I'm on TV

Well, not yet actually, but I soon will be.  TipTV to be exact.  Last week I video-taped about 6 hours of training on CDA, CCD and XDS at our TipTV studios.  The studios are located in the GE Healthcare Institute where we hold many of our training and education activities just outside of Milwaukee.

The training groups works with eMedia Studios and Services to do the filming.  Jim was my director, and Keith the camera operator.  I was Mr. Boone, or "the other Keith" for the two days while filming.  A description of the studios appears on eMedia's web page here, and you can even take a walkthrough tour.  I was in Studio B (the first studio your see on the tour).

Taping for the day started out scary.  I had just finished putting the polishing touches on my presentations the night before and saved them.  But, an innappropriately placed coke bottle ended up bathing my laptop on the way to the studio.  I managed to recover the presentations by swapping the hard drive into another computer before that hard drive finally did go belly up.  So in the first two hours we put twenty minutes of CDA training into the can.  It took me a bit, and some prompting from the director to get back into my groove.  We polished off the CDA class and the XDS class that same day.

Thursday morning, I dropped my computer off to be replaced, and we video-taped the CCD presentation.  In 12 hours, we put 12 hours of video "in the can".  They taped both me and what I was projecting on my laptop, so 6 hours of training became 12, all of it filmed in HD.  I finished in time to pick up the replacement laptop before I headed back to Boston.

The taping they did of me used a green screen ("chromakey") background, so who knows, I could show up in Paris, or Hawaii, or with the pyramids behind me in Egypt in the final production.  We are hoping to have this finished sometime in the next six weeks, but have to fit it in with other productions that are being edited.  The studios include advanced editing equipment, a graphics department, and lots of other "Cool toys".

Although I've acted in theater before, and had some stage productions video taped, I never taped in a studio before.  This was a new and interesting experience for me, and one I hope can be repeated.  TipTV has quite a bit of continuing education on the use of diagnostic imaging equipment, but this is the first time they've put effort into developing training on standards.  I hope it's successful.  The lead for this project feels that it will be, because as she says, where else can you get it, but from the horse's mouth.

My response?  Whinny