The Blogging Monkeys

We Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts!

By Josh Dubois

 

On a recent Saturday I packed up my proton packs into Ecto 1 and headed up to Baltimore to shoot a video on Ghost Hunting.  As I loaded my equipment into the public library--we were filming the audio in a conference room there--I realized I had to curb the urge to ask about Gozer, and try to force Ray Parker Jr. to stop performing in my noggin.  

Now, admittedly I know nothing about ghosts except that they are sometimes made out of giant marshmallows, so I felt I had some learning ahead.  I soon spotted the expert Vince Wilson dressed as I would imagine an archaeologist, lugging around just as much equipment as myself.  Over the next couple hours Vince discussed everything from EMF meters to cold spots.  I won't go into too much detail here, as you might as well just watch the video.  I also learned that when you shoot a ghost hunting video normal audio malfunctions sound a little bit more like screams.

After getting our audio completed we headed over to Edgar Allen Poe's grave, located in downtown Baltimore.  Here in the backyard of a historic church lies Edgar's original burial site, as well as Mr. Poe himself, in a fancy new grave site near the entrance.  The history behind Poe's burial is as interesting as the location.  The original headstone, and the only one his family could afford, was destroyed in a freak train accident.  He rested in an unmarked grave until a group of Baltimore teachers gathered enough money to have a proper headstone attached.  

To cap off the shoot, We went underneath the church into the catacombs to film about half of the b-roll that will appear in the final video.  The shoot was incredibly fun, and educating, and even a bit scary--for just a second.

 

Introducing our New Video Page & Player

If you’ve noticed, we recently launched a new video player, as well as a redesigned video page!  The new video player and page was the result of many hours of hard work.  We worked around the clock to implement all new the behavior. We had folks creating css, slicing images, implementing behaviors for the new tabs and behaviors for the new scrolling pane. Then, we brought it all together and tied it in with the data that drives the page. 

What does that mean for you, the viewer?  Well, in addition to a cool new design, there are many functional improvements as well.  First, you can now easily view all the segments in the video series simply by clicking on the film icon in the player bar.  Doing so pops up the thumbnails, which you can scroll through to the right or left and select another segment to watch.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the immediate right of the thumbnail button is a button that gives the viewer the ability to view the video full-screen--definitely helpful for those hard-to-see shots.  To the right of that—the tool icon in the far bottom-right—provides the ability to zoom or use slow-motion.   One additional cool feature with the zoom is that after selecting how much you want to zoom, you can actually drag the mouse around to focus what part of the screen you want to zoom into.  Clicking on the tools icon again will remove the menus.

 

Finally, if you click the ‘Share’ button in the bottom-left corner of the player, you’ll be taken to a screen where you can submit the video to various bookmarking sites, send an email of the video to a friend, or embed the video on your website or blog.    To give you still more options, if you click the appropriately-named “Options” button near the bottom, you will have the ability to embed different sized players—even a custom size of your choosing.  Once you’ve selected the size, simply click “Copy Embed Code” and then paste into your web page.  It’s that easy!  Clicking the “Share” button one more time (or the “Close” button) will instantly start the video playing again.

Moving on to the new video page design—the goal was to enhance the navigation and aesthetics of the page.  You'll now find other related videos conveniently to the right of the player.  Plus, if you scroll down the page, you'll find still other videos to watch.  We also moved the video details, such as view count, star ratings, etc, and the transcript up the page, so that you can now watch the video at the same time as viewing them.  Finally, we've made it easy to post your favorite video to popular bookmarking sites, by providing links beside the video, as well as on the 'Share' screen in the video player.

Overall, the entire redesign process was a team effort.  It's still a work in progress as more content is planned for this page we've still got room to make the page faster, but we’re pleased with the new look and hope that you like it as well.  Please let us know what you think!

Welcome to the Gun Show

By James Lucas, MonkeySee.com Producer

Recently, I was woken up by the shrill high-pitched beeping of my alarm clock at 2:00 AM--never a pleasant experience. As I swatted mindlessly at my unyielding wake-up call, I thought about the excitment that this day would bring. In a few hours time I would be leaving DC behind for a more exotic location, Long Island, and a Monkeysee.com video shoot with Fitness Celebrity, John Basedow.

