17 Rules

From the HOW Magazine blog - 17 Rules for Designers, but they work just as well for video producers. Here's a couple:

11. Take advantage of the perks.
Have fun. We’ll never get paid as much as the sales guy in the building next door. I guarantee we have more fun at work though.

13. Never, ever, ever stop learning.
The moment you think you know everything, your learning/growing/executing curve stops right there and you will be doomed to a life of simply repeating what you know. This industry is constantly turning over with new technology, new avenues of communication and new techniques to reach new people. The desire to constantly relearn the technical skills required to execute our ideas is crucial to our future success, but moreover, our desire to improve our ability to generate better ideas and conceptualize stronger solutions is of greater importance. Anyone can use Photoshop. Only you can decide why to use it.

Legal Advice

Photojojo has a post on Photography and the Law. I'm no lawyer, but I would think that it would apply to videographers as well. I've had a couple of the issues they cover come up over the years, like issue #1:

I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space.

I've been stopped by mall security when shooting in a mall, even though I was hired to shoot a commercial for the particular store that I was shooting. Most security guards around here, though, tend to let you do whatever you want if they see you have a camera.
Of course, beware their disclaimer:

...we’re not lawyers. None of this should be construed as legal advice. If you have a legal issue, get in touch with a lawyer. Much of this information was gleaned from attorney Bert P. Krages‘ website, so we’ll go ahead and recommend him.

Teleprompters

I like to think up DIY projects and convince myself that someday I'll actually finish one. That's why Instructables is one of my new favorite websites. It's chock full of user-submitted projects of all kinds - some simple, some harder, some dirt cheap, some more costly.
Here's two Instructables on how to build a teleprompter:

Full-screen scrolling teleprompter
I needed a teleprompter to help me make better looking videos for my website on woodblock printmaking, so I built this one, using nothing but a few pieces of scrap wood and glass, and only free software.

When recording videos, I discovered that I'm not much of an actor ... namely, I can't remember my lines! I tried to get around this by printing out a large-type 'script' and hanging it up next to the camera, but when I looked at the resulting video, it was obvious that I was reading something, and not looking directly into the camera. There was only one solution ... build a teleprompter!

Here's how I did it, in just a few minutes, using a couple of scraps of wood, a scavenged piece of glass, and an old shirt ...


Teleprompter DIY for $50.00: