Making Better Museum Video with YouTube Data

I presented evaluation methods for YouTube as a part of a collaborative panel presented by the Media Production and Branding Special Interest Group and the Data & Insights Special Interest Group at MCN 2016 in New Orleans. The panel featured evaluation methods research by Trilce Navarrete and Elena Villaespesa, and a case study of SFMOMA video strategies by Emily Robbins. I am finally posting an unpacking of my portion of the presentation and outline some of the next steps for my YouTube video research that was inspired by a presentation by Emily at Museums and the Web 2015.

The tool

I can't take credit for this brilliant tool created by Digital Methods, but it is an awesome resource and organization. They have a collection of wonderful tools, the one I am using is the YouTube data scraper:

https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/youtube/mod_videos_list.php

Using the channel id approach I can scrape the full list of every publicly posted video on a single channel. Then I use chrome developer tools to grab the channel id from the code side by selecting the channel name and locating the  "data-ytid" field. Below is a screenshot that shows this.

So what channels do I pull data from? In other words, who do I benchmark against? I look at institutions I consider peers to my own. So not only a similar range of content being presented but also a similar budget. In addition to contemporary art museums of a similar size I like to also include what I call aspirational channels. For me this is the Louisiana Channel whose rate of production is beyond anything we could reasonably take on at the MCA, but I love their productions and their channel's high performance reflects that quality.

The data

Once the data is scraped I pulled it into Tableau taking the entire data set by video title and pulling that into the graph and looking at measurable elements such as Duration versus view count with the channel titles sorted by color so that I could identify the densities. Hooray for data visualization!

This map looks at the view count against the date published so that you can see when channels are born and who is doing burst publishing, many videos at time in little bursts as opposed to with regularity over time. In this you can see exactly when MOCA TV was in full swing, particularly the launch, where you see the highest density of publishing.

For kicks I switched view count to like count, and as I presumed likes directly reflect views but with lower numbers so let's just ignore that and look at views where we get numbers that make us feel a little more relevant. Because, as you'll note even in the above graph I capped it at 25k because let's get real, museum video is only so popular as a thing.

A question that came up from the group when I started sharing my graphs was how often are people publishing content? So This stacked bar graph became a really interesting tool for examining bursts of activity and who is creating at regular patterns, and here we see that the Louisiana Channel's consistency is incredibly impressive. And something happened the week of May 31 at the Walker in 2015, and yes I remembered exactly what it was, the Superscript conference had just happened it was the mass upload of all the symposium content so we'll see a similar burst of activity like this for last week as they just posted their Avant Museology symposium documentation.

Learnings

Looking at the data I am getting some ideas about good practices, not necessarily best, about what makes video work well. Frequency of posts and short durations certainly seem like important aspects of the content. The data also demonstrates that there are exceptions to every rule. And finally, an easy win if popularity is your goal–Celebrities! 

So how am I applying these learnings if my goal is to get more views and followers?
First what are we making and how is it doing? Our production methods to date have quite simply been to capture more program content and create better and more produced content, the edited narratives that accompany exhibitions.

New practices

Post video clips (outtakes)

Timely release of content

Prototype informal content capture that would be long term sustainable for the scale of our production team.

Wait, is the goal reasonable?

This goal directly conflicts with our distribution method. We embed from Vimeo on our website which is our primary traffic destination from social, so I am not getting any of the Vimeo stats incorporated into our performance. I'll never be the Louisiana channel with that kind of distribution method. So how do I prepare our channel for a future where it is better integrated into a new digital strategy? Or do I let go of my YouTube obsession and embrace alternative distribution strategies and instead focus on the aggregation of the analytics across these media. Perhaps, but I am a huge YouTube fan, and I love the idea of our museum videos being integrated into the fabric of the diverse world of YouTube content, MOCA TV did get that right for a little while. So can we be players in this game and end up a part of someone's YouTube K-hole? Maybe someone discovers contemporary art one long night of clicking.

Next steps

Fill out this survey to participate in the conversation (even if it is months later, the data is still useful). The answers to these questions help the team that worked on the presentation all of this was a part of continue to develop tools to benefit our work.

