Work Experience
Video Editor / Graphic Manager
5/2006 – Present Lenan Corporation (now operating as Lanair Products LLC), Janesville, WI
Implemented all video equipment and filmed / edited to DVD videos for training, introduction videos to the in house theater (learning center) , and product promotional DVDs.
Designed promotional materials and coordinated with publishers for Magazine ads and Direct Mail.
Designed websites as needed, and trained the appropriate people how to use the backend properly for updates should they need to make them ( I.E. – thier department makes changes frequently or I am not around that day )
For video work, I primarily used FCP ( Final Cut Pro ), Motion, DVD Studio Pro, Soundtrack, Quicktime and Compressor.
For still image and print work ( magazines and direct mail ) I primarily used Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat Professional.
For website work ( Site creation, implementation of sales-team ‘needs’, and monthly updates ) I used primarily a wordpress backend so I didn’t have to create a multi-leveled login with proper security from scratch, and then coded the pages in PhP+Html to form the frontend. The exception was www.lanair.com, which I had to use ASP for, since the software our company owner someday plans to use for a shopping cart requires ASP to integrate into our in-house CRM and Purchasing software.
It should be noted, that in this position I regularly utilized the internet to research products, solutions, software “how to” videos, grab videos to convert for in-house-events, and submit videos to places like youtube, and our own Marketplace Believers websites. Once every couple months I’d delve back into wordpress to learn any new changes introduced and see if I could update our current wordpress based sites without breaking anything we were currently running on the site as a plugin or custom piece of code. ( I point this out because when I first joined our company owner was skeptical about allowing use of the internet, but soon came to realize that I could produce things for him with it, that he’s never had access to before. It would be very hard, and to some extent not possible, to do my job without it. )
For Samples of my work:
Our company’s primary website. This is probably the largest chunk of code I’ve done for a single project. This was a massive overhaul from the uninformative yellow-and-white cold-fusion website that it once was into an ASP & PHP site. The site includes a wordpress back-end for a searchable FAQ portion since I knew I could implement reliable internal search functionality easily this way without having to rely on outside sources like google.com. This site contains all of Lanair Products LLC’s product information and functions three-fold – as a landing-point for people researching Lanair heaters, as a place to host our manuals, product-related video and other media, and a tool for informing the public of what used oil Heaters are and how they work to aid in sales by the Lanair telecommunications sales team. Currently, Lanair runs ‘old fashioned’ and doesn’t use an online shopping cart – all sales being handled by a phone-based team that guide users through the website, but we are working on implementing an ASP.net Shopping Cart that links into our Mas90 ERP backend through the help of a two companies – Brilliance Business Solutions (www.brillianceweb.com) and eBridge Connections (www.ebridgeconnections.com) that we hope to have in place by the end of this year.
This site now redirects to Lanair.com, as Lanair decided to ‘merge’ the product line into the Lanair branding instead of leaving it separate as originally planned. As a result, the vast majority of the work done for the Lanaircool site has been discarded and the primary ‘Lanair.com’ theme has been utilized to make sure visitors feel a unified experience, instead of being confused and feeling like they were dumped to another company’s page all together.
This site was designed with a wordpress backend and included a simple template to include videos from youtube efficiently so it could be updated by the website owners. The intent was to have a home page for the Marketplace Believers evangelist Events and Videos from Les Marzahl, the previous owner of Lenan Corporation (Now under new ownership as Lanair Products LLC) that could be updated easily by his family. While the site may live on in some form, I am unable to maintain the site for the previous owner, and it may change drastically from it’s original design since, while I supplied them with the data, we can no longer host the site on our corporate servers for them and it will require someone to upload their files to a new server for it to continue functioning.
UPDATE: TIMES CHANGE… and Jobs Evolve
Almost all Video related work at Lanair Products has stopped under new ownership and the requirements of my job have changed heavily. Our IT person was let go and I was asked to fill in for the void he left where I could. For me, this was an interesting change of pace, but I was unsure of what I could and could not handle, since while I’m a fairly tech-savvy person and grew up on computers, my experience in the ‘network/server administrator’ environment was limited to say the least.
