Friday, November 6, 2009

Leapin' Lizards er uh Amphibians

The Northern Slimy Salamander (Plethodon glutinosus)to be precise. I was shooting tomorrow's "What a Zoo" segment with The Toledo Zoo's Tim Herman. Tim was showing me a slimy salamander that had laid some eggs that hatched recently. He noticed that one of the salamanders in the exhibit was shedding its skin. Tim told me he'd only seen this once before and that the salamanders usually did this at night. Here's some of the video I shot. I sped some of the video up to 400X after the previous clip played at real time speed.

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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Live from Democrat Party

Right now I'm camped with Kristian Brown at the Lucas County Democrat Party's party at UAW Local 12. We'll be covering the Wilkowski camp's reaction to tonight's election results. Righth now the place is starting to fill up. Probably 50-75 people here right now and the crowd is steadily growing. A few of the Wilkowski supporters have told us how confident they are at this point. Right now we're 20 minutes out from the polls closing and we expect to have the results start trickling in in the next hour or so. I'll be tweeting the rest of the night with the latest.
-Billau

Election Day

Ok, so if you follow me on Twitter you know that I've already voted. My polling place is DeVaux Middle School or Jr. High whatever. Anyodd, the poll workers were very helpful and there was no wait at all. I'm here to give the "all clear" on the Sylvania & Douglas front. I'm working second shift today and I'll be at UAW Local 12 with Kristian Brown to bring viewers the latest from the Keith Wilkowski camp. I'll also tweet as much as I can. If you have any questions you would like posted on the tweet updates, send me a direct message and I'll get back to you.

-billau

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Beyond the Soundbite

With 12, check that 11 (actually not really sure...at the time that this piece went to press I was still unsure what was happening about Trisha L. dropping out of the city council stampede) candidates running for six open seats on Toledo City Council, I realized many people probably don't really know who these candidates are. I worked with Bill Hormann today. He's in the middle of putting together a weekly piece that gives us a snapshot of who the candidates are that are running for city council. I decided to call this one "Beyond the Soundbite" because the candidates always have more to say than can be fit into a one minute and thirty second piece. Here are the full interviews with Polly Taylor-Gerken and Adam Martinez I shot today with Bill.


Polly Taylor-Gerken
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Adam Martinez
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I posted these two interviews because I shot them. If I shoot more of these I will post them. I may not post other interviews in this series that I do not shoot.

Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Monday, September 28, 2009

An Update

My apologies for the lack of posts here lately. I tweaked my shoulder playing softball recently so I've been filling in as a show editor quite a bit as of late. It works out because we are on the tail end of vacation season for our staff. Anyodd this post is just a heads up that I will be editing this week, shooting most of next week and then editing the entire week after that. Hopefully I'll get something blog-worthy next week, if not look for something the week of October 19th.

Until then if you're bored, and you must be if you're still reading, I was looking back at my Hurricane Ike posts from last year and thought they might be worth a second look.

Part 1

Part 2

-Billau

Thursday, August 20, 2009

U.S. Rep. Bob Latta on Health Care

Caught up with U.S. Rep. Bob Latta last week and got his take on the healthcare legislation that the President and congressional democrats are pushing for.

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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Opal Covey Interview

Last Friday, Bill Hormann and I went to mayoral candidate Opal Covey's house to do an interview with her. After I shot the interview, I was asked by several people to make it available in its entirety. Well, here it is.

Part 1
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Part 2
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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Funny Thing Happened To Me Yesterday...

So I'm getting ready to shoot an interview in this house in Monclova yesterday. There are six adults in the room that have come for the interview and two kids that are going to be part of my b-roll for this story about a new children's educational product.

As I'm setting up, I pull a microphone cable out of my vest pocket and start hooking it up to my camera. I hear a slight gasp behind me and one of the ladies say, "That just fell out of his pocket."

Let me give you some back story now. I earned my BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. I also earned a minor in sound design. One of the courses I took dealt with gathering audio while in the field. One of the tips my professor taught me was how to protect a shotgun microphone from the rain. A shotgun microphone is a directional microphone about 3/4 of an inch round and 6-12 inches long. Mine is mounted on my camera. The professor told us that in the rain, an unlubricated condom can be put over the foam windscreen that covers a shotgun microphone with only a 10% loss in audio to protect it. See where I'm going with this one yet?

Yeah, so I hear this lady say it fell out of my pocket. I look over on the floor behind me and see this balled up, off-white thing lying on the floor. It's kind of dark in the room and I can't really see what it is, so I don't think anything of it. Now I hear more whispers behind me. I look over at my reporter, Lissa Guyton, and she has this horrified look on her face.