Create a museum video data exchange. The scraper tool only gets the surface level information, number of views, duration, etc., not the level of detail we can get on our backend analytics. But we can start exchanging CSV files from our channels to compare analytics. Maybe even create a museum video data repository so that we can start being a smart as Netflix and redesigning our content based on how people are engaging. Or maybe not since we can barely keep up with content production, but you get the idea.

In context of the insights we gain, look again at how the mainstream is functioning– there is plenty of information out there, for example– http://tubularinsights.com/youtube-statistics-competition/

Figure out a free way to aggregate data across our platforms, e.g. YouTube and Vimeo. Surely there are services that can do it, but let's roll up our sleeves and figure it out!

Continue to use the MCN network to develop a toolkit for understanding engagement with our video content across platforms.

Start gathering more detailed evaluative data on our video. We do user testing for websites and interactives, why not the video itself? Can we get as clever as Netflix in the creation of our content, where we shape the methods and styles to improve our approach to sustainable content creation?

What makes a good video?

The Brand Master Series for MCN Pro

Check out two conversations with brilliant women working with brands from strategy to design. They help us to think about what brand means from content to finished project. In addition to talking about the idea of branding each presented a variety of selected projects to give us a window into how they approach brand for various types of clients.

Why have museum brands become commodities?

Recently two major art museums in America presented their new and exciting visual identities: SFMOMA, under a major renovation (re-opening day as May 14, 2016) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Both projects bring a lot of buzz for the museum sector and, at the same time, reminds us of the challenges from the standpoint of strategic brand management. 

As a design project, the SFMOMA is great. A coherent change for a 20 year old logo. Fit for an open platform approach, is best used when it’s in the “expanded” version that pushes the three parts of the logo to the edges of any layout. And yet you can also relate it to the "frame" graphic trend that envelopes whatever is inside.

"Just as our new building is much more open to the city, the new logo is deliberately porous, providing multiple points of access. The organic configuration of the three parts echoes the idiosyncratic, free-thinking culture of the Bay Area, which is known for its nonconformity and diversity", said the SFMOMA in-house design team, "In short, the logo is designed to be as versatile and dynamic as the program of the institution".

The same could be said about the brand new MCA Chicago new identity, a powerful typography and grid oriented design, from Mevis & Van Deursen studio. It's a game that opens up a conversation (with a friendly HI and GO upfront) and also keeps a direct relationship with the contemporary art they display. As posted of the new museum website: "The identity features a grid, which refers both to the city grid of Chicago and the limestone and cast-aluminum squares that form the facade of the MCA; a color palette of black, white, yellow, and blue; and a new logo. Keeping the concept of a grid in mind, French designer Karl Nawrot created the typefaces by combining squares to form a series of fonts that range from playful to classical and evoke our institutional values and our diverse programs".

Both projects are just a starting point. The institutional practice will show if all the associated metaphors will come to life or if they are just visually cool. Considering the museum's recent history, there is a lot to expect.

And that always makes me think how much we, in the museum business, are aware of creating create sleek, unique, even name-free logos that are still instantly recognizable. And more: that not only "evoke" or represent the values and dynamics but also push those institutions forward. In Dec 2014, Damian Borchok, CEO of the Interbrand Australia, presented the talk I have nothing to say, and I'm saying it on the Communicating the Museum conference. Check the video where Borchok argues that contemporary brands, whether in retail or culture, ended up falling into the trap of becoming "commodities". 

That’s a good point to discuss. Cultural organizations have gradually adopted a series of those market conventions where the visual dominance in any medium should only be attributed to the content. The museum that is presenting should be hidden - except for the presence of that little logo on the corner that your boss always asks you to make bigger. But size is not the matter. That means a missed opportunity to show the connection the organization have to content. The logo is there but it do not speak out. In most cases you can easily swap the logo from an institution to another and that could give the same result. You won’t even notice it.

This is especially true for cultural organizations that have done branding programs following a design trend type that does not necessarily reflect something of the nature of these organizations, their views or the causes they support.

