An idea for videos: interviews

An idea I had yesterday: what if we did video interviews of the people at the various well-known nurseries and mailorder companies? I would personally love to be able to watch video interviews of, for example:

Antique Rose Emporium's rose specialist
Bluestone Perennials shipping manager
Jere Gettle (Baker Creek) on heirlooms and GMO
JL Hudson on living off the grid :)

What we could do is decide in advance some people that we'd like to interview, and then work together to get the best 10 to 20 questions for them, and then send someone with a camcorder over to interview them.

Maybe some interviews with extension officers/master gardener coordinators around the country.

and maybe even some impromptu interviews with regular nursery staff members around the country.

What do ya'll think?

dave

Good idea!

OOOh...I can see the potential

Our own Dr.Carolyn Male comes to mind immediately.

We've got a local hydroponic grower who supplied fresh tomatoes to the Queen of England during her trip here this spring.

Some of the daylily folk have good relationships with some of the well known growers.

William Woys Weaver

Oh yeah...I got Shoe on film singing his famous 'Size Ten Shoes' song....

Please post Shoe promptly with his "sunflower" pix!

Great idea . . match the faces with the people we spend our gardening money with . . . make you more familiar with them.

And interview members like Mistymeadow and countrygardens!!

Yes, a whole section interviewing our very interesting members!

Yes, that sounds great.

The only limitation is that we can only interview people if we have someone nearby with a camcorder and is willing to go conduct the interview. For example, I can interview most of the Texas people/companies, but I can't be interviewing someone in Ohio or Germany. :)

dave

And PLEASE . . take quality movies. For my parents 50th wedding anniversary I put together a video of all 13 of their sibblings and some of the videos they sent me were terrible. You need to practice a bit to get a good video (lighting, angle, content). You can get a lot of interviewing into 5 minutes if you plan it out.

If someone can wrangle an interview, but needs technical help, here's a thought: most high schools, community/junior colleges, tech schools and even universities have an A/V department. Often the teacher/professor and/or some of the students are willing to do videofilming and decent editing for a very nominal fee.

Good idea, Terry!

I just knew this new video idea would be chock full of wonderful avenues. Ya'll make me want to sell my tractor and buy a camcorder!

(Melody, "Oh yeah...I got Shoe on film singing his famous 'Size Ten Shoes' song..." there weren't no shoes in that song. Besides that video would only pertain to gardening if my feet had stepped in some fresh compost material!)

Good idea, Terry, on contacting local schools for some video help.

Dave, on your videos (averaging around 4 minutes) how much time went into each, including recording, reshooting, editing, etc. And can't editing be easily done on the computer with those things?

Shoe.

PS...loved the tutorials, Dave. Have seen the tomato one and compost one. Wish there was a way to save them to a file though so I don't have to re-download them again for future viewing. Or would that be a no-no involving copyright stuff?

"copy them all on one DVD and let people buy a DVD "at cost" so you don't have to download them all."

Yeehaww! Yet another fine feature! And I bet it would be a "keeper"...people will love them.

Still hoping for DSL or some other faster internet link in our area (and may have it available someday) but I imagine there are many parts of the country and World that may never have that available (at least any time soon!). The DVD's would be great for those folks. (It takes me roughly an hour and a half to download a 4 minute video.)

Quickly off topic...I am curious, Folks, how long does it take those of you on DSL/highspeed/satelite, etc to view these videos? (If I can't have DSL or cable, dare I think of springing for satellite?)

Many thanks to you all.
Shoe

Mine doesn't download...it just plays...nice and smooth...

I played the composting one last evening and I could only get 3 breaths of talk from Dave before it locked waiting for more download. I am on Bell South UltraLite.

Molly

Molly...what is Bell South Ultralite? DSL? Cable?

3gardners...what are you using? DSL? Cable? Satellite? (And are there any more options out there?)

Shoe

I have DSL.......never going back to dial up again!!!

