getting b-roll stalls

"Ina, I haven't found the b-roll you want, and I will call you when I find it, okay?" Jack said to me through his cell phone on 5/8 Tuesday morning. "Oh...so probably when?" I asked. "Ina, I am also on another line. I've got to go," the phone was hung up. Is what he said a courteous version of "sorry, there is no raw video footage"? Sigh....

Stanfor News ran an article and a video about the dishwasher-loading robot back in November last year. Ted assigned me to get those audio and video materials, which can be used in our storyboard on that topic. I contacted Stanford News, and they told me that Jack is the person to ask and he is usually swamped. Jack was actually prompt in returning my phone call and making arrangments with me. On my first trip to his office on 5/3, he uploaded the video file to the laptop I took there, plus a "bonus" video of a full-blown Honda robot performing dance steps. Realizing that the raw footage, or b-roll as Ted taught me, of the synchronized video is better for us to make our own video of, I make an appointment with Jack to go to his office again on 5/7 for the raw footage. This time, I was not as lucky. As Jack pulled out the file drawer where the mini-DV tapes were kept, he found that the tapes for that robot story were not there. Thinking that the engeering library might have checked them out, he made a phone call to the library, only to find that the person in charge was at a meeting. "Okay, Ina, I think they should have it. Check with me either this afternoon or tomorrow morning," he instructed. I called him the next morning, and got the response as described earlier. Shall I wait or call him again? Right now, I am really pessimistic about getting the b-roll, and think we may have to build the storyboard with the synchronized video file we have. :(

Next steps

All right, here's what everyone is responsible for:

Story component #1 -- What does STAIR do? And what is the potential market?
media: video interview with Andrew Ng, b-roll of STAIR in action (from Jack Hubbard at Stanford News Service), infographic of how it works, and perhaps an interview with a venture capitalist or potential user to talk about the market segment
supplementary info: links to press coverage of STAIR, extra downloads of the Andrew Ng
interview or the STAIR in action.
team members: Ina and Nef

Story component #2 -- Who is Andrew Ng?
media: video interview with Andrew, b-roll of him at work, pix of him and his team
supplementary info: links to his bio, his home page, his CV, and stories about him.
team members: Ted and William

Story component #3 -- Time line of significant scientific and cultural developments in the
history of robotics and AI at Stanford (we need a shorter name for this)
media: photos and/or videos of each development, along with a paragraph of explanatory text.
team member: Ox
inspiration: the Jerry Brown campaign time line, time line that accompanies NYT story about Ng's research. Try to have fun with this.
source: Get with Prof. Oussama Khatib. He has a highlight reel of important AI research at Stanford.

Don't forget: with each component we should think about a space to invite user comments and input and to get people engaged on the topic.
(Maybe a poll to vote for your favorite pop culture robot, a quiz, flash game, etc?)