The Travel Channel Academy

I love video, but I don't have a whole lot of experience with it (just look at my website:-)). That's why when I learned of the Travel Channel Academy I got excited and immediately booked a spot in their class in Washington DC. It's taught by a guy named Mike Rosenblum who is seen by many as the leading proponent of 'short-form video' in the world. Mike has an extensive video and film resume and his take on the world is that video has progressed to a point where just about anybody with a little training can put together broadcast quality product. That opinion appears to get him a lot of scorn from certain areas of the broadcast community.

At first, I was a bit skeptical about this approach, after all don't you need a trained eye to be an video 'artist'. Well, as I sat there in class I began to realize that's not the case. In my class sat absolute newbies to video and people trained at film schools. If I learned one thing, it was simply that those with extensive training and fancy camera's were just as capable of putting together a pile of crap as the rest of us. Seems the more training most people had the worse the crap they put out, didn't make sense.

That's what made this class interesting. I got to watch the work of 40 people scrutinized and critiqued. On our first go around, there was a lot bad video, even from smart people. The second time around, however, not a bad video emerged. Yes, people who had never touched a camera before actually made some very interesting stuff, that only would have been better if they had better microphones and recording techniques.

I hope to figure out a way to incorporate more and better video in my travels in the future. It will be trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't, so I hope you'll be patient with me. In my opinion a photo might be worth a thousand words, but a short video can increase that exponentially.