To Borchok, the way of building strong brands in museums begins by having something to say and actually saying it ("put on display").

What are your thoughts about this? Has your museum brand also fallen in the same trap? How does the print and digital work you do for your museum authentically speak up in context of the organization's mission?

Make your own Big Ideas video

The short videos circulating on the MCN Twitter feed were produced using the following remote capture method. We're sharing this tutorial and tips to encourage more presenters to take on creating self produced videos telling us about your session at MCN in November. If you do, be sure to tweet it to @museumcn!

Remote interview capture for Mac users 

1. Smartphone/iPhone capture. Built-in video recording software is great, to improve quality look at the lighting and sound tips.

2. Recording with a Mac with iSight:

Open Quicktime Player

File > New Movie Recording

To select external camera or microphone click arrow next to record button to change settings

When ready click record in Quicktime

Once the file opens make sure to save it!

3. There some good free software and tutorials for PC recording out there as well, just not tried and tested by us so not sure which are the best. If you know one, please share in the comments!

Lighting tips

Set up so that you are not in front of a window, instead face the window for full, even lighting.

Turn down brightness on laptop and turn on a desk lamp to avoid the blue glow of the screen.

If there is a little bit of a color cast over the image, this can be fixed by working with more even colored lighting; using just daylight, or just incandescent artificial light.

Sound tips

Use external microphone: An external mic is always better, if you can borrow one, even a low-end microphone will help reduce ambient sound. If you have a newer laptop with one “headphone jack” for sound you can use an iphone style headset with a speaker to get more isolated sound.

Sound Check: Test out your set up first by doing a test recording, make sure your setting is to “Built-in input.” If your clip doesn’t have any sound proceed with using the built in mic on the computer.

Reduce ambient Sound: It is important is to record in a quiet place, so close the windows, turn off fans, children and refridgerators. Play back your test recording at high volume and listen closely for background noises that you can fix.

If you want to buy a microphone because you have now become obsessed with making your own vlogs these are all going to be a step up from a built in laptop mic:

• Cheap ($16):Cyber Acoustics CVL-1084 USB Desktop Microphone
• Better ($40):Samson Go Mic - USB Microphone for Mac and PC Computers (Silver)
• Way better ($55): Blue Snowball USB Condenser Microphone with Accessory Pack (White)
• Awesome ($160): Rode NT-USB USB Microphone

UPDATE

This blog was created to provide a space to informally share ideas and projects with the museum video production community. We can’t say we have sustained the initial excitement: we had 26 posts in 2013; 4 posts in 2014 and none so far this year. Most of the posts with no comments at all. But hey, see how we care about metrics and evaluation?

Maybe it’s the right time for you and me to give the blog a second chance. With the freshly rebranded Media Production and Branding SIG and the Educational and Interpretive Media SIG it’s the perfect time for a reboot. (Side note: be sure to get yourself officially included in the SIG by signing up via the form link on the above linked SIG page that you want to be involved in)

Personally, we are excited about this change and look forward to seeing how this fosters expanded conversations about the media production process in context of the institution and its story (MPB) or the context of interpretive and educational tools found within and beyond the gallery (EIM). We also look forward to the inevitable collaborative opportunities we will have with one another as well as with other groups like Metrics and Evaluation. I look forward to hearing your ideas for collaboration and discussion topics here on the blog and at our upcoming annual meeting, more on that soon!

The official communications for the MCN Special Interest Group on Media Production and Branding will (like all the others) continue on the MCN list-serv. This blog is an informal place for capturing our conversations that can be easily shared throughout the community. So we look forward to continuing to hear about projects, technologies and provocations about the production of media content for museums here, but it’s only gonna be fun if you're here.

I am working on a post about the real scriptwriting process, not the idealized one we reference when describing our production process at conferences. And Luis is working on some interesting stuff about branding to get the conversation going on this new aspect to our group.

It’s gonna be FANTASTIC.

Let’s rock and roll.

September MCN Pro Session

This past week Emily and I brought together some wonderfully smart people to talk through file organization and the specific challenges we have when working with audio and video media. I learned so much from our guest presenters, and I look forward to incorporating tools and techniques from their presentations into my workflow.

