San Diego Comic Con is Coming - by Mark Schulze

These are assorted photos showing the outside environment at San Diego Comic Con where our broadcast video production crew covers the show for our various clients.

A view across the street from the San Diego Convention Center; San Diego Hard Rock Hotel on the right where the limo is parked

San Diego Comic Con Conventioneers crossing the street

San Diego Comic Con is kid- and family-friendly

Whoa, remember the Hot Dog Mobile?

Photographs by Patty Mooney

San Diego Comic Con is Coming - by Mark Schulze

Do not mess with this guy

Do not mess with the green guy either


A glimpse of the San Diego Comic Con convention floor; it's tight

Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connolly appeared on a panel for 'The Day the Earth Stood Still," 2008

Photos by Patty Mooney

San Diego Comic Con is Coming - by Mark Schulze

Welcome to the second installment of San Diego Comic Con photos from over the years. This batch is from 2008, inside the San Diego Convention Center. But in the next days and weeks I will devote my page to some vintage photos that will take you way back!

These three handsome guys are all serving in the Marines and volunteered to be ushers at the various panels at Comic Con

Sign posted outside the lavatories; unfortunately non-humans cannot read

Two Avators in the hallway

More fun and frolicking with photogs and avatars in the hallway

These photos were all taken by my partner, Patty Mooney who serves as producer and/or sound technician on broadcast video shoots.

San Diego Comic Con is Coming - by Mark Schulze

San Diego Comic Con is coming, and it's coming fast. After a quick glance at their website, one can see that Friday and Saturday (July 24 and 25) are already sold out; these are the times when you will see the most costumed characters in every corner of the San Diego Convention Center halls. These are the two days that Comic Con fans spend the year preparing themselves for. If you position yourself in the right place at the right time with a camera, the crowds will slowly shuffle on by, providing great photo ops.

Thankfully we have press credentials in hand, and so we will be on our way into the maelstrom once more, just as we have done for over a decade, as an elite broadcast video production crew, gathering images from the convention floor and beyond!

San Diego Convention Center, street level

Check out the Caped Crusader's double chin; looks like he picked up a few things for the bat cave

Actor Hugh Jackman makes a surprise appearance in 2008

Actor Beau Bridges talks about Stargate: Continuum on the flight deck of the USS Midway, 2008

Stay tuned for more Comic Con photos taken over the last ten years, in the days and weeks to come, as our way of gearing up for San Diego's largest convention.

These photographs were taken by Patty Mooney

Adventures at the Landfill - by Mark Schulze

Mark Schulze on camera at Otay Mesa Landfill - Photo by Patty Mooney

Johnnie Perkins, Allied Waste Services Director, and Mark Schulze, Director of Photography - Photo by Patty Mooney

Video production has been my way of life since when I left college in 1981 and started my video production company, Crystal Pyramid Productions. One thing I love about the business is that no two productions are ever alike. Each one has its own special demands and features a whole new roster of people who are involved, as well as its own location or set of locations.

We have recently shot on various occasions for our local waste management company, Allied Waste Services. These shoots have been interesting in that they have also provided an education to all of us on what happens to our garbage once we dispose of it and cart it out to the street curb. My wife and partner, Patty Mooney, has blogged about it herself, as she accompanied me several times as a sound recordist at two of San Diego's landfills, and she edited the award-winning video, "Operations at Sycamore Landfill."

Adventures at the Landfill - by Patty Mooney

Check it out - it's really quite fascinating.

Balboa Park, San Diego's Jewel - by Mark Schulze

Mark Schulze collecting stock footage in Balboa Park, San Diego - Photo by Patty Mooney

One of the fun things I do in my job is to gather clips for our stock footage library, New & Unique Videos. We actually started the company after shooting a documentary called "Full Cycle: A World Odyssey," which took my partner, Patty Mooney, and me around the world with our mountain bikes and a ton of video equipment. After the documentary was completed, we started getting calls from clients who wanted to buy footage from the places where we had traveled. And thus began the stock footage branch of New & Unique Videos.



"Full Cycle: A World Odyssey" garnered over 13 international awards and lots of press; however, it was never broadcast on television because it was considered too "nichey" and because it was the first "reality show" ever produced, it was misunderstood and just too far ahead of its time. Patty and I started calling it our "red-headed stepchild" as we began parsing out clips like the crazy Tasmanian devil and the underwater mountain biker clips which both appeared on Real TV.



Anyway, one of my favorite places to shoot footage is our very own jewel, Balboa Park. Above you will see one of the two water fountains featured at the park along with the Museum of Man. If you ever get a chance to visit San Diego, you must be sure to check out Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo. There are also several museums that are excellent, including the Reuben H. Fleet Space Center & Theater, the San Diego Natural History Museum which is now showing the Body Worlds Exhibit, the Automotive Museum, the Hall of Champions Sports Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, and the list goes on. On a beautiful day you cannot go wrong.

Pat and Oscars Give Away One Million Breadsticks - by Mark Schulze

A very interesting production gig occurred in 2004 when Pat & Oscar's, a local fast-food restaurant chain here in San Diego, decided to give away breadsticks, calling the campaign "Summer of One Million Breadsticks." Their mascot, as seen in the above photo, is one of the funniest mascots I have ever had occasion to videotape. A very personable breadstick, to be sure!

I shot a VNR (Video News Release) for Pat & Oscar's. What this entails is first shooting footage of an event (such as "Summer of One Million Breadsticks"). After the shoot, the videographer (me), drives like a bat out of hell back to the studio to edit the best clips into a five-minute reel that then gets messengered to all the big local news stations. You hope for a slow news day so that your VNR gets aired. This particular one was picked up by two of the stations and shown on both the 6 PM and 10 PM news segments. So that was a successful campaign for Pat & Oscar's.