Below are some notable IT-related projects I’ve worked on this year:
Oversaw the transition from one Phone Service provider and Data Provider to another while working with very out-of-date and out-of-support-contract Cisco Equipment. Much of the Cisco phone system is largely a mystery to me and feels unnecessarily difficult – but we got things switched over and after a long wait before we could do the transition, the phones rang flawlessly in the morning.
Implemented a tape-backup solution using Arcserve by writing a script that allowed us to have a regularly scheduled off-site copy of our primary server’s data after a consultant told us it was impossible, which coincidentally only a few days later came in handy to save our rear-ends when we had to restore a corrupted portion of our ERP data.
Evaluated and helped decide on a replacement CRM that had tighter integration with our ERP system
Wiped most user’s computers and gave them a fresh start (still an ongoing process) to get everyone operating smoothly with minimal investment in new hardware
Developed plugins for our CRM to make entering and searching for data by our sales team more efficient
Learned (to the point of being able to identify and fix most problems – though not enough to call myself an expert) the vast majority of software applications used by our company that I had previously not been required to use, including Sage Saleslogix, Sage Mas90, Crystal Reports, Exchange, Active Directory, Iprism Firewall Appliance, Barracuda Spam Firewall, Citrix, PC-Charge/Active-CHarge, etc.
It’s been an interesting year, and as I continue to do graphic work, website design, magazine ads, online advertising, and manual updates, and participate in marketing strategy meetings on a regular basis, I am curious and excited to see what my capabilities and limits in the IT field will be, and what my “official role” might evolve into.
Video Editor / Camera Operator
6/2005 – 2/2006 Fiskars Crafts, Madison, WI
Filmed and edited shows for Fiskars Crafts web-based series on crafting tutorials called “FiskarsTV” while attending Madison Media Institute
For Examples visit
Software workflow involved Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion, and Soundtrack.
Video Editor / Camera Operator
5/2002 – 6/2002 Vico Auto, Milton, WI
Our group at school was asked to put together a video commercial and website for Vico Auto, a local used sports car dealer.
We had some students drive the vehicles and some of us lead them on the back of a truck filming them. Our first time doing something like this, the video was very jumpy (no form of steady cam) but ended up looking good in the end video.
We edited the video with Adobe Premiere and some (much faster) video editing software program we had at school who’s name I cannot recall.
The final product was shown in a theater before movie showings. The final edit ended up a faster speed (made the jitter disappear and movements seem much sharper/intentionally filmed).
The website was completed by a friend of mine (Jesse Morton), but the company did not pay – and so work on implementing the site stopped, and we cut off our work relationship with the company.
Education
7/2003 – 2/2006 Video and Motion Graphics – Madison Media Institute (MMI), Madison, WI
Associate Degree : Video and Motion Graphics
ProTools certified
Applications/Systems I am familiar with:
* Photoshop
* Mac OS 10+
* Windows OS (all)
* Illustrator
* Final Cut Pro
* DVD Studio Pro
* Motion
* Soundtrack
* Premier
* After Effects
* Video Toast
* Dreamweaver
* GoLive
* Microsoft Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint etc)
I am familiar with both Mac and PC environments, and able to adapt from application to application pretty easily.
I also look somewhat dorky – which HAS to count for something. Dorky guys rule on computers – so thats like super bonus points.
Avid is to Video Editing as Qwerty is to Keyboard Layout. Design that does nothing but slow down workflow. I am not interested in using that software except where absolutely necessary, and even then – in short term.
Skills
Advertising – Marketing
DVD Authoring
Photo Manipulation
Graphic Design
Video Editing
April 6th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Cool
October 5th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Thank you for sharing!
May 30th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Proud to say I’ve worked with this guy.
He’s an elite.
August 17th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Your blog is interesting!!
Keep up the good work!!
November 2nd, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Hello there, just stopped by doing some research for my Fiskars site. Truly more information than you can imagine on the web. Not quite what i was looking for, but good site. Cya later.