On Friday, I finished a new site design for Cookin With Lenny. In addition to gourmet production catering for TV and film productions, Chef Leonard Bent (aka Lenny), has been the on air chef for years on Good Day LA for Labor Day and Fourth of July shows, featuring his newest recipes. He asked me to redesign his site and I wanted to get it up before his Fourth of July appearance. The site has lots of great recipes and some Step-by-Step Recipe Videos to cook along with which were pretty much hidden in the old site. Some time soon, we will be shooting and adding lots of new Step-by-Step Recipe Videos and a few other surprises. It is still somewhat of a work in progress, with a lot of work to do on updating the old database and old CMS system which currently have some issues. Here is a shot of the

Posted In: Blog, Consultant, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, html, php

After a couple major overhauls, I have settled on a look and site structure I am pretty happy with. Five Day DVD Site Five Day DVD grew out my consultant wok with the American Film Institute and several local high schools. I ended up developing a fairly comprehensive training program based on teaching beginners everything they need to complete a large DVD yearbook project over the course of a five day workshop. Five Day DVD, was created with Wordpress, a great blog system that allows some pretty complex customization.

Posted In: Consultant, Web Design.
Tags: custom web design, html, personal projects, php, web clients, web design, WordPress

North Hollywood High School held their Career Day on June 5th and invited me to take part. I had two class periods, each about an hour long. It was just enough time to run through an accelerated version of the 'Shooting the Scene' exercise at the center of our Five Day DVD Workshop.Each class was split into two groups. We only had one camera so one group shot while the other had a brief Q&A. It was their day to ask questions about careers, so they all had lots of great questions about what it was like to work as a filmmaker, editor, director, videographer and so on. Then they switched and the second group shot and the first group asked questions. Each group had only fifteen minutes to shoot, but they all completed their scenes - some with time to spare. With the remaining time, we had a screening

Posted In: Consultant.
Tags: personal projects

I recently shot some training videos for the American Film Institute.Check them out below:AFI ScreenNation: Sound Tips See the rest here:AFI ScreenNation: Editing TransitionsAFI ScreenNation: Interview BasicsAFI ScreenNation: Lighting Basics

Posted In: Consultant, Video.

In addition to making my own films, I have gotten more and more involved with the advancement of Media Literacy over the last couple years. After working as a consultant with the American Film Institute's Screen Education Department, I worked with some local high schools in the Los Angeles area, helping teach and advise their DVD Yearbook groups and Media classes.Over the last year I have started to speak with several Media Literacy advocacy groups, continued to work with the AFI Screen Ed department and developed my own program based on my work with the schools. All of this has culminated in the launch of a consulting company - Five Day DVD - which is putting together all of the experience, the methods, the lesson plans and materials I have worked with into one place.

Posted In: Consultant.