I’ve said all I’m going to say about the personal part of what’s happening, but I thought it would be kind of cool to share how we’ve been producing the show from two locations.

Writing the show hasn’t changed much except that Luria writes much more than she did when she was here. It’s been interesting to see the different types of stories she chooses than me. I tend to write about gadgets. She tends to write about tech news and Web services like Google Docs. The Brief we will release today is about stuff we both wanted to cover. I wrote some of today’s show yesterday, some this morning and she wrote some to. Because of Google Docs, it’s always been easy to collaborate on a script.

After the script is done, Luria shoots it herself. She has our lights and the camera and the teleprompter. She shoots in front of a green screen in one take with one fixed shot and then she transfers one HUGE file to me, via FTP. The uncompressed footage is typically 4-8GB per episode. Sometimes it takes five hours, and really, that’s the biggest downside of the setup.

I have all the editing gear. As I download the file, I do preproduction graphics that will be used in the episode. When I have the file, I drag it into Final Cut Pro. It usually takes less than an hour to edit. Occasionally, when there are unusual graphics or video features in a particular episode, it takes longer.

I compress the show into three formats using Sorenson Squeeze. It does an excellent job, but it’s slow (and expensive). Then I upload the four formats to Mevio and post to the GeekBrief.TV Web site.

Except for news that needs to be more timely the workflow has worked well. It’s always fun to trouble shoot our way through new challenges.

We get asked all the time for advice about equipment. New media production, even using professional equipment, is far, far less expensive than broadcast production. Even still … better, more expensive equipment can set a new media producer apart from someone using equipment purchased from a local, consumer electronics store.

We started GeekBrief.TV with an inexpensive consumer camera and a relatively expensive professional microphone. It was clear a couple shows in that the inexpensive consumer camera wasn’t getting the job done, so we upgraded. It was a massive financial challenge for us and we sacrificed a lot to pay for it without going into debt, but we bought a high-end camera. I think it gave us an advantage.

The next episode of GBTV will be shot on our sixth camera. We moved immediately from consumer to “prosumer” and in the prosumer space, we moved from SD to HD. Our new camera is our first professional camera and it was freaking expensive. The costs are covered by the value of all the equipment and past cameras we’re selling, but still, it feels like a big investment.

We love giving equipment advice to anyone interested in working in new media, but the one thing we never advise is to go cheap. We recommend making sacrifices to purchase the best equipment a sacrifice will enable.

The hardest questions we get are related to price. We often get asked to recommend an HD camera below $300 or a wireless microphone system below $200 and our answer is we can’t! There are HD cameras below $300 and wireless microphone systems below $200, but we can’t recommend them because they just aren’t good enough for professional looking and sounding production.

The first year of GeekBrief.TV, we spent approximately $30,000 on equipment. We had to sacrifice a lot to pay for it, but we were passionate about our goals. We still sacrifice to buy better and better equipment because this is our life.

The best advice we can give about equipment is to not go cheap. Go cheap on your clothing. Go cheap in your food and drinks. Go cheap on everything in your life, but invest everything you can, without going into debt, on your equipment.

I’ve been getting some great advice from Jason “Cannonball” Jenkins about lighting. Jason is a professional lighting designer who is currently on tour with the Osmonds on their 50th anniversary tour. After he introduced me to a few hardware and software solutions that would enable us to control our lighting from a single control point, I read a short blog post on AutomatedHome.com about the company iControl receiving funding from the iFund.

I started wondering how cool and how hard it would be to create an iPhone App that would control DMX lighting via WiFi. The lights themselves could be wired to the network, and the iPhone would operate as a wireless controller complete with sliders for dimming individual lights.

I’m still early in my research, but I found a post about using an iPhone or iPod Touch as a visual controller. I found a company that makes an ethernet connectable DMX controller that has a Palm App written for it. I also found this DMX WiFi receiver that would probably be overkill in my setup. I also found a D.I.Y. for using DMX in a home automation setup.

If an iPhone or iPod Touch can be used in home automation, it could also be used to remotely control studio lighting. I’m not sure how hard it will be to pull all the parts together, but it seems like it could be amazing.

Macworld, for us, was an amazing week. We met old friends and made new friends. We’re convinced people who watch GeekBrief.TV are the nicest, coolest people we could know. We also learned a lot.

The shows we make outside the studio are not as good as those we make when we’re here. Cali is great in both situations, but I’m not.

At the end of this month, I’ll be doing a four-day bootcamp at the Travel Channel Academy in Washington D.C. My least favorite part of what we do is running a camera. I like the pre and post production stuff, so I hope to learn some shooting skills that will make camera work more interesting for me and for people who watch what I shoot.

When we speak to an audience about what we do, we refer to a video Ira Glass made for Current TV. In the video, he talks about how all video wants to be crap. Making good video is working hard against video’s tendency toward crappiness. He also talks about how your skill doesn’t live up to your taste when you’re getting started. It takes most of us two or three years to start making video that starts to live up to our original imagination. I’m still not there.

I have it in my mind. I know how I want the show to look and feel when we’re outside the studio, but I’m a long way from making that happen. I’m hoping I’ll be closer after the Travel Channel thing.

BTW, Cali isn’t feeling well. She worked hard and didn’t get much sleep last week, so I’m hoping she’ll take a couple more days to rest. I have PLENTY of Briefs in the can, so that should help.

We’re extremely grateful to xTrain.com, Drobo and PodShow for making our first trip to Macworld happen!

I don’t think anyone reads my blog yet, and that may be my favorite thing about writing it. So far, it’s just for me and it’s just about stuff I want to remember or consider or document. If I thought there was an audience, I’m sure it would change what I post and the way that I write the posts.

This is a floor plan for the studio space/house I’d like to build:

The building is a perfect square with all the functional rooms surrounding the center studio/living space, which is recessed so that every part of the house steps down into the studio/living space.

The studio/living space will be beautifully lit for video and when the lights are off, it will be just a normal, urban living space. The most unique thing about the space will be a noise isolated control room that will house computers, servers, displays, audio equipment and a bed for my dogs.

My next step is to create a budget and start working on raising the funds to make it happen.

I have a dream and unlike MLK, mine might be fleeting, but for now….it’s a dream.

Cali did four segments on The Lab with Leo Laporte in Canada last week.  The setup for Leo’s show is impressive, not because of all the money they’ve spent, but because of all the money they’ve saved.  They figured out how to get the best possible HD quality using relatively inexpensive equipment for the task.  The set looks great and the whole environment they’ve created is an inspiration.

When we got married, we set a goal to always work together.  We like working at home, but we want a big part of our home to double as a kick-ass TV studio.  If chefs can produce cooking shows from their home kitchens, why can’t a tech show be produced from someone’s home living room?  Okay, so yeah!  We already produce a tech show in our living room, but it’s not a “real” studio.

So the dream is to buy a place, and little by little, convert it into a place that is half home and half studio.  That part is the consistent part of the dream.  The part that may or may not bond to the cement of the dream is that I think I’d like to have some kind of small school that launches video podcasts.

I don’t know…may be it’s crazy, but I’ve loved having William, our intern, be a big part of our production process over the last few months, and I think we’ve given him some of the skill necessary to produce an indie production.  William has a great eye and great taste.  I hope we’ve added to his skill set, and I’d like to be able to provide other up and coming producers with some real-world experience.

Let’s see if the dream continues.