Sometimes the old adage “what is old is new again” really is true. My first full-time job in television had me working at an interactive channel programmed specifically for doctors. Thirty years later, I find myself editing a lot of videos for medical, dental, and pharmaceutical companies. The various spots include interviews, marketing materials, as well as educational videos for doctors and hospital staff.

Serving as a hub for cultural enrichment, experiential learning, and stewardship of collections, manuscripts, photographs, and other invaluable archival materials since 1893, the Chester County History Center (CCHC) preserves and shares Chester County’s diverse, noteworthy, and captivating stories with a wide range of audiences. Their history museum in West Chester, PA, aims to enhance community vitality and build historical literacy — the pillars of robust civic culture — through curated programming and resources that span hundreds of years.

In case you’ve been living in a box for half a century, Biography is an American documentary television series and media franchise created in the 1960s by David L. Wolper and owned by A&E Networks since 1987. Each episode depicts the life of a notable person. While freelancing at NBC News Productions, I had the opportunity to cut several episodes of the long running series.

Arthur John Shawcross (June 6, 1945 – November 10, 2008), also known as the Genesee River Killer, was an American serial killer active in Rochester, New York from 1972 through 1989. Editors are pretty tough people, we see a lot of footage that never makes it to the public, and I can say this guy really creeped me out.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS is the main advocate for accelerated, comprehensive and coordinated global action on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. UNAIDS is leading the global effort to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Since the first cases of HIV were reported more than 35 years ago, 78 million people have become infected with HIV and 35 million have died from AIDS-related illnesses. Since it started operations in 1996, UNAIDS has led and inspired global, regional, national and local leadership, innovation and partnership to ultimately consign HIV to history.

For a good chunk of my career in New York, I went from one editing job to another. As a result, I did not always have a chance to get a copy of the project I had just completed – this was especially true when you had to lay the episode off to tape in real time.

Here’s a taste of some of things I worked on. More will be added as I find them in my basement, transfer them from tape or run across them on Youtube.

Rivers of Beer was my first opportunity to combine beer and tv. We developed a pitch for a show that would take viewers around the country and world to look at beer and its impact on global culture. The plan was to put together two pilots, one an American story, the other international. 

In the end, as often happens, the series was not picked up. This left me with a lot of great footage, including an interview with legendary beer writer Michael Jackson, and nowhere to show it. The decision was made to supplement that footage with some newly shot stuff and turn it into a feature length documentary on lambics. Rivers of Beer would go on to win a 2010 Telly Award.

**FUN FACT** – Kevin is probably the only person in the world who had the pleasure of working with both Michael Jackson (the Maven of Malt) and Michael Jackson (the King of Pop). He assistant edited the Spike Lee directed video for MJ’s “They Don’t Really Care About Us” back in the 90s.

It looks like it’s time to cue James Burke again.

This one is going back a few years, but it was a short project that I really enjoyed working on and came about in an odd way. I was out in the yard doing some work when an old colleague from NBC called asking about my editing availability. As luck would have it, I had some time coming up. He told me that somebody would call me in five minutes, but he couldn’t say who this somebody was. It was all very mysterious.

When the phone rang, it was Stone Phillips. Now I had been a freelance editor, who had been working for Dateline NBC’s unit for ten years but had never worked with the show’s former host. He usually worked with the same producer and editor combo, and I was a bit intimidated. We spoke on the phone for a few minutes, and he told me about his project.

The entire work experience with Stone and his producer Steve was fantastic and a lot of fun. Stone could not have been any nicer. What really made it stand out amongst all of the pieces I’ve worked on over the years was where I edited it. I loaded my Avid into the back of my car and drove up to New York, where I spent several days hosted by Stone and his wife at their home while we edited the videos.

Beer and tv “connected” again for me, when I held an impromptu tutored beer tasting one night at their house.

Shelton Brothers was, at its core, essentially three brothers and some like-minded friends who shared a passion for well-crafted beers and an interest in traditional beer styles.

In the mid-nineties, one of the brothers found a beer in Brussels that was like nothing he had ever tried before and he brought some home to America to share with his siblings. Flash forward to 1996 and an importing company was born. Shelton focused on beers brewed with a sense of place, a distinctive house character, and an appreciation for tradition, value, and/or the natural art of beer-making. For about twenty-years, they had an amazing, yet eclectic portfolio of artisanal products, and introduced many drinkers into what lies outside our borders.

One hurdle was education. Shelton Brothers needed to teach their potential customers about the breweries themselves, the styles they produce, and the cultures they came from. In my spare moments, I would put together short videos to try and do just that.

Click on the pictures to watch the videos.

I was not the only one who had changes in their professional life thanks to the coronavirus. An old colleague found himself unemployed after over ten years at the same company. At his former job, he had setup a tour company under their banner. Late in 2021, he decided to take his experience doing that and rolled out his own tour company. While the first year was rough due to the continued impact of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, he is making it work.