The lady behind me taps me on the shoulder and says, "That just fell out of your pocket."

When I take a closer look, I see it. There in all it's glory is a half rolled, unlubricated condom strewn across the floor.

After some explaining we all had a good laugh. I did, however, get an awkward look from one of the ladies we interviewed when I asked her to unbutton her jacket so that I could put a microphone cable out of sight inside her jacket.

-Billau

Monday, June 29, 2009

Ben Konop Heckled at Presser

You may have heard on television lately or read in the local paper, that Lucas County Commissioner/Mayoral Candidate Ben Konop was heckled at a presser over the weekend. Like we stated when we started these things, the photog vlogs are to share video that we shot (Chris G. in this case) that didn't make it to our airwaves. Here's the heckling presser.

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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Wilkowski and Biden

V.P. Joe Biden was in town today. One of the people in attendance at his speech was Toledo Mayoral Candidate Keith Wilkowski.

Wilkowski's website states:
Inspired by Barack Obama's message of change and vision for rebuilding America's cities, Keith founded and chaired "Toledoans for Obama."

I guess the V.P. didn't remember him. Here's their exchange today:

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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Red Wings and the Stanley Cup and Time Off

[This post has nothing to do with news or 13abc. I just needed a place to vent about hockey.]

If in some freak chance the Red Wings don't win the Stanley Cup this year, the blame falls squarely on NBC. In the NHL playoffs, when a team wins a series in 4 (Pittsburgh) or 5 (Detroit) games, they are always rewarded with a few extra days off before the next series starts. NBC has forced the NHL the start the Stanley Cup Final with only 2 and 3 days rest for the Wings and Penguins respectively. Even more, the first three games will be played in four days.

Why would NBC do such a thing? Maybe it's because they realize that because the playoffs have been so exciting this year, they want to keep the momentum going for the fans.

Nope.

Maybe NBC sees that the two teams that will be meeting in the final are both on a hot streak right now and NBC wants them to stay hot.

Nope.

I'M A CELEBRITY, GET ME OUT OF HERE!
INSIDE THE OBAMA WHITEHOUSE: BRIAN WILLIAMS REPORTS (parts I & II)

Yup.

NBC doesn't want to interrupt it's stellar summer lineup. Thanks for your concern. Tell you what NBC, I'll trade you the NBA on ABC for the NHL on NBC. Straight up. No? That's cool. I'll be watching Don Cherry on CBC anyway.

Go Wings!

-Billau

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Joe The Plumber (JTP) Lightning Round

Last week Greg Bilazarian and I spent the day in Holland, Ohio interviewing Joe Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber aka JTP. After the interview I did a quick, ten question, lightning round with Joe. Here it is:

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I've also been asked lately about why do we keep putting Joe on television. Some people have told me they don't care what Joe has to say. To that I have to disagree. Last week when we aired the first part of our interview that included Joe's thoughts on homosexuals, the story was #1 on our website. There is interest out there.

Watch for more of these "lightning rounds" in the future.

Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Twitterers Twittering Tweating at 13ABC

A lot of our staff here at 13 ABC is using twitter. Here's a list of some of our staff using twitter along with the links to their tweets.

13 ABC Action News
Diane Larson - Anchor
Lee Conklin - Anchor
Brian Trauring - News Director
Anthony Knopps - Assistant News Director
Kristian Brown - Anchor/Reporter
Melissa Andrews - Anchor Reporter
Greg Bilazarian - Reporter
Sashem Brey - Anchor/Reporter
Todd Gaertner - Photographer
Me - Photographer
Rebecca Regnier - Reporter
Jennifer Jarrell - Reporter
Zack Ottenstein - Reporter
Christina Williams - Assignment Editor/Reporter
Jenny Walenczak - Assignment Manager
Becky Black - Assistant Director of Finance
Cindy S - Director
Craig K - Engineering
Vickie Van Vliet - Producer
Terry Kowalski - Promotions
Ryan Speer - Promotions
Alexis Means - Reporter
Amy Montgomery - Nightside Assignment Editor
Chad Evearitt - Engineering
Tamara Rost - Program Director

-Billau

Friday, April 3, 2009

Carty Today

Some of you may have heard or read about the mayor's comments today at his press conference. At the beginning of the clip you can hear the blade reporter's question about the all-america city application. Enjoy.

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Thanks for shooting the video Sobo.

-Billau

Monday, March 30, 2009

Mayor Carty's Balanced Budget Proposals

Brief blog today.

The mayor plans to reduce city spending by:
- 10% across the board pay cut for all employees
- 40 police officer layoffs
- privatize solid waste collection
- reduction in fire department overtime
- suspend payments to public employees retirement system

At the same time he plans to bring more money in by:
- reciprocity tax credit change
- trash fee increase
- increase back tax collections

-Billau

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Flooding Here, Flooding There...

