I filmed this video of my family’s backyard bonfire with a point n’ shoot while visiting home over the winter break. (Kate, here’s your shout out.) It features my girlfriend, Kate Drance, my father and some new and old friends who are traveling across the country on a luxury touring bus. (Thanks Aric, Tim and Robin!). I think they’ll agree, that sitting around the fire and eating fresh oyster stew wasn’t a bad way to start Louisiana. Tim?

I gotta say, I like this short clip. And it probably has a lot to do with, if not all, my old family home and the song selection. “The Lonely Shepherd” stuck with all of us who watched and liked Kill Bill. When I heard it coming out of the F-train at Broadway-Lafayette today, it prompted me to finally make this clip in iMovie. (Side note here: After you’ve managed to learn Final Cut basics, iMovie is wretchedly counter-intuitive. Yes, I’m slightly bragging.)

Watching the footage with the song produced, for lack of a better word, an emotion, granted, probably because it’s my old family home. But it also really hammered home the cold hard fact – that Professor Duy pointed out today in NYC24 – that if your audio is off, your video, no matter how good, suffers…badly. The music over the top of Backyard Bonfire, to state the obvious, really makes an impact. But you compare. See it without the song. Mmmm, oyster stew.

It seems that since I started taking classes at the J-School last August, I’ve been excited about taking classes at the Columbia’s B (or Business) School this January. In fact, I keep telling people (erroneously) that I’m earning a master’s in new media publishing, as if that existed. To quote George Constanza, “It’s not a lie, if you believe it.” Still, I feel guilty for making up a master’s.

To assuage my guilt and to genuinely learn how to read a spreadsheet, I’ve enrolled in Business and Economics Reporting with Dave Kansas of The Street and Wall Street Journal and cross-registered to enroll in International Media Management at the B-School with Professor Eli Noam this spring. For those paying attention to my Twitter feed, I recently discovered that my plan to take International Financial Management proved to be, uh, overwhelming. Flipping through the first 100 pages or so of the $103 textbook reminded me of my intense aversion to formulas that include things like,  ∾ ∞ ∑ ∫ and other puzzling Greek math symbols. Wasn’t I taking a B-School course so that I could learn how to read a basic spreadsheet? And if so, why wasn’t I just learning accounting basics, like everyone told me to? I put down “International Financial Management” by Geert Bakaert and Robert Hodrick and walked swiftly to Professor Noam’s class, where I was startled to learn…

1. People eat in B-School classes. I mean they eat. This guy had warmed up some pasta and meatballs and was going at it. Another guy munched an entire salad WHILE THE PROFESSOR LECTURED. I couldn’t believe it. We would never do that at the J-School. We just sit there and drink our expensive Cokes and dream of Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches.
2. There are far more students in a B-School class than in a J-School one. There were at least 50-60 students in International Media Management today. So, score 1 J-School. It wouldn’t be so bad if they all weren’t eating or…
3. Crammed into some weird UN-Security-Council-inspired seating arrangement. The space between the tables in the U-shaped seating arrangement is so tight, that when you need to get up for, say a napkin after eating your lasagna, you essentially have to walk out on your tippytoes, effectively raising your waist so that your crotch dangerously brushes past the back of some poor scrunched-over student’s head while your butt wipes the table behind. It’s as if were constantly stuck in the window seat when flying, and the person next to you, instead of politely getting up, motions for you to bowlegged-ly shuffle sideways out into the aisle. That’s you squeezing in and out of seats at the B-School. Weird.
4. They have their own wireless Internet. It’s called WoFI. You can’t even get Columbia University free wireless Internet there. Seemed unnecessarily elitist at the time. To request access there, email consultant@columbia.edu. Send email again, for good measure.
5. Can I just say, Professor Eli Noam taught for a solid 3 hours. Sure there was a very short break, but the man got up there and steadily and persuasively made his case that it was the US film industry’s innovation in content production, financing and risk management that gave them the one-up on every other film producing nation. The longest I’ve ever seen a J-School professor speak uninterrupted is 15 minutes. The rest of class time is spent watching this or reviewing that, or simply discussing something someone brought up. That actually may be for the best, but sitting there listening to a professor lecture in a linear straightforward format, wow, I felt like I was back in school again. Refreshing.
6. They have a cafeteria! They have a cafeteria that sells Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches and more. They have a coffee shop! A real working coffee shop. The J-School only has an empty, brand-new, never-been-used-before-still-glistening-under-the-fluorescent-light coffee shop. There are no Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches. I was jealous.
7. OMG. A Coke costs $1.25 at the B-School???!!! We’ve been paying $1.50 at the J-School. We’re the ones who are broke and with diminishing job prospects. We should get the cheaper Coke. Whoever arranged this injustice at the J-School must suffer.

I guess what I’m saying is, today was a good day. I spent the first half of it reminiscing with my J-School friends, who I’m proud to call classmates, and then started my second semester at Columbia. In 4 months I’ll graduate. Have I told you? I’ll be earning a master’s degree in international new media publishing and management.

Ten things I’ve learned so far making Hoop Knight (they are not in any order and there are certainly more to come)

1. I’m lucky to work with Chris Kieffer. Really lucky. Works hard and knows his stuff better than most. (Chris, you need a Web site.)
2. I can buy, host and manage my own domain name and server. I know that sounds pretty mundane, but I can do it now, no problem. Before, you’d catch me bull shitting.
3. The elusive HTML and CSS horizon are inching closer and closer. By March 20, 2009, when the project goes live, I’ll know CSS well enough to originally design an entire site. I think.
4. Twitter. Please. No problem. Key is to offer a consistent slice of info. rather than simply say what it is you’re doing right now.
5. Basketball. Sorta. But I’m getting there. Been a long time since I went to a high school sports game. Like it. But not nearly as much as Chris.
6. Shooting sports. Wow. Tough. Need two cameras to do it well. One wide and one medium or close. Sheesh. This is the tough spot.
7. Audio gain. Man, in a gym your gain is either too low or way too high. Need to be able to adjust quickly.
8. Final Cut Pro. Still, have a ways to go with this one, but I’m much closer. Basics are accomplished. Would be ideal to learn some more shortcuts. Learning the program is actually easy, compared with making quality videos.
9. People care about Mount Vernon High School basketball. It’s a big deal to everyone in and around the special town. It’s important to me now too. Hope they manage to get the 2010 school budget passed.
10. Story board, story board, story board. This is a big one for me. Don’t get this right, you’re a mess. And did I say Chris Kieffer?

Oh, and I should note that I have watched me a fair share of basketball videos. I recommend the truly amazing documentary, Hoop Dreams and Nike’s “Road to Redemption,” the buildup to the 2008 Olympics for USA’s basketball team. We live to honor these films in our master’s project.

Comes out on January 6, 2009 on PBS. Geaux Martin.