Music Video - Lift You Up - and New Website

This never happened in TV news. In some spare time at work at Kelby Media Group, I shot a music video for my song, "Lift You Up." A coworker who heard me play it asked, in complete seriousness, if I was on a record label. "I know people who do music," he said. "And that song's good." When he had some downtime, he even wanted to help, and he did the camera on the moving shots.

How cool is that?

I shot the rest, and edited the video. Plus, I wrote, performed and recorded the song. You've heard the term "one man band"? This is nearly that in more ways than one!

"Lift You Up" is a painful song for me in a couple of ways. First, it deals with trying to support friends who have suffered catastrophic losses in their lives. Second, one of the people who inspired it, for whom I once had great affection, decided to sever ties with me, so I get a bittersweet feeling whenever I play or hear the song now.

Like the song itself, the video is not perfect, but I like it a lot, and I hope you will, too. Please take a look:



I have taken this music stuff seriously enough that that I bought a the domain name MrJohnMusic.com. For now it uses the basic layout of JohnMcQuiston.com, but it has the best of my songs there, and I plan to tailor a style just for it. Stay tuned. (See what I did there?)

Anchor of The Year?

So this happened. For the third straight year, I am a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists Florida Chapter Anchor of the Year. I don’t know if this is good. I worked as at WWSB-TV in Sarasota for not even two full weeks of 2014, and my entry consisted of work from a single day’s ordinary newscasts. Either the judge really liked my work on a mundane news day, or only three people entered and all of us made the finals.

You may judge for yourself:

Lorikeets Play - Sony Power Zoom Lens Test

One cool thing about my job is that I get to try out cool gear like the Sony FE PZ 28-135mm G OSS lens. Some days I even get paid to go to the zoo and take pictures or photos! The Sony power zoom lens is designed with video in mind, so that's what I shot with it.

While shooting demo footage with the lens on a Sony A7S camera, I caught a couple of interesting exchanges between these colorful birds at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa called lorikeets. I don't know if this is their version of wrestling, or if it's an attempt at mating. But it's fun to watch?



I did no color grading, correcting or sharpening in post. This is straight from the camera, rendered to an MP4 file. The part before the dissolve used the lens' auto focus. After the transition I manually focused the lens. This shot doesn't feature much of the zoom, but it worked well for me. I'd say more but since I will review the lens for my job, I don't want to steal anyone's thunder! But the result will go up on YouTube, and I'll post it here.

Anchor of the Year?

The Florida chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has released the list of finalists for its annual Sunshine State Awards. I am one of two up for its "Anchor of the Year" award for my work with WWSB in Sarasota. In the whole state of Florida! See the list here.

Here is the entry I submitted:

Double Duty

Some recent changes at our station include our sports guy moving to co-host the morning show. Since he used to do sports on our weekend newscasts, which I anchor, that leaves me to carry the ball, if you will, on sports, too.

I spent the first dozen years or so of my career doing sports, so it's not difficult. The challenge now is writing and editing the sports segment AND still writing much of the newscast, too.

I'm not complaining. Although the double duty divides my attention and leaves me less time to polish the news scripts, once the stress of getting it all finished has passed, I have fun reading the sports on the air.



And if I am lucky enough that you enjoy my work on ABC7, you are lucky enough that I just signed a new contract to stay there.

I don't think this will give me a big head

Someone called the station today to ask if this was the weekend we were supposed to turn back our clocks to end Daylight Saving Time. After getting his answer ("no"), the caller changed the subject and told our newscast producer that I was too good for this market and should move on to someplace bigger.

When the producer passed the message on to me, I of course felt flattered. But I could not resist pointing out that the glowing assessment of my talent came from someone who had called a television station because he apparently could not read a calendar.

You can assess my talent yourself, if you wish. Here's an excerpt of one of tonight's newscasts.

Baby Born at Baseball Stadium

Hardly hard news here, but I liked this story, and its telling. Yes, I am biased.

