If you're connected to a school, university, non-profit or company, ask them what they plan to do with their audio & videotapes! If you recommend our services, we'll pay you 10% of whatever they spend. In 2021 we paid a single referrer $17,000! archive2digital.com

And how we shot hummingbirds against a black background 10 years ago today! Some of our shots were used in a TV series.

How we shot a hummingbird against a white background on our balcony!

Never thought I’d see the day when Video8 and Hi8 tapes would have to be baked (dehydrated), but that day has come! Though being well stored in AFI’s vault, this entire batch of Hi8 requires baking before we can transfer it. Shows how much degrading is happening in 30+ year old tapes of all kinds!

You’d be amazed what filmmakers try with varying degrees of success before they come to us for proper driving plates. And then they learn we give massive discounts to low budget filmmakers! www.instagram.com/reel/DYuGHQB...

Human memory is not only fallible, it can be barely reliable at all! Why? EVERY time we access a memory, our brain re-writes it, like re-saving a file on disk. This opens the door to small changes that color and eventually completely change our perception and memory of past events.

On shoots there’s always a pressure of crunched load, setup and takedown time. Got this nifty attachment that will cut stands and sandbags way down for a bright soft light we need to have on my current shoots! Only 1 stand instead of 3.

Our family started something we called “Easter eggs” back in 2018 - expecting good news from the beginning of each day and sharing with each other when we find it. Turns out we hit on a brain hack without knowing it! www.instagram.com/reel/DYpHXEB...

Me at 21, playing at Toronto’s Breakfast Television in 1992. We got home from a gig at 2:30am and had to be at CityTV at 5:00am! But still a way cool experience.

Mold cleaning videotapes! PSA: 40 tapes could cost you $1,000 to transfer without mold, or $5,000 with mold. Especially if you live in a humid climate, check your tapes for even the smallest white spots! If you see any, quarantine them from the other tapes, because it spreads from tape to tape.

Just realized I may not get a single day off including weekends until October! Booked to edit two back to back documentaries, and still have 15 shoot days & 30 edit days on a different project. Gotta strike while the iron’s hot in this work climate!

Latest driving plate sale on Pond5 - New Orleans! www.pond5.com/stock-footag...

1 of the best parts of shooting stock footage is you can do it from home! And also gets you out of the house and into nature. My wife shot this clip of a hummingbird from our balcony 10 years ago today. It’s so close you can see its little tongue moving!

1 year ago, I hit massive resistance from the industry re: independently funded TV series. Today? Everyone I talk to sees this as the future, big studios are coming on board & indie series are going into production. Now we just need to get them on board with shared equity, for sustainability!

After six years of writing and submitting short stories, I decided to do some accounting. bobderosawriter.substack.com/p/the-number...

Friend of mine ran into an old associate today (Avid trainer from the 90’s) who has gotten into videotape transfers. My friend asked if he knew me, and he said no — but he had bought and read my book! It's a fairly small niche and my book is one of the only modern resources: captureifyoucan.com

3 years ago today I received the proofs for my 2nd book! It tells all about how to build a passive income shooting stock footage using only your smartphone (or any other camera). sellstockebook.com

8 years ago today I finished editing my 250th TV episode! Since then I edited 75 more, for a total of 325. I also produced, hosted and edited about 240 video podcast episodes, with almost 300 interviews.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms! Cherish yours while you can. Mine left the world 26 years ago, but her memory is treasured daily. Miss you, Mom!

BEWARE of misleading graphs! Looking at the below, you would think the blue line was WAY lower than the red. It’s roughly 4% lower. You always have to look at the context, what is being compared, and whether you are seeing the full range of the graph.

Just my trusty Sony SRW-5800 capturing an HDCAM SR tape for AFI! Lifted too much heavy equipment today so set it up on my dining room table rather than in my loft office. We store lesser-used decks offsite in air conditioned storage.

Fun fact: our competitors have asked us multiple times to raise our prices, and remove our driving plates from Pond5 Our answer: nope! Our full sets are over $1,000 cheaper, and single angles are over $450 cheaper.

Want to have fun with your phone? Play this virtual VR driving plate, and move your phone around to pan/tilt in 360 degrees as it plays: youtu.be/bgC1Mjtl5bE?...

