Emerson's Habitat for Humanity Video

This is a video I put together for Emerson's Machinery Health Management business in Knoxville, TN. It follows the progression of construction of the Emerson sponsored Habitat for Humanity house built in April 2009. The video appears to end around the 4:13 mark, but keep watching. There is a nice surprise at the end. Total run time is 5:33. Oh yeah. I almost forgot. Turn up your speakers. The music rocks.





Emerson is headquartered in St. Louis MO. The Machinery Health Management business is part of Emerson Process Management located in Austin, TX.

Smoky Mountains - Nov 2008

Ok where was I? Oh yeah, I remember. I was catching you kind readers up on our adventures this fall. So now the story continues.....

After we returned from the Czech Republic, we had lot of catching up to do (work, school, home, etc) and lots of videos (Over 10 hours of net footage) and still photos (over 800) to upload. It took about 3 weeks to get back into any thing that resembled a normal routine.

Early in November, Sandra and I made a couple of trips to the Great Smoky Mountains National park which is about a 70 minute drive for us. I’ll be featuring some of the photos from those trips over the next several posts here. I hope you’ll check back often to see them. And as always, comments are encouraged. Oh yeah, here is another short driving video. You folks seem to like these. Turn up your speakers and enjoy a relaxing drive through the golden fall colors in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Then send a link to this page to someone who is stressed and encourage them to take a 3 minute relaxation break. They'll thank you for it later.

CZ Trip – Riding the Lift.

Many people are unfamiliar with what Europeans call a lift. It’s a small phone-booth sized elevator. Below is a video where we managed to fit 3 people with 2 back-packs inside. Don’t worry, I checked the weight limit and did the math. It was a bit comical but shows you what riding in a lift is like. You’ll also get to see the entrance and the street outside our apartment.

CZ Trip Day 7 Sun – Prague

This was our final day in Prague. We shot some footage for summary purposes of the trip and took mom to a rather large shopping mall. We then got off the subway near the museum and walked down the new town square for more shopping. We stopped in at the Louve' Restaurant for dinner and their world famous hot chocolate.

Here is a video of our ride on the Prague Metro/Subway. There is no music on this one so you can hear the sounds better. If you are ever fortunate enough to visit Prague, then the subway is the best way to get around in the city. A week long pass gets you on the metro as well as the buses and street cars.

Here are some random photos.

From Prague - Misc

Our Apartment Building and street

From Prague - Misc

The view from our window at night of the street

From Prague - Misc

Cafe across the street from our Apartment

From Prague - Misc

From Prague - Misc

From Prague - Misc

Bread Basket at the Louve' Restaurant

Waiter at the Louve' Restaurant

CZ Trip – Day 3 Wed.– Klatovy and Pilzen

Being able to park the rental car right outside the apartment was very convenient. Back-packing all of our gear on the subway was not fun. There was some concern about parking downtown in Prague. Our apartment was in the old city a short walk from the river and the Charles Bridge. Apparently, only permanent residents who have special permits are allowed to park on the streets in that area of town. Others will be towed at least during the business day, when parking is scarce. But we got in so late and left so early each morning it was not a problem. On Day 3, we were up early and loaded and on the road ahead of the morning traffic.

We headed west for an hour to the outskirts of Pilzen and then turned south to the town of Klatovy. I should mention that my sister Ava did the driving each morning and through out the day. She did an awesome job. Sandra and I would read the maps and road signs to help navigate. Sandra would also talk us through the shot sequence for the day. Here are some photos of Klatovy.



Pretty much every where Sandra went with her big camera she drew a crowd. Here are some photos of us setting up in a park to shoot a scene in Klatovy. The school must have dismissed for lunch because soon there was a crowd of middle schoolers watching us film.



We got the shots we needed in Klatovy and headed back to Pilzen. As you have seen in some of the videos, I occasionally, would get out the little Panasonic camera and use the mono-pod to film us driving from the passenger seat. The Czech country side is really beautiful and the best way to show you is these little driving videos. I hope you like them. This one was filmed on the drive from Klatovy to Pilzen.


CZ Driving from Klatovy to Pilzen from Jim Walker on Vimeo.


