We opened the meeting with general announcements.
The WEVA Town meeting will be at the New Yorker Hotel the in February so we will be skipping our meeting that month. In addition there will be a Video Expo at Armato's in Glendale Queens on November 14th, 2002. Please be there to show your support. We had a room at Armato's for many years it was our first home. In addition there is a local association table for distribution of our printed materials to attract new members, if you are willing to sit at the table to hand out pamphlets, please let me know so I can put a schedule together.

Our December 2nd Wedding Menu has officially launched. We have begun registration. If you have not done so, please send in your check. It is the only thing that holds your place. Registration is limited to 150 attendees. So first come, first served. We have Sony and Moore Digital on board to sponsor the event. Al and Tony are working with additional companies to see if they would like to jump on board our first major event. We're really excited as we have registration coming in from California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia! Jump on board while you still can. We had a call for nominations for the new slate of officers for next year at NYPV. Please see download section for list of the officers duties and bylaws. Since none of the nominees runs opposed we will have finalize elections with a call for support from the floor in November. Please be at the meeting to show support.
The elected board will consist of:
President - Tony Cucci
Vice President - Al Ritondo (continuing)
Treasurer - Maggy Krupka
Secretary - Robert Knowles (continuing)
Sgt. At Arms. Martin Grillo (continuing)
Sgt. At Arms - J.J.Johnson
Continuing on in non-elected positions:
Kathy Ritondo, founder
Alick Samuels, past president.

We welcomed new members Yoojishwar Sing , Jorge S. Guano, Israel Rivera, Richard Johnson, Jr. and look forward to seeing them regularly at our meetings.

Our first presentation was by Mr. Ed Swetz, owner of E.J. Video Productions of Yonkers, New York. He is a board member of the NJVA and the Tri-State Videographers Assn. Ed has been in video production for many years but started his career in Sales and in a Wedding band. He is a winner of a silver creative excellence from WVT (the first incarnation of WEVA) in the very first year the awards were given.Ed walked us through the features of the PD150 that make it such a popular camera in the Wedding and Event market. His innovative approach to using smaller cameras began in the early 90's when he configured a monopod stick with a tripod adapter to stabilize the camera. He went on to show us many gadgets that he had put together over the years admitting that "Necessity is the mother of invention." He has adapted a sax and guitar neck strap (gained from his experience as a musician) as part of several braces he has fashioned in his own home. The smaller size of the camera offers greater creativity. Comparisons were made between the PD150 and the 250 since Ed owns both. Some of the "cool" menu features that he uses extensively were demonstrated such as: Push Focus, Pre-Focus (What's Your Hurry!), Zebra Bars, Custom Presets, manual adjusting gain, shutter, iris control, the AE/AS feature for backlight situations. He also covered the principals of white balancing and when and when not to use a wide-angle lens and lens hood. We watched a love walk he created back in the earliest days of love walks which he reedited and still holds up today 10 years later. In addition we were able to see the PD150 in real wedding situations "on the job." The workshop ran just about two hours. Great workshop, we all gained so much. Thanks Ed. You're welcome at NYPV anytime. We have invited Ed to come back to speak to us about a subject he knows well. The Bar Mitzvah. Time and date for presentation to come.

The next presentation was from our own Bill Florio. Bill's exciting presentation was on how to build an inexpensive editing system (on a shoestring). He showed us how and what to put together to edit for under $1,000.00. He demonstrated the "Shuttle Space Walker." A key point to having multiple editing systems is that they should all be compatible one with the other. Changing hard drives when a system is having a problem is one way to work more efficiently and not have much down time in your business. Some key points for those of you unable to attend are: Don't put Microsoft Office in your editing computer. )"It's like a weed!" Don't put email or Internet on your editing computer. Don't buy cheap computer parts. This is where quality counts. Don't be penny wise and pound-foolish. Avoid cheap stuff at computer shows that is rebuilt and will die soon The power supply is very important. Buy a good one! In addition to showing us how to build a system, Bill demonstrated the new Premier 6.5 editing software. It is better than previous versions and is more stable. Another piece of software that Bill recommends is the "Scenalyzer," an inexpensive program that he uses in conjunction with Premier 6.5 to create a DV index file. All of his notes will be put together and posted in the members only lounge as soon as we can get it up there. We ended the meeting at 11:45pm.
Whew!

We had such an exciting meeting we ran our of time for Marty Grillo's safety presentation. We will begin next month with Marty, sorry Marty. In the meantime, take warning, someone is out to STEAL YOUR CAMERA and Remember the TAPE is in it!!!! SAFETY IS A BIG ISSUE. WE ALL NEED TO BE CAREFUL OUT THERE. THERE IS A RING OF THIEVES AT WORK IN OUR AREA. THEY ARE WELL TRAINED AND ARE IN AND OUT IN A SPLIT SECOND. SEASONED CREWS ARE BEING OUTWITTED. YOU NEED TO HAVE EYES IN THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD. WATCH OUT IN THE CHURCH.NEVER LEAVE YOUR EQUIPMENT UNATTENDED. BE WARNED, BE AWARE, BE CAREFUL, HAVE AN ASSISTANT ON ALL JOBS, NEVER LEAVE ANY OF YOUR EQUIPMENT UNATTENDED, WATCH FOR SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR, PARTICULARLY PEOPLE ASKING YOU QUESTIONS/DIRECTIONS OR TRYING TO DISTRACT YOU IN ANY WAY. HAVE YOUR SERIAL NUMBERS WITH YOU. REPORT EVERYTHING TO THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY.

All agreed it was a great meeting. Meeting adjourned at 11:45. There are just not enough hours in the day or night to cover everything. Members then crowded into the Tick Tock Dinner for an after meeting bite and chatted till 1:30 in the morning.