After a brief wake-up shower and a short stop in Arlington to pick-up my Monkeysee colleague Courtney, we were on our way to BWI Airport. Thanks to heavy traffic and a GPS system that stopped caring, we barely made our flight.

We arrived into Long Island airport at 7:00 AM for our noon shoot with John. Now if you know anything about Islip, Long Island, you probably know that it isn't very close to New York City. Unfortunately, Courtney and I never received that memo. We both figured that we had more than enough time to take the train to Manhattan, do some sight-seeing and come back in time for our shoot. WRONG. We, did however end-up taking a lovely scenic train ride to Penn Station then directly back.

Courtney and I arrived to the gym a few minutes before noon. We had just barely begun to setup the equipment when John and his assistant arrived. Admittedly, I was a little nervous about meeting him. He is the first celebrity I've had a chance to work with, so I really didn't know what to expect. Fortunately, for both of us, he was extremely nice, very willing to follow direction and work with our ideas and had a great since of humor, which helps during long shoots.

The video we were shooting that day was called John Basedow's Guide to Awesome Arms. It didn't take John long to get our format down and before you know it, we were done shooting. Our biggest obstacle of the day was the constant and persistent gym noise. Thankfully John's Assistant, Carline, had no problems with asking people to quiet themselves down, and we completed our shoot without any major snags.

We had a few minutes after our shoot before we had to go to the airport, so some obligatory snapshots were taken. We decided to forgo originality in photos and opt for the "Welcome to the Gun Show" pose. Predictably, John was several buffness levels above me. It was not my best picture.

An uneventful flight home wrapped up our day and I was at home and in bed by a little after midnight. Not one of my shorter days, but definitely one of those most fun I've had at work. I also took away some great workout tips, so you better watch your back John Basedow--there may be a new fitness celebrity in town soon.  I'm gunnin' for ya.  And if you haven't seen the video series yet, check it out here.

James

Editors note: Sadly, since finishing this shoot, James decided to move on from MonkeySee, but his new adventures can be found here. Best wishes James!

MonkeySee on iPhone 3G

We're staying quite busy over here, but we wanted to take a short break to brag about an exciting announcement--you can now watch MonkeySee's thousands of professionally produced videos on the iPhone 3G.  Even more exciting, we are the first how-to site to have that ability! Pretty cool, right? 

The complete text release can be viewed here.  So get your iPhone and check us out today!

Surviving the iPhone 3G

By Josh Dubois

Last year, I waited in line with my Mom for the original iPhone.  We spent two hours in separate lines--she waited at the Apple Store in Tyson's, while I waited in the mall's AT&T line.  At the time, no one really knew how many (iPhones) there would be, so everyone was nervous about getting their hands on one.  The stores opened right on time, and everyone who wanted one got one--quick too. 

Needless to say, this year when I showed up outside an Apple store in Clarendon, VA and hopped in a line one-third the size of last year, I thought it would be no problem--I will be in and out, new phone in hand in no time.  This year it was a little more important that I have one the first day than it was last year.   First, I was working on a video tutorial, and trying to get it done as quick as I could.  I had already run into a couple delays early in the week as my old iPhone was stolen the week before in NYC, which was reason number two why I wanted to get one on the first day. 

The doors to the Apple Store opened right at 8 AM, and the first 15 or 20 customers went inside.  It took around 25 minutes before anyone emerged with a really fancy bag and an even fancier phone inside.  Then the delays started.  Apple's new process of activating the phones in-store, to avoid people "jail-braking" their phones, selling them overseas, or buying them simply to sell on eBay was taking its toll on the Apple servers.  They crashed and crashed and crashed, and the normally cheery Apple employees were equally freaking out, claiming, "Listen, we are more frustrated than you right now."  That was probably true at 11AM, when I didn't yet have my phone and still had about 60 people in front of me.  However, at 1PM, when I was sitting on a stool inside the Apple store with only three other customers and 35 employees standing around, I was starting to feel a little frustrated. 

Finally at 2PM I got my phone, but I couldn't make calls from until I took home?!? (In store activation = terrible idea).  Overall, it was sweet, I got a tan from waiting in the line outside, felt like a huge nerd, and still had 10 hours to go to complete my video.  The phone is really cool though! 

Was it worth it?  Check out my new video entitled How to Use the iPhone 3G, and let me know what you think.

