Rewind – April 10, 2002
By Kathy Ritondo
Our meeting opened with announcements for the upcoming meetings scheduled. In addition we discussed the need for larger meeting space. Al & I spent the better part of the day in NYC, touring the local hotels for space large enough to accommodate our growing group. Since we are at standing room only, we’ll probably be making the move sooner rather than later. We’ll keep you posted on these developments.

The most exciting portion of the evening was the unveiling of this, our new WEBSITE. Many thanks go out to our newest members, partners and web designers Hector Olivieri and Maggie Krupka of Engravingimage. After extensive consultation with the NYPV board and burning the midnight oil on several nights they have brought NYPV into the new millennium with a sleek new look. They are available to help you design or redesign your website, so look them up!

As you explore the site you will find so many exciting new additions. The Members’ Lounge is my personal favorite. When completed it will be a pass code protected area where members will be free to share experiences on message boards, post classified ads to buy and sell equipment, list jobs available to shoot or edit and generally use this area to “hang out” between meetings. Within the members lounge, we will have a section called “DOWNLOAD”. This area will have the NYPV Biography book application, the By-laws, code of ethics, the responsibilities of the officers so if you loose your copy you can always go back and “download” it. We hope to post sample contracts, booking agreements, and paperwork as NYPV members contribute to the construction of this area.

Digital Editing was the first presentation of the evening. Mr. Hank Teller demonstrated the New Video Toaster11 that has just been released and has been finding press in all the major video magazines. Our president, Alick Samuels tells us that it is on his wish list for Santa this year! Mr. Tellers’ informative presentation and lively question and answer period took the better part of the meeting. The Digital Shooting portion of the program was tabled due to the fact that the PD150 shoot out required members to bring their PD150’s and no one did.

Finally, Creative Technique was the second presentation of the evening. NYPV’s co-founder Al Ritondo walked us through the layout, design and production of custom labels and case covers for VHS and DVD’s. The programs he used were Serif’s Page Plus and Adobe’s Photoshop. Customizing your own covers and labels allows you additional opportunities to communicate your company name and logo to the client so you can satisfy all of the future video needs. In addition, the covers use JPEG’s snapped from the digital video and feature the couple in several romantic poses. They begin to fall in love with your work without having seen the actual video!

Once again, we encourage you to check out the website of the place where we meet. This is www.NYPC.com. This is the New York Personal Computer Users Group. They offer very interesting and inexpensive classes in computers and software applications. Mary and Lenny Ginsberg are the people to talk to if you would like to join their group. The phone number is the same as the hotline.