Texas Production Team captured an incredible concert by Livingston Taylor (brother of legendary James Taylor) at the prestigious Kinkaid School's Brown Theater.  The 82-minute concert featured Livingston's exceptional singing, guitar playing and songwriting talents.  Peppered with light-hearted humor, Livingston performed an innovative and hilarious guitar-picking / announcer bit in which he wins the "Guitar Olympics."    Jim Zura directed the three-camera shoot.

Lalo De Pilar is a world-renowned Fusion-Flamenco guitarist, having learned under the tutelage of notable Spanish guitar masters.    He has authored numerous instructional books, and performs at acclaimed events worldwide.   When Lalo performed at the Heinen Theater in Houston, Texas, he commissioned Jim Zura to capture the moment.  While only a one-camera shoot, Zura's editing skills turned this musical masterpiece into a visual and auditory experience.

Michael Brim has been an acoustic singer/songwriter favorite in the Houston area since the early 1980's.  With a gifted voice and smooth guitar style, Michael has introduced a number of hit-worthy original songs into his repertoire of cover favorites.  Jim Zura lensed a live performance of "Neon Desert," and edited it into an innovative layered music video that included a viewpoint of the audience from inside the guitar.

LIVE FROM 

HOUSTON STUDIOS

Hadden Sayers has made his mark as a thunderous blues/rock guitarist in Houston.   His group was invited to Houston Studios to participate in a series of high-tech remote live-switch fiber-optic transmissions.  

TPT's Jim Zura was the dolly-cameraman for a month-long series of live music video productions at Houston Studios.  What makes this unique is that the director, TD, and program record deck were in Dallas!  Total Video teamed up with Q-Media and several other vendors in this beta test of a new milestone in multi-camera remote production!

Three fiber-optic lines carried the full bandwidth signal from each camera to a switcher in Dallas.  The TD cut the show together there, with the Director calling the shots.

The link included full two-way clear com communications, full bandwidth return video, and even tally lights!  In all, eight popular regional musical acts were featured in hour-long sets.

The sets and lighting were changed for each band, who performed for two days.

The point of this technological demo is, you don't need a TV truck and you don't need to fly a Director and TD to a remote multi-camera shoot.  All you need is a set of fiber optic lines between you and the location!   That'll be pretty easy, once they finish that "last mile."

Lighting Director / Set Designer Chuck Singleton,

 Video Engineer Bobby Maxwell, 

Jibmeister Henry Vojtek

Kelly Lancaster jams with Lalo De Pilar at on of Jim Zura's Round Spring Gulch parties.

Kelly Lancaster with Jim Zura at a taping for an upcoming teaching video,

ZERO-BUDGET 

MUSIC VIDEO

Well, when you're the cameraman, audio tech, editor and performer (and you own your own equipment), you can get away with a "zero" budget!  When Jim Zura embarked on a solo trip to Colorado, he took along a small digital video camera and an audio recording he made of the song "I've Been Everywhere."  At 16 locations, he set up the tripod, camera and sound playback, composed the shot, lip-synced a line from the song, reviewed the shot and sometimes did a re-take.  He then edited this footage with some stock video he shot from other projects and produced a lively 3-minute music video! Note: this was done in 2000, when this song was rather obscure, before it became the theme for commercials ad nauseum!