Super-quick nervous system hack to calm anxiety! www.instagram.com/reel/DXQzpwC...

Sample of the composites we render for our driving plate clients, so they can see all angles at once! I designed an After Effects script that can take a folder of 10,000+ clips and automatically create these comps. We often deliver the composites as early as the next day. drivingfootage.com

Only issue about using a Mazda MX-5 as a camera car is that I’m tall and you have to practically fold me to get me inside, especially because of all the gear stuffed in a tight space. Crew were joking you needed a can opener to get me out!

Had an amazing driving plates shoot day for the Disney show ‘Nobody Wants This!”

Disney shoot day! Huge advantage of our new compact 360 rig is we can put it on a rental car.

It’s a very tight fit, but wiring is coming along on our compact 360 driving plate rig! This rig can easily fly in a suitcase anywhere in the world. We’re already confirmed to be shooting in Singapore this summer. drivingfootage.com

Confirmed this morning that we’ll be shooting driving plates for the Disney series “Nobody Wants This!”

Just me (left) and my band on Breakfast TV in Toronto 34 years ago!

New items listed for sale, LA area! Panasonic GH7 camera, and Deity Theos wireless mic kit. Ended up over-purchasing for a shoot gig and am selling unnecessary kit items. losangeles.craigslist.org/search/sss?u...

Need a multicam shoot with up to 12 cameras, for a conference, event, training/promo video, podcast or concert in California, Arizona, or Nevada? I’ve got the gear, and TONS of experience! I also rent out all the gear if you want to do it yourself. avgearguy.com

Yowee! I’ve seen some bleak assessments of different aspects of our culture, but this one takes the cake! Connor Leahy explains his theories why the younger generation across the world aren’t having kids: www.instagram.com/reel/DXtz3TT...

HOTEL TIP -- never pay last minute cancellation fees again! All you have to do is postpone the reservation for 1 week later. They will do that for free. Then a day or two later you can cancel the reservation without a penalty!

Hard to believe both Apple and Marvel almost went bankrupt! Could you imagine what the 2000’s would have been without these 2 companies?

The Hollywood Reporter posted this picture about the recent uptick in LA production — but does anyone notice how it’s still lower than during the double strike year of 2023, when no one was allowed to work?

Looks like we’ll be shooting custom driving plates for a Disney series coming soon! Our rates are the best in the industry. drivingfootage.com

What Disneyland Space Mountain looks like with the lights on!

So much of creative industries like TV, film and music is just WAITING. You plant seeds, write, hone your craft, pitch and hustle, but even for people like James Cameron, nothing is guaranteed. He sat on the Aliens script for many years before he could get a green light.

Crazy month on Threads… 4.5 million views!

What is shared equity filmmaking and why is it so needed right now? I explained on a recent episode of Pilar Alessandra’s ‘On the Page’ screenwriting podcast: onthepage.libsyn.com/946-shared-e...

Gave some free driving plates to some high school students, and look at the fun PSA they made! youtu.be/aKvzjQ-PiG0?...

ON RESULTING “Resulting” is when you see the result of one single situation and think this applies universally to every situation. Why is resulting bad? It’s like seeing lightning hitting one tree and concluding that lightning will hit *every* tree. It’s a logical fallacy, and should be avoided.

Wow! Writing by hand actually improves your memory — not just of the thing you’re writing! www.instagram.com/reel/DXPmTsf...

Fun fact: there are 10,000 centi-millionaires in North America ($100 million), and over 1,100 billionaires. Our brains can’t conceptualize that much money — if you earned $1,000/day 365 days of each year and didn’t spend a dime, it would take over 2,700 years to earn a billion dollars.

True story! My uncle bought a car for $300, drove it to death for 3 years out in the country. Listed it for $150… no takers. He cleaned it inside & out, took a toothbrush to the engine, and listed for $950 - it sold immediately! Perception is everything in sales.

Selling a low miles Chevrolet Impala Limited with tons of upgrades in the LA area if you know anyone who needs one! losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/cto/d/sa...

Every once in a while we have to dismantle our driving plate 360 rig because we need the cameras for a multicam shoot!

MUST WATCH: the sharp decline in cognitive development that happened to kids when devices entered education — the first generation in history that didn’t improve over their parents. Alarm bells! x.com/mindsetmachi...