Session Description: Have you ever gotten tangled in a web of disorganized video and image files? What are the best practices for organizing and storing images, audio and video? What is the difference between interpretive content and collections content? What constitutes a work of art and a backup work of art when discussing file types?

Anna Chiaretta-Lavatelli and Emily Lytle-Painter, co-chairs of MCN’s Media Production SIG, will explore issues around digital file storage and organization in cultural organizations with the follow speakers:

Heidi Quicksilver, The Jewish Museum
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
Patrick Heilman, DIA Art Foundation

This is an informal “radio show” style chat with short “presentations” and Q&A.

MCN2014 Proposal: Iron Editor

Here is a potentially fun/ridiculous idea for a panel:

A group of video editors are given a shared set of assets and a few different challenges (no animation, use only still images, same b-roll from an iPhone, keep it under 1:00, use only creative commons licensed materials for anything additional, etc). Those editors sit in a public location (maybe in the conference room) and have their screens projected while they edit for an hour (?) prior to the session presentations, (perhaps with a moderator providing Iron Chef style play-by-play?). The participants then discuss their thoughts in general about editing and storytelling, and the works are presented, questions are answered.

Anyone game for being a part of it? It would all be in the spirit of fun and not harshing judging your chops. I'd down to be a moderator, announcer, or editor and hand over the reins to anyone. 

MCN2014 Proposal: Collaborative Video Production

I'm interested in talking about collaborative videos produced between multiple entities, to look at how they create a more rounded story that fosters partnerships and allows the museum to engage community. It creates connections between the museum and participants by acquiring greater exposure, and engaging people who may not necessarily ever be in a museum video otherwise.

Collaborative video production has the potential to create more exposure because the videos become more engaging stories rather than self-serving promotional videos (even though the collaborative videos can be self-serving, it may not seem as such since it's not just the museum promoting itself).

Lastly, I'm thinking about discussing how important it is to think about video being internally collaborative and not just something per department. It's not just an educators/curator/marketers tool, but rather should be a collaboration between all of the above and more.

I'll be looking at a few collaborative videos I've made at the Balboa Park Online Collaborative and how they have all differed in some ways but all created a very meaningful and powerful story that united different groups.

MWA2013: Making it Pretty and Easy: Video for Museums on the Cheap

This is a very late update about my presentation at Museums and the Web Asia this past winter, I encourage those who were able to attend to share their experience of the recent MW conference in Baltimore!

So I have this production philosophy, and I know that at least several of you are on the same page with me on this-

Anyone can do it.

Consumer technology has come such a long way that we should not hesitate to put the camera in the hands of the curator, conservator, any professional at your museum, even (and perhaps especially) if they are completely inexperienced with video. Video is just another language for sharing information ideas and stories, augmenting text or replacing it.

As a video artist I was always toying with inexpensive technology to see how I could push it to behave either in a stylistic way that blindsided quality or as the technology has dramatically improved (understatement) using consumer cameras with my production know-how to create something that looks great. This wasn't any kind of revelation, it has been happening all around me over the past decade. In 2003, two years before YouTube was even born, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation was released in theaters. It is a feature film created from years and years of footage captured on handicam as his own video diary dating back to childhood, and to further underscore the role of consumer technology, he had edited the whole thing in iMovie.

I didn't realize the relationship of my independent video practice to the work I was doing in museums until I began working on the Conservation Reel project, www.conservationreel.org. This Kress Foundation funded project provided the opportunity to explore the landscape of conservation video as it currently exists and then imagine up what the future of video production and conservation looked like with the voices of the Advisory Committee expanding my perspective. It became a two year endeavor to understand how video can be used by the conservation community, and how to teach someone from scratch to make great looking video quite simply with minimal tools.

I took this philosophy with me to Museums and the Web Asia in Hong Kong and a second abbreviated version of the conference in Beijing. It was a wonderful experience bringing these ideas to the broader community and I hope that it is just the beginning of a longer and broader conversation that will help us move forward in considering best practices for content production in museums.