I was brought in to design and program the company’s website, aid in its branding, design some simple graphic social media posts, and edit promotional videos. The challenge with the website was to distance Inner Circle Beer Tours from other tour companies, most importantly the one he was previously with. Contrary to current website trends, we worked to make the site as informative as possible and include a lot of data and images on the places visited on the tour and the cultures.

www.innercircletours.com

I would go on to plan and and guide an eight-day beer and whisky tour to Scotland for Inner Circle.

Click on the pictures to watch the videos.

A short film I put together with producer/director Damon Sinclair to help raise funds for K9 unit of the Richland County, SC Sheriff’s Department. It focuses on the bond between the human and canine officers.

In 2016, South Carolina businessman, George Sensor, was watching the evening news when an in-studio piece about the sixth annual Guardians of the Night 5k came on. Lt. Kevin Hoover and his K9 partner Arko were there to promote the event which benefits the Richland County Sheriff’s K9 Unit in order to purchase life-saving equipment, food, medical necessities and more for the dogs. The following day, Mr Sensor reached out to Lt. Hoover to see what the unit needed, the response was canine ballistic vests. Sensor wrote a check for three vests, and the rest is history.

Click on the picture to watch the film.

Helen Sipala takes us on a tour of her former home, Painter’s Folly, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Built in 1857, Painter’s Folly has played a role in the lives of three major American artists: Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and Andrew Wyeth. Sipala discusses the friendship that she and her husband forged with Andrew over the last few decades of his life.

Click on the picture to watch the film.

For over two decades, their goal was to try and bring the best beers from around the world to drinkers in the US, since they couldn’t get them at the source. Then one night they had an epiphany – “what if we actually COULD bring drinkers to the source?” Using their knowledge of the international brewing industry, as well as  professional contacts and most important, friendships, the Shelton Brothers took guests on the “inside.” They would go on to host successful beer tours to Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain.

I was tasked with designing their website, as well as creating some promotional videos using footage mainly shot on mobile phones while the folks from Shelton Brothers were traveling for work.

I was approached to put together a simple promotional video for the Chester County Council of Boy Scouts of America for their annual fundraising gala. They were in the final push to raise the funds needed to complete the Oscar Lasko Program Activity Resource Campus (PARC). PARC will be a seamless combination of indoor and outdoor space, creating an amenity unparalleled for training and program opportunities for Scouts, adult leaders, and the community. Its 28 acres of expansive green space provides a wealth of opportunities for environmental education, outdoor living skills development, team building and leadership enhancement, as well as recreational and fitness programs including fishing, hiking, team sports, and outdoor games.

As the video due date began to close in, I was brought on to edit two more videos for the same event.

This project was personal to me, as both of my sons were scouts and my wife is a scoutmaster in Chester County Council.

Click on the pictures to watch the videos.

(Nov. 26, 2020) Here we are again. When I started this show back in early 2020, I never thought that I would be doing a second season. While I knew Covid 19 wasn’t “just like the flu,” the possibility of preparing for a second winter of the pandemic seemed so remote.

The first round was hard on many small businesses and unemployment was high. With summer came an ebb of the pandemic and an ease on restrictions. Now the colder months are just about here and cases are rising quickly. This second round will be catastrophic for the drinks and service industries, as well as those who work in them. So I implore you, please support them when you can. If you don’t, they may not be around when we reach the other side of this pandemic.

Season 2 is made up of 20 episodes and 2 extras. Click on the picture to see the video.

(April 12, 2020)  Like most of you, I’ve found myself glued to social media over the last few weeks. Sadly, not an hour has gone by where I’ve not seen another person or small business affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These are my… our friends, colleagues, and family. For me it includes a friend of over four decades wondering if his company would close permanently, a former customer who may have to lay off about 1500 people, a small brewer who has found himself with no outlet for his beer, and most importantly, a friend who tested positive for coronavirus.

For the last decade, I’ve spent almost every waking moment focused on the greater craft beer world. In that time, I’ve made some great friends. When COVID began to spread globally, my first thought was how I could give back to that community. The result is NO PANTS DURING THE PANDEMIC. It is a web series that features the bars, restaurants, breweries, cideries, wineries, distilleries, and stores that I know and love. That’s only the tip of the iceberg – what about the servers, bartenders, chefs, farmers, bakers, and even musicians – everybody who has been affected by all the closings?

Each of the season’s twenty episodes features one place and is about 30 minutes long. It allows the guests to discuss their business, and see how they are coping during these trying times. Please note that I am not getting anything out of this series other than the opportunity to help and talk to people. Everybody appearing in the show is doing this in their free time to help their businesses and the people who work for them. The series was not a simple live Zoom call. Each interview was edited down by me to make it move nicely and be entertaining to watch and look as professionally done as possible. NO PANTS was essentially produced without a budget, and is made up mainly of images supplied by the guests and friends or from social media – since we were all quarantined. Please spread the word about the series and share it with your friends.

Click on the picture to watch the episode.