My boy Doug Ferguson finished fourth today during round 2 of the 2010 Snowshoe Race Series. I just happened to be around and grabbed some photos during his run.

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For our one year anniversary, my wife and I rented a condo at Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia. 70 degree weather and blue skies made for a perfect day of downhilling. Billie rented a Kona freeride bike and I rode my Specialized P3. Not only was it her first time riding a bike of that size, it was her first time riding downhill. Once we got her padded up, we headed down the trail to see what she was made of. After a couple runs she really started to get the hang of it. She did really well for her first time out. By 4:30 we were completely beat so we headed to the pool to cool down and relax. We met up with Doug, Meghann, and Wyatt for dinner at the Junction and then it was off to bed to rest up for another day on the mountain.

AM

Sat around watching the Crossfit games all morning and decided to rep out on some handstand pushups. Did 3 sets and got 16,11, and 8. The individual finals at the games were rediculous. I don’t know how they managed to get that much work done after two previous days of hell.

PM

Had a pump and grill party at the house. Travis and the Ferguson’s came over for some hot dogs and pump track. We made a short little video while we were at it. Little Wyatt (2.5 years old) once again put us all to shame with about 50 laps…totally killed it.

The 2009 Tennessee football season was full of excitement, drama, and lots of late nights staring at computer monitors. One of the highlights for me was working on the Eric Berry for Heisman campaign. Because Eric was a defensive back, he didn’t have a the best chance of winning the Heisman (typically given to a quarterback or running back) so we launched a series of viral videos to raise awareness of his mad defensive skills.

This was the second video we shot for the campaign. It features Tennessee hoops star Renaldo Woolridge (aka Swiperboy)  who wrote the lyrics and gave us a great performance for the video. We also got the dance team to choreograph a routine for some background eye candy. Working with Eric and Renaldo was awesome. They are both great guys and really down to earth. I think Eric probably had more fun than any of us that night. This was also Swiperboy’s first music video and I’m glad we brought out all the stops for him. As of today the video is about to hit 300k views on YouTube and it’s had a lot of play on utsports.tv as well.

Overall we had a decent size budget for the video. We brought in a lighting crew (Smoky Mountain Grip) who did an amazing job with the locker room and hallway. The main performance camera was a Sony F900. We also shot on 2 Sony EX3′s for some slow-motion and pickup shots. I spent a few days editing on an Avid Media Composer and then sent it all over the web. Here’s a behind the scenes look and Renaldo’s take on the development of the video.

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A few years ago I worked for Horizon Entertainment (a small production company out of Atlanta) on a show called Varsity Inc.. The eight episodes featured a football team from West Monroe high school in Louisiana. We had to cut a music video for the show featuring the band Saliva. Their music was already being used in the open and some promotional spots so we brought the band in for a shoot with some of the characters. There were three of us cutting on the video over a period of about a week. I think we had about 6 takes from three different cameras on the performance along with hero shots and footage from the football season. This is what we came up with.

Yesterday I received an email from the guys at Mpora, Europe’s largest action sports community and video platform, asking me to upload my Windrock video to their site. Lo and behold it makes the featured content on the site today. Pretty cool place to be seen and show off the quality downhill of East Tennessee.

So I’m sitting at work doing a bit of editing when I receive an email linking to a blog called dixibmx. When I opened the page my jaw dropped. I see 6’9 246 pound Tennessee power forward Wayne Chism riding a bmx bike in a skatepark! Check out dixibmx to see what those guys thought when they saw the big man catching some air.

Week 2 of Mark and Doug’s Bigfoot dirt jumping 10 week program. Right set…Check. Two sets to go and we have accomplished our goal.

For roughly the last 6 months of 2007 I packed up my bags and moved to Atlanta, GA to work as an assistant editor on a show called Varsity Inc. It was produced by a company called Horizon Entertainment and ran for 8 weeks on ESPN. It was definitely a step in the right direction for my career. I learned a lot about workflows and how to deal with thousands of hours of footage.

Work weeks were pretty brutal. Six twelve hour days a week digitizing, cutting selects, and doing rough edits for the show all through the night for the editors to work on in the morning. I also created a lot of the graphics for the show.

Overall I had a blast and am glad that I got the experience. This is a short excerpt from the first show of the season.

The second installment of “ChalkTalk” with Tennessee defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox. So many good bites to use…so little time to show them. Check out the video.