If Santa brought you a camcorder for Christmas, or you’re simply encouraged by the videos over at PJTV, or our own efforts here, you might be looking for some tips to jump start your own creativity. Videomaker magazine, where I frequently contribute articles is excellent and its Website warrants plenty of exploration time. And you may also want to supplement your study of DIY video with…video. Here’s a great place to start, as producer D. Eric Franks writes on his Videopia blog:
A few years back, Digital Juice produced some really great programming for DJTV that I was lucky enough to be involved with. It sure didn’t last long, offically from October 2006 until late 2007, but the concept was well ahead of its time and most of the content still feels fresh in 2010. Unfortunately, while almost all of the shows are still available for free online, they are also almost completely and hopelessly lost in the chaos of Digital Juice marketing, promos and lesser screen-grab training segments. (Yes, I have contributed to the “lesser” content, but I accept no responsibility for the lack of organization!)
And so, I present here my annotated and completely biased catalog of DJTV programs and episodes. Much of this content is also available for purchase on convenient, conventional DVD-Video disc from Digital Juice as well, but you’ll have to track that down yourself!
Click over to Franks’ blog and follow the links for a variety of extremely useful tips — you’ll probably recognize more than a few that I’ve borrowed from time to time to spice up my own Silicon Graffiti videoblog. Probably the best place for a beginner to start is DJTV’s first series, Take Five. As Franks writes:
Take Five was really the pilot show for the entire DJTV venture. It started as a narrow sort of “Tips for Using Digital Juice Products” marketing piece (nothing wrong with that at all and a great idea) and eventually expanded to cover more than just Digital Juice, which, in my opinion, made the show much more broadly interesting and useful. Relatively easy to produce, it was never a fancy flagship showcase, but man, between Chuck and Rick, the 30 or so episodes (and 150 Tips!) sure were fun to watch. Unfortunately, due to the disorganization over at Digital Juice, these episodes are truly lost in the clutter and I couldn’t figure out how to tease them out of a simple search. Some day I’ll see if I can’t manually dredge through the files and find them for us!
Here’s a quick and dirty Google search of the Digital Juice site for the words “Take Five.” You should be able to track down most of the segments from there. Happy viewing!
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