One Man Band

It's a term used in music to describe someone who plays multiple instruments and used in television to describe someone who does a production by himself.

In this case, it's both — though I got help from some recorded drum loops and overdubbed bass for this one.



Note that this was shot on a consumer camera in about 30 minutes and does not reflect the quality of my professional work.

Camera Found

I played golf with my father today. When I met him at my parents' house, I saw a small case on a bureau by the front door. Inside was a little Canon SD500 point-and-shoot camera I thought I had lost. I had actually left it inside my dad's SUV probably on some previous golf outing.

It must have sat in there for two or three months. Its battery still held a charge and its memory card still held empty space. So at the risk of leaving it in his SUV again, I brought it with me when we played at Lake Jovita in San Antonio.

That's Dad in the video with his golfing buddy Steve making a couple of cameos.



Yeah, the video's not great and the audio has a background hum. The LCD screen is fried so I have to use the tiny eyepiece to frame shots. The camera zoom function doesn't work any more, either, at least not shooting video. And the camera is difficult to hold still. But since I had given up the camera for lost, it's like I got a new one. And I like being able to shoot video with something that's about the size of a cigarette pack.

People in the Pound

ZooToo has just posted my final story. This one I actually shot back in February but was delayed because the story's subject, the Humane Society of the Nature Coast, was a contender for ZooToo's million-dollar makeover.

Executive Director Joanne Schoch and other volunteers spent a week living in the shelter's animal cages to raise awareness and money for the shelter.

I hope my pronouncement that this was my "final story" for ZooToo is premature. It suspended news production back in April. I was told that it may be temporary, which would be great because I enjoyed doing the stories. ZooToo been slowly releasing stories already produced to keep the website fresh since then.

You can read the story on ZooToo's website or watch the video version below.

This Is Not It

I'm always looking for ways to put my video camera to profitable use. (I'd like to make money from my still camera too but that's another story.) Unfortunately, in the freelance game, you also have to look out for people who dangle the possibility of a payday with the real aim of removing money from your pocket.

Learn. Shoot. Earn.

That's the headline on the page of the Travel Channel Academy. It's affiliated with the Travel Channel, which is an actual channel you can find on cable and satellite. I can't because I don't have cable or satellite but you can. "Give us 4 days of your time," the pitch reads. "And we'll give you the digital filmmaking toolkit to become a travel journalist."

Just four days. Wow! The Travel Channel Academy got a plug from WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., where the course is offered. See it here. I originally had embedded the video here but couldn't get it to stop playing automatically.

Sounds like a sure-fire hit. How come not everybody is doing this? For one thing, it costs $2,000 for the four day course. Add $500 if you don't have your own camera and computer. And that puff piece interview glossed over the fact that relatively few of the "graduates" ever sell pieces to the Travel Channel — and that many of them bring as little as $50!

(Journalists are supposed to be skeptical. They're not supposed to be cheerleaders just repeating someone's news release. Don't get me started.)

Maybe if you're laid off or on furlough from your regular job, you have better options for that $2,500 you have lying around.

Besides, I'm already a travel journalist. Remember my video recollection of a trip over a Utah mountain in a Toyota Prius?



Or this classic from Key West:

Alligator Hearts Garbage Truck

I kid you not.

This was my latest story for zootoo.com. An alligator at a Sarasota attraction called Jungle Gardens lets loose a bellow every time the trash truck makes a pickup at the park.

I didn't even think this was a zootoo-type of story. I sent it to my editor for grins and she wrote back telling me to pursue it.

Best of all, editors made virtually no changes to the text version of the story I submitted and the video version survived completely unscathed.

That means, of course, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.



Feedback on ZooToo.com has been mixed. A lot of people got the humor but some did not. They felt sorry for the lonely gator. Alligators don't need playmates.

Perhaps I should have pointed out that this one came from an alligator farm. If she wasn't at the park, she'd be someone's wallet.