Some of you may not know that Pilzen is home to Pilsner Beer. Once we got into Pilzen, we got the video shots we needed and found a small little restaurant for some dinner. I drove us home at the end of a long day of shooting. Here are some photos of Pilzen.

CZ Trip – Day 2 Tues. – Usti nad Labem and Lovosice

This would be a good time to mention, that I am under strict orders from my producer (Sandra) not to spoil any of the story details from the “Jonne Project.” Fortunately there are plenty of other interesting stories from the travel, sightseeing, and vacation aspect that I can tell you. I should also mention that we chose to stay in Prague because it was in a central location to our 3 main filming destinations. Each destination was just over an hour away from Prague. So the first order of business was to rent a car. Driving in Europe is not recommended for most Americans. While all of Europe does drive on the right side of the road (except England) the signs are very different and some of the customs are different. But, I lived in Italy three years, and Ava has been to Europe frequently, so driving in CZ was not going to be a problem.


Now that we were unpacked, our batteries charged, cupboard and fridge stocked we were ready for our first day of filming. The breakfast cereal with buttermilk was quite a rude awakening. We ended up eating the cereal dry. We left our apartments, with our bulging backpacks loaded with equipment and walked down the streets to the nearest subway. From there we went to the end of the green line and caught a shuttle bus out to the airport and rented a car. This took nearly two hours, but soon we had loaded up our little black Skoda sedan and we were on our way north to Usti nad Labem.



The first location that we needed to find was on the outskirts of town, down some rather small country roads. Sandra had turn-by-turn directions and we did a good job finding all the streets until we got to the last road called “unnamed road”. We went by it twice, but finally found what turned out to be a little dirt field-road, which explains the unnamed part. We bravely inched the little Skoda over the ruts in the road praying we would not meet anyone, because it was definitely a one lane road. But since there were no signs of civilization, we figured the odds were pretty good we were the only people around. We found our first location and got our shot. We packed up and headed back into town to see if any other locations looked familiar to mom. But so much has changed she didn’t recognize anything. The Elbe River passes through the town and there is new modern bridge which we managed to drive across.



Driving in Usti nad Labem from Jim Walker on Vimeo.


We then moved onto the small town of Lovosice for more filming and a good dinner. Then it was back to apartment in Prague.

Czech Republic Trip – Day 1 Mon.

We took a quick flight from Knoxville to Atlanta and there we caught a direct overnight flight to Prague. We were late out of Atlanta due to technical difficulties. When they disconnected the Plane from terminal power, the engines died. Not the best feeling in the world, but we were thankful it happened on the ground instead of in the air. They reconnected the plane and ran through the pre-flight check list again and this time things worked and we pushed back from the terminal and were soon in the air. We arrived in Prague at about 11:30 AM Monday, over an hour late. We had arranged a ride to pick us up and take us to our apartments, but they had given up waiting on us. There were several professional looking shuttle vans for hire so we decided to take a chance. Fortunately, most of the drivers spoke enough English and we had a map to the apartments which helped. By the time we made it to the apartments, the manager had gone to lunch and so we had to wait around on the side walk with our bags of gear. Fortunately it was a quite one-way street with little vehicle or pedestrian traffic. Eventually, the manager returned and we hauled the bags up to our apartments.

Ava flew from Washington DC to Stuttgart, Germany and took the train to Prague. She arrived just after lunch. We rented two apartments, one for mom and Ava, and one for Sandra and me. We took a quick nap then headed out for a short work to a nearby supermarket to stock up. We would later discover that we accidentally bought buttermilk for our breakfast cereal. The labels were not in English. We hung out in the apartments for a while, getting all of gear ready to go (charging batteries, labeling tapes, etc), unpacking our clothes, and just generally resting and trying to get used to the new time zone. We went over our filming plan, which was to travel to 3 to 4 different towns where mom grew up. We would attempt to hit this hard for the first 3 days. If the weather cooperated, and we completed our shot list, then we would have the remaining 3 - 4 days in Prague for site seeing. Later, that evening we went out to eat. Filming would start the next day. The video shows our apartments and the restuarant where we ate.




Prague - our first evening from Jim Walker on Vimeo.