Digital software makes video editing easier for Black Rabbit

BOULDER — Variety is the spice of the video production business, and Pete and Peggy O’Neil incorporate it to the hilt in Black Rabbit Productions. They create their own independent videos on outdoor travel, they maintain an online bookstore of outdoor publications at www.blackrabbit.com and they produce highly acclaimed video programs for corporate clients.

“Each part of the business is great – we love doing our own travel documentaries and we love working with clients,´ said Pete O’Neil, who operates the company with his wife from his home office in North Boulder.

Their independent productions include the award-winning “Exploring Arches National Park: A Users Guide.”

“We shot it with the cooperation of the National Park Service and Canyonlands Natural History Association,” O’Neil said. The video introduces viewers to the stunning landscape of Arches National Park, an ever-evolving gallery of weird and wonderful natural stone arches, hoodoos, spires and balanced rocks, according to Black Rabbit’s Web site.

In exploring some of its best-known trails and least-visited areas, it explains why Arches is so full of arches and emphasizes the importance of walking softly through its fragile desert environment, O’Neil said.

Another award-winning video called “Night Photography” follows landscape photographer Dan Norris into the dark and shows amateur photographers that they needn’t pack up their cameras when the sun goes down. In clear, easy-to-understand steps, they learn to capture on film a night landscape that in some cases can’t even be seen by the naked eye. Included are star trails and star points, how to double- expose a moon into a shot, how to shoot lightning and how to paint with artificial light.

Other independently produced videos include “Hidden Canyons,” “High Desert Images,” the “Video Home Inventory Guide” and “Document It!”, designed to be used by insurance companies with the home inventory guide to convince prospective clients of the importance of having a personal property inventory.

Another part of Black Rabbit Productions consists of their corporate video productions, for clients like NIST and NCAR. “Scientists are doing great things,” O’Neil said. He and his wife created “Who Cares about Science,” which was shown at the Denver Film Festival last year. “We wrote the script, interviewed people and translated scientific jargon into what kids can understand,” he said.

The O’Neils are equipped with the broadcast industry standard Betacam SP, digitizer, editing programs and audio. While analog tape-to-tape editing does exist, O’Neil said eventually everyone will make the switch to digital.

“I could make a change in 10 minutes to a finished (digital) copy,” O’Neil said. “If it had been done the old way, it would have taken thousands of dollars.” That’s because analog tape to tape is hard to edit. It is a sequence of shots the producer decides to string together. If the middle shot no longer seems right in the video, to remove it would require going back to that spot on the tape, erasing it, and then recording all the shots again to come after it.

With digital editing, it merely takes a few key strokes to delete a sequence. The other side of the coin is digital editing provides millions of options. “Since you can make changes, you do make changes,” O’Neil said.

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