Hit the road yesterday with Greg Bilazarian to cover area flooding. Our first stop was Defiance. We did a noon live shot where the Maumee and Auglaze rivers meet. That was kind of rocky. We hit at the top of the show, but we didn't get to Defiance until 11:30 and our live truck arrived at 11:50. We pulled it off. Had a live interview with Defiance police chief Tim Tobias. That really wasn't our first live shot, chief. Really.

We spent the first part of the afternoon getting flood video for our six story (sorry, no link on this one, 13ABC didn't post it on the web) and looking for characters. We saw a couple standing on their porch surrounded by flood water. I had chest waders on, so I decided to walk through the 200 yards of water that separated us. I got about 3 doors down and couldn't walk any further. The water was midway up my chest. What I learned on my way back to drier ground was I was walking down the street with a slight current at my back. Though much of the walk back wasn't in deep water, I felt like I was in a lap pool. We ended up talking to the couple after they kayaked out from their house.

We did our live hits from Grand Rapids, Ohio, where the water was still rising. That was a pain. The first problem is our big, giant satellite truck doesn't have non linear editing capabilities. What does that mean? Glad you asked. Instead of editing my video (shot digitally onto a disk cartridge)on a computer (like you might some home video), we had to edit tape to tape (like hooking two VCRs together) after I dumped my digital video to an analog tape. What brought the fun to a new level was even though I was told that they would try to get another photographer to G.R. (ask me about they some other time), when Kristin Emery and Bill Spencer arrived at 4:30, a photographer did not arrive with them. They!

Good Lord, this is getting long, time to wrap it up.

Somehow got all the the video edited, quality took a slight hit. And here are the final liveshot numbers.

5pm - Kristin and Greg live
5:30pm - Bill live
6pm - Kristin and Greg live - Bill 2 lives for 13 ABC, a live for The Weather Channel and 2 look lives for The Weather Channel.

Wonder what's in store for today. When are you coming back Sobo!?!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Freedom Call Allows Local Marine To Be In Toledo Hospital Delivery Room... While He's Stationed In Iraq

Shannon Chappell gave birth to her daughter on Saturday. Her husband, Marine Private First Class Shaun Chappell, was 12 thousand miles away at war, but he was right there in the delivery room with her.

With the help from a non-profit organization called Freedom Calls, Shaun was hooked up with Toledo Hospital and had a live video conference so he wouldn't miss his daughter's first moments.

Here is the story that we aired tonight:

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And for the Chappell family, here is the raw video that I shot while I was at the hospital today:

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Thank you Chappell family, and all families who have served or are serving, for your sacrifice for freedom.

Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Toledo Community Foundation's Stimulus Wish

Here's Jeff Smith's story about how the tough economic times are hitting local charities.

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Thanks for watching.
-Billau

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

DTV Transition

Roughly 16%.

You know those commercials you've been seeing on your TV for the last year about the transfer to digital television?

16%

What's the date that broadcast stations are going digital? Say it with me...February 17.

16%

How much are the government coupons worth for buying a dtv converter box? Say it with me again... $40 (you actually get two $40 coupons you know).

16%

Oh that 16%, what's that all about? 16% is the percentage of households with televisions that would be effected by the transition if they don't already have a converter box or if they don't have a television that can read a digital signal.

Now congress is pushing a bill through that would delay the digital transition because they think people aren't ready. This isn't a partisan thing, I blame both sides. To me it seems as though the government thinks people are too stupid to figure this thing out.

Come on. Really? We've been busting our humps here to make sure everyone out there understands what the conversion means to them. It's important to us because if their televisions go black, they're not watching us. We've done PSA's, weekly news stories, held phone banks that have received hundreds of calls. And that's just at our station. I'm sure the others have tried to make viewers aware too.

Just in case...if you have satellite, cable or a digital receiver, the transition won't effect you - if you receive an analog signal over the air (that means you have rabbit ears and you get just a few channels like 11, 13, 24, 30, & 36), you will need a converter box to continue seeing a picture on your television.

Our congressional representatives need to give our viewers more credit. They also have much more important things that they could be working on. The transition means more to local stations than it does politicians any way. We've worked hard to get the word out. Let's get this transition over with and move on, instead of dragging out the countdown for another four months.

Sorry. Had to get that out there. I fell better now.

-Billau

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Around The Bend Improv Group Featured on 13 ABC Action News

Around the Bend improv group was featured in last night's Action Newsreel. Here's the story.


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Thanks for watching.
-Billau