My presentation from the conference is available on SlideShare:

MWA2013 Making it Pretty and Easy: Video for Museums on the Cheap from Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli

SIG Lunch at #MCN2013

During MCN2013 in Montreal, Quebec, the Media Production SIG met for the first time to discuss the needs of this newly formed Special Interest Group. 

Here are the notes from the meeting: 

How can we reach people year-round to create a network of media professionals?

Start year round discussion on Twitter. Have a permanent hashtag for people to use (#museumvideo) and install widget on the blog. 

There is a desire to keep blog long form and public to be able to share more 

Should we start a ListServ? Who would host/manage? It should be archivable and easy. Maybe Google Groups? Consider having people apply to the listserv to avoid heavy sales focus?

Topics for Next Year:

• Accessible Production: Logistics of Content Production and Guidelines for Creativity
• Video Project Process: Tips and Tools for Organization and Management
• Long Form Video for Museums
• Hiring Media People: What skill sets do digital media creative teams need?
• Process Inspiration: Tips from Other Fields on Making Digital Media
• Educating Leadership: How to teach your boss about video and digital Media
• Forced Outsourcing: How to manage Digital Media projects (creativity and when you have to use an outside company
• Importance of Video: Setting Context of Video in Museums
• Telling Stories with and without media
• Evaluating Video

Are we missing anything? We hope to create a year round program of discussions and communication to make the SIG a valuable resource for our members.

MCN 2013

Hey Y'all! Members, new members, members to be, and the media curious:

We have been officially established as the Media Production Special Interest Group (SIG)! We have sponsored two sessions at this year's conference and look forward to collaborating on the the development of panel topics for next year.

We have a new look for the blog that includes a twitter feed drawn from our newly established hashtag #MuseumVideo. The Media Production SIG while having a focus and strong presence of video producer members is not just for video makers, it is for anyone telling a story with digital content, we all know audio, images and text are also used to develop content to share with our visitors on a variety of platforms. We are here to support each other in our practice in all ways, from advice on specific projects to major equipment purchases.

I look forward to meeting more folks and getting more of you contributing to the blog! contact myself or other users to get added as an author to this blog by emailing annachiaretta(at)gmail.com. I would like to encourage those near eachother to start scheduling regular gatherings, and even google hangout gatherings.

When you first join the blog, please take time to share a little bit about your production philosophies and an example of content you have produced, help produced, or even simply want to produce.

This blog is public in the spirit of open dialogue and knowledge sharing.

Time Lapse Video for Exhibition Assessment

Hi fellow bloggers,
 The time lapse video I posted (and especially the camera I used) has people thinking of interesting things we can do with time lapse video. Three of us are currently looking at using time lapse video to assess the success of exhibition design, especially for hands-on activities. The idea is that this would be a more efficient way to do a tracking and timing study. The educator in the group is wondering if anyone has done this before and if so, what were the results. Do any of you know of previous studies of this sort of thing? The time lapse cameras have only come down in price fairly recently, so I think there won't be any previous projects. But if you know of something, could you drop me a line: tmotz@toledomuseum.org

Thanks,
Tim

An update: Although our management did express interest in the concept, the funding request for the time-lapse cameras was denied with instructions to look into other ways to do the same thing, like with our security cameras.  But I would still be interested if anyone knows of a similar project to use time lapse for exhibition assessment. 

Article: What do curators want from the AV community?

From the article: 

"Clearly the participants on both sides of the industry are doing something well: museums are selecting the right equipment and methods of communication, suppliers are responding with suitable systems and together the appeal to the visiting public is growing.  

Mark Taylor: “The classic way of showing an exhibit with a printed label no longer works.  In the digital age, visitors expect to be ‘users’ and to interact with the museum, seeking out and educating themselves on what they find interesting,” however he notes a point of caution: “We must avoid adopting digital techniques just for the sake of it; not to attempt to outdo the amusement parks, rather we need to ways to enhance the visitor experiences."

Read the whole thing here: 
InAVate - Museums - What do curators want from the AV community?

