Tiffany Brown Photojournalist

20080627 air guitar rawks...

on tuesday i had a daily assignment to shoot angela corvello who is competing in this weekend’s air guitar competition at harrah’s. i was ready to shoot some portraits of her at the casino where reporter joe brown and i met her for the interview, but the scene was a regular casino cluster.

she said she had time the next day so i called my editor and asked if i could snag a couple hours to have her in to the studio on wednesday. angela said she was going to need to do a little drinking before a real photo shoot so i asked how early she can drink. “it’s always noon somewhere,” she said, and we made a plan for 1:30p.m. the next day.

on wednesday i set-up a tripod and camera with an intervelometer in the corner of the studio, taking a picture every five seconds, as i set-up for the shoot…..angela and her crew – complete with “documentarian” with video camera, “security” heavy, and three “groupies” arrived, and with the lights on and stereo cranked angela air-rocked through four clothing changes and a couple hundred frames in around an hour.

when i checked out the photos it was pretty clear aside from what runs in the print edition, a slideshow of the portraits alone was not going to be overly exciting. i downloaded the timelapse pictures, compressed it and came up with the idea to try and make a multimedia video combining the portraits and some timelapse with ambient audio from videographer ryan mcafee, who shadowed the shoot for a 702.tv piece on the air guitar comp that will air next week.

once again, i turned to my editor and asked to take thursday to try and bust out a multimedia piece in one day for friday’s paper – a huge challenge for me considering the amount of time previous multimedia videos have required! he said go for it….so i called angela and swung by her house yesterday morning on the way to the office for a five minute audio interview, and after a near 15 hour day yesterday – mostly glued to my laptop, “No-Strings Stardom” is online today with joe’s fun story previewing the competition.

it’s a bit of a different approach, so i’d value any feedback…if you think it works or not, blog comments or
e-mail ….i’d love to hear whatcha think!

the video:

and print edition layout by designer rachel perkins….

ROCK.