during my junior year. It was a simple B&W video camera that fed into a reel-to-reel video recorder. I got the opportunity to make use of it as I was working as a school photographer at the time. Since it was very comparable to the reel-to-reel audio systems I was used to working, I was able to perform some very simple recordings with it.

One of them was a project of our Chemistry instructor, Mr. Gene Buzzard. (He stood about 6′4″, had ruddy skin and a nose like a beak: he had a considerable sense of humor about his name, even to the point of having a statue in the classroom of a buzzard with a pointed hat holding an Erlenmeyer flask in one hand and a chemistry book in the other, standing over a bubbling cauldron out of which were sticking a pair of arms and legs.) All of the second year Chemistry students had to create and perform a skit to be recorded and shown for the first year Chemistry students. None of the second year students knew how to run a camera, so I wound up doing most of the taping. There were satirical skits (“Convert it into moles and call me in the morning.”), a parody of “Kung Fu” named “Chem Fu”, and Christmas carols like “The Twelve Days of Chemistry” and “I’m Dreaming of a White PPT.”