We are on ATT_UVERSE which is actually sbcglobal.net with dsl. Comes to the house on fibre optics. On all of the video it would stop while it buffered and then start again. Is that because of my PC?

Shoe, Dude you know I can copy anything I can access to a DVD for you, just let me know.

Lou - what is the machine you are using? / os etc, Gotta know what you are working with to figure out where your problem is.

Edited to say : maybe a continuation on the computer forum?

This message was edited Jul 12, 2007 7:40 PM

thank you, Dyson. Will go to computer threads.

Shoe,

Ultralite is on the DSL, same as DSL, only a little slower (I can't tell the diff) and a LOT cheaper.

Molly
:^)))

Thanks, Molly. So I guess DSL has varying degrees of 'sign up' status or something? Pay more and get faster speed or something?

Dyson, thanks for the offer of copying. I was just hoping I can see the videos without having to DL them each time. If I ever get a highspeed line out here I'll be fine (or will I always want faster! faster!?)

Thanks Lou and 3gardeners for you response.

Shoe

Shoe, have you checked into satellite internet? I live in the boonies too, and I can't get DSL, cable, or any of those. I finally found Wild Blue satellite and I'm loving it. I went for the fastest option, and it costs me around $80 a month. I figured this wasn't so bad, since previously I was paying $20 something for an ISP service, and also paying for an additional phone line at around $30 a month. The extra $30 a month was worth it to me, and we can all run our computers at the same time. There's times we have 4 computers connected to the internet at the same time. It does go down during storms though, but I would normally have my computer off and unplugged then anyway.

Wild Blue http://www.wildblue.com/

Sorry to hijack the thread. :(

Thanks for the info and link, Joan. I"ll be sure to check it out.

And yes, I think I've pulled folks a bit too far off topic so let's all move back to that, okay?

And now, back to our regular feature (video interviews).

Shoe.

This sounds like an absolutely wonderful idea. But personally, I would never be able to watch them. We only have access to dial up here on our little island. There are probably others that have similar problems...how about making the videos on DVD and available to purchase? Or is that taking it too far? I know I would be interested in buying them/it. You could get a lot of interviews on a DVD.

Shoe Aren't you with embarq telephone. You can get faster dsl with them. I know to get aol broadband was an arm and a leg.

From post further up this thread Dave says, "I think when we get enough videos it might make sense to copy them all on one DVD and let people buy a DVD "at cost" so you don't have to download them all." So it's just a matter of time before you can get them!

A couple more ideas of people to interview would be Tony Avent of Plant Delights and Dan Hinckley

Do not know of either of them, but if you have an interest I may, as has been my experience on this site.

ecrane3, those are good ideas and just what I was looking for in doing interviews.

Are there anybody else out there who we'd like to interview in particular? If we put together a list of the interviewees, we can then later figure out how to interview them. :)

dave

I'd love to see an interview with an accredited botanist or horticulturist. I don't know any though.

Annie Hayes from Annie's Annuals would be a fun interview too, although I'm not sure how well-known she is outside of California.

And how about Dirr? Everyone always uses his books as references so he'd be a good one too.

Bert Wilson at Las Pilitas in Santa Margarita, CA - or Valerie at the Escondido nursery.

If you guys want interviews with horticulturists, I may be able to get a few. I work with a bunch of them. lol. One even has a book out on butterfly gardening.

How about master gardeners in specific regions?

I like that idea.

How about Jim Maas or one of his staff from Maas Nursery?
It's fairly local so wouldn't be much of a problem or cost in getting it done.

He has a lot of unusual plants and garden objects from around the world.
Even a photo tour of the place would be nice.
He might also give some info for importing things in general??
I'm sure there's more the interview could cover but that's interesting to me.

MsC

These are great ideas! Keep them coming; I'm compiling a list of all the suggested people, and in time I will post specific threads requesting brainstorming on the questions to ask them.

dave