And from the small world department: Les Smith, the anchor who introduced this piece, worked for more than 20 years in Norfolk, Va, including the two years I worked there in the early 1990s. I wonder if he recognized my name as he read it.

A Month Late

But I was busy. And lazy. And I forgot.

Here is a video I shot during my trip with my brother Jim to Key West last month. If you're not my brother Jim, you'll probably be bored. Jim, you'll probably be bored too.

When Am I Gonna Learn

... to keep opinions to myself, nod my head and say, "Thank you, Sir, may I have another?" Like a good boy. Or at least one that wants to keep freelance jobs.

I don't know.

ZooToo posted my latest story today. It's about how people will line up and wait for hours for the chance to adopt dogs they saw on TV rescued from puppy mills.

Some changes made after I submitted the story disappointed me. I keep reminding myself that I surrender editorial control of these stories in exchange for creative control over how I cash the check.

Traffic Stop

We're not talking police encounter, here. My temporary gig doing the traffic for WTSP-TV, Tampa Bay's CBS affiliate, will end soon. Seven months ago I got a call saying that the station had let its traffic reporter go and asked if I could fill in "until further notice."

Further notice has come.

The last girl that the station auditioned has won the job. I don't know when she starts but I do know she's going to need a lot of training before she's ready to go on the air. My days here are numbered but I don't yet know exactly what the number is.

The gig has lasted a lot longer than I would have guessed and it's been good for me.

Coincidentally, I had just put together a montage of lighter moments of my traffic reporting. I've posted some of the clips before but some of the later ones are recent.

This Cat's Nose Knows

Here is the promised zootoo story about the cat that checks his owner's blood sugar by sniffing his breath. The video is embedded below but you can also read more details on zootoo.com here.

On Hold

I completed another zootoo story this week that turned out well enough to prompt one of the editors to e-mail me:

Just wanted to email you and say how amazing a job you did on the Diagnostic Cat story. The video and audio as well as delivery was fantastic.

As usual, the story was amazing before I got a hold of it: A cat that with a sniff of your breath can tell if your blood sugar is outside of its normal range and will alert you to the problem.

No, I am not kidding!

The story should appear Monday. I'll post the video and the link to the text article then.

I also spent half of last week finishing another story for zootoo that it says it can't run for a couple of weeks and maybe not for three months.

They had assigned me a story about something at the Humane Society of the Nature Coast. Only after I deliver the completed story do the editors notice that the shelter is one of the contenders in a shelter makeover contest it's sponsoring. To avoid the appearance of favoritism, zootoo decided to hold the story until either the contest ends or this shelter is out of contention.

I hate that it's been delayed, not just because I don't know when I'll get paid. Here's a preview.

Nice To Be Remembered

Someone landed on this page of JohnMcQuiston.com today from a Google search for "John McQuiston WCPO."

More than four years has passed since I left Cincinnati's ABC affiliate after working there for only a little more than two years. Yet occasionally my statcounter will tell me that someone from the Cincinnati area has Googled my name.

The link above goes to the page on my site where I have a few examples of my work at WCPO. I watched them today and I can see why I'd remember them. They make me proud even now.

But I don't have enough ego to believe that they could have etched my name into someone else's brain strongly enough for the memory to last so long.


Video Courtesy: WCPO-TV

Traffic Update

My tenure as traffic reporter at WTSP-TV will end Friday. For a week at least because I go out of town on vacation. I don't know what the station will do in my absence. I was the fill-in. I wasn't supposed to be here long enough to need a substitute.

Makeshsift Mittens

I posted this for the person whose story I related before one of my traffic reports this morning for WTSP. If that's not you, you may be bored by it. You might be bored anyway but, hey, at least I gave you the courtesy of prior warning this time, which is more than I usually do.

It has to do with the recent snow in North Carolina. That's why we hear the weather guy narrating video about snow before you see me.


Video Courtesy WTSP-TV