YouTube Channel Page

We're happy to show off our redesigned YouTube channel page: http://www.youtube.com/user/monkeyseevideos

There will be MUCH more to come, but if you have a minute, take a look through and tell us what you think.  Also, feel free to subscribe to our video page, so you'll be able to see the latest videos uploaded, as well as what comments have been posted.

48 Hour Film Project

Monday marked the end of an exhausting, but productive weekend for many of us here at Monkey See. We completed the 48 Hour Film Project—with less than 30 minutes to spare.

For those of you who don’t know, the 48 Hour Film Project is a major competition between filmmakers around the country who write, shoot and edit a 4- to 7- minute film in only 48 hours.

Even though all production takes place during the 48 hours, we had a lot of time before hand to begin prepping for the event. We cast two fantastic actors to help us shoot the video—Meera and Paul.  Preparing further, we scouted locations and assigned everyone to a specific job.

On Friday night, every team selected a genre by drawing from a hat, which included drama, comedy, musical and horror. Each team was also assigned a character name, profession, a prop and a line of dialog that must be included in the movie. Our genre was “Film de Femme”, and we had to use ‘sauce ‘as a prop, a designer named Larry or Lori Gardner and the line “I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”

Derek and James had the script finished by midnight for the first read-through while the rest of the team scoured the local malls for props and costumes. Most important was a red gown for Antonia’s soap-star character, Celeste. Anna and Antonia found it minutes before the mall closed at 9:30 and—with the help of a coupon—even stayed within their budget.

Many of us only slept for 1-2 hours on Friday night before getting up at 5:00 am to begin a LONG day of shooting. We began during “Magic Hour,” a time when the light is perfect, at dawn or sunset.

The first scene we shot starred Win and Antonia on the top of a parking garage. After that, our crew quickly moved to a bar area in a building nearby and then drove off to Antonia’s dad’s house to shoot the rest of the movie.

Shooting took place from 6:30 am until 6:00 pm, with most of the time spent in an extremely hot room, thanks to the lights. It was a challenge to keep our makeup from dripping off and stay cool. We were relieved when the shooting was completed and we could retreat to David’s nicely air conditioned apartment to begin editing!

We edited in shifts from 7:00 pm Saturday until 5:30 pm Sunday. James was our main editor and had some help from Josh and Antonia. Derek worked on After Effects throughout the night to create a hilarious car explosion special effect.

By 10:00am the entire piece was cut together and all we needed to do was add effects, fix the audio and add music and sound effects. No problem, right?  Wrong. By 5:30 we all started to sweat—again—as we struggled to burn the DVD and get all of the paperwork together.

Finally at 6:15 pm – only an hour and 15 minutes before the deadline – Courtney and Win left for the Warehouse Theatre in D.C. with our DVD. At 7:00pm Courtney called to let us know that the video had been delivered and was on time. Success!

I don’t think any of us have ever slept as well as we did Sunday night. It was an amazing weekend and a huge team building experience for us. We all worked together to create this movie and we hope you enjoy our film, entitled Mulberry Place.

Introducing...the Blogging Monkeys!

Thanks for visiting MonkeySee!  This is the official launch of our blog, and it's been a long time coming, We're growing rapidly over here at MonkeySee's world headquarters, outside of Washington, D.C., and hope that this blog can be a regular meeting place on our site. 

Over the past year, we've been busy creating videos on everything from last-minute dinner recipes to one-on-one skateboarding lessons.  We've got interior design tips, the basics of dog massage, boating safety--even instructions on how to milk a cow.

There are dozens of ways for you to get involved.  Our Filmmaker Program allows you to join our network of producers around the country.  You can upload your own quality video, or even sign up to become an expert and possibly appear in one of our videos.  And that's just the beginning--we want this site to be driven by you, the viewer, so send us your feedback!  If there's a video you would like to see, a suggestion about the site, or just your opinions and experiences, feel free to comment on this blog and share with the MonkeySee community.

In the coming weeks, we'll use this blog to give you a behind-the-scenes look at videos that we are shooting, introduce experts that we love and reveal new features.  In addition, we will review some of our all-time favorite shoots and post the footage that, otherwise, may never have made it to the site.  To make things interesting, we'll also make the occasional announcement and giveaways just on this blog--so keep checking back!

So, hop in the car as we pack up the lights and camera, and head out to some of the best dance studios, skate parks and restaurants around. 

The Blogging Monkeys