Home Brew Multimedia Tour

This is a project that I've worked on for a couple of years, almost as a hobby. To contract with an audio tour company for an exhibition tour is expensive. The last tour we did with an audio tour company had a development cost of $30,000, plus rental of the tour players.  A multimedia tour is even more expensive because of the greater labor involved in developing one. An app can be expensive, too. I once estimated that an exhibition would have to draw an attendance of 90,000 or more to break even on the audio tour costs, and we rarely see that kind of attendance.  As a result, we rarely can afford to have an audio tour, multimedia tour, or app developed for an exhibition. A cell phone tour is much lower in cost and fairly easy to upload and manage, but the audio quality is low.  So I've been on a mission to find an easy way to deploy tour content on a mobile website.

We use WordPress a lot. The museum website is actually a WordPress site, highly customized by Madhouse Creative, a local multimedia design firm. I created a social networking and training website for our docents using WordPress, and I've even created a visitor comment kiosk using WordPress. So I started looking into WordPress as a platform for multimedia tours. I think I'm about 90% there. If you go to timothymotz.com on a smartphone, you see a mock tour page with content about an Egyptian statue in our collection. If you go to the same URL on a desktop computer, you get my rather lame personal blog.

WordPress was designed to be a blogging tool.  Note that I am talking about the free WordPress software installed on your own server, not WordPress.com, which is a for-profit company which sets up blogs on their server.  If you have web hosting with access to a control panel, you probably have the ability to install WordPress. Depending on your hosting service, you may even be able to have more than one installation of WordPress.  I can set up multiple subdomains for free and install WordPress in them, letting me set up special-purpose websites for as long or short a time as we need them.

The appearance of a WordPress site is governed by templates called themes. Functionality is added using plugins. Themes and plugins are added from the control panel of your WordPress site. There are thousands of free themes and plugins available to allow you to easily do virtually anything you might want to do with a website.

The switching between the desktop and mobile versions of my site is done automatically by a plugin called  WP Touch, which includes a mobile theme that is used when your site is accessed by a smartphone.  The video on the page was uploaded to Vimeo and embedded on the page. The text was copied from a gallery label. The icon for the audio element was something I created and uploaded to the site.  It links to an MP3 file I uploaded to the site as well. If this all sounds complicated, trust me it isn't. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use WordPress.  The only mildly complicated part is installing WordPress, and with my hosting service that was pretty easy, too.

I would be very interested in getting feedback on this idea. I think it has promise. It lets small institutions deploy multimedia content at minimal cost, as long as they have wifi in the building. It would eat up a user's 3G bandwidth to take a multimedia tour using their data connection.  If you combined a site like this with QR codes on gallery labels, you would have a pretty simple and foolproof touring system without the need to purchase or rent tour players. The part I'm not completely happy with yet is the audio. Because the video is streamed from Vimeo, the viewer can start watching it reasonably quickly while the rest of the file downloads. The audio, however, must be completely downloaded to your phone before the file plays. I need a way to stream audio. The dumb solution would be to create a video with a single still image and the audio file  and upload it to Vimeo. But I would like to find an audio plugin that would handle things a little more elegantly.

Time Lapse Video

The Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion has an artist residency program called G.A.P.P. (Glass Artist Pavilion Project).  At first the artists in residence were all glass artists, but more recently they have been artists in other media who were interested in working with the glass artists on staff in the Pavilion.  The current artist in residence is Erwin Redl. He is perhaps best known for draping the Whitney Museum in red and blue lights for the 2002 Whitney Biennial, Redl works with tiny light-emitting diodes mounted in a grid to play with viewers’ perceptions of space and architecture.  For his project in the Pavilion, Erwin and the GP glass artists created a series of glass balls filled with red liquid.  These are suspended in an array inside a light well in the Pavilion that is open to the sky.  Since nearly all of the interior and exterior walls of the Pavilion are glass, visitors can see the balls moving in response to the wind.  The installation is titled "Floating."

My part in this came when Erwin requested that we create a time lapse video of the installation for the entire year that it is to be in place.  I had never done a time lapse video before, so this sounded like fun.  I started looking into cameras, and the first one that came to mind was a Go Pro Hero 3, which is advertised as shooting time lapse.  We bought one, I went through the manual and set up the camera on a tripod outside the light well, and let it run.  The next day I removed the card, uploaded the images, and found that it had only run for two hours.  It turns out that although it will function as a time lapse camera, the battery is only good for two hours under optimum conditions.  Go Pro Support said in response to my query that no, I shouldn't try to run it directly off a charger; it would overheat and could explode!  Great little camera, but not what we needed in this situation.

What to do?  I did a Google search for time lapse cameras and came up with the Brinno TLC 200.  It's a dedicated time lapse camera and it's battery life at the settings I wanted to use is two months!!!  It shoots 720p video and it's only $130.  (The GoPro, by the way, doesn't shoot time lapse video. It takes a series of still images which you then have to drop into the timeline in your editing software.  The Brinno gives you an AVI file.)

 It looks like a toy, but what a great little camera!  It's insanely easy to set up and accepts SDHC cards.  Here's a shot of the installation.  You can see the tripod with the Brinno in the air space at the back of the light well.

 I want to get a few more.  I can think of lots of things to do with them.  You can get attachments to turn it into a stop animation camera or a motion detection camera, and you can get a waterproof housing for it.

Here's the video.  The only problems are the occasional reflections that show the camera.

Timothy Motz, Introduction

Hello everyone!  I’m delighted to be joining this group and to make the virtual acquaintance of all of you.  I have come to museum video production by a very roundabout route.  I have worked in art museums for over 30 years and have my doctorate in the History of Art, specializing in Greek and Roman art.  The first ten years of my career were spent as an assistant curator of Ancient Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  I backed into video as the Manager of Educational Media in the Education Department at the Toledo Museum of Art, where I have been for the last 20 years.  In that position I was responsible for maintaining the museum web site, designing interactive gallery kiosks, managing audio tour projects, making felt boards, casting crayons into deodorant containers (seriously!), etc.  We bought our first video camera (a Panasonic DVC-30) several years ago thinking that I would be shooting short clips to use in gallery kiosks.  

In January of 2013 the Toledo Museum of Art reorganized its staff into new teams.  I am now a Media Producer in the Design Studio, which is part of the Visitor Engagement team.  The Design Studio is led by our exhibit designer and includes me, two graphic designers, and eventually (budget permitting) a web developer.

Except for a few short training workshops, I am completely self-taught in interactive design and video production, so I’m a little in awe of the rest of you.  If you look at the videos on our YouTube channel you can watch me learn to shoot and edit by trial and error.  I started editing with Premiere Elements and am now working with Premiere Pro CS6.  The museum is Windows-only, and that pretty much determined which editing software I would use.  We now have a Panasonic HMC-150, a Nikon D800, and a D5100.  I’ve been using the Panasonic for a couple of years, but am just investigating the Nikons.  The rest of my equipment is pretty much prosumer level.  I have a couple of Audio-Technica wireless mics, two Shure wired lapel mics,  an Azden SGM-2 shotgun mic, a Røde Videomic Pro, and a little TASCAM digital audio recorder.  Yes, I have a thing for microphones.  You can never have too many of them.  I claimed a castoff set of Lowel Tota lights but am hoping that in this fiscal year I can get some lights that would give me a bit more control.  I am now working on a Dell Precision T3600, which is a relief.  When we made the switch from SD to HD, the shortcomings of my previous computer became painfully obvious.   

I have nothing against buying pro level equipment, but we are serious about budgets here.  I try to spend my budget where it will have the most impact on the product.  My mic boom is a painter’s pole and my equipment cart is a Stanley Fat Max that I bought at Home Depot.  The Fat Max is actually a great equipment cart.

I am not only a one-man band, I have additional duties beyond audio and video production.  In the short term I am still managing Rights and Reproductions and will continue to have some role in photography and AV support.  I’m excited that this group has formed and I’m very interested in what the rest of you are doing.

tmotz@toledomuseum.org