 Okay, we're live. We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fiedel. It's Monday morning, back from the weekend. Okay, all right. With all kinds of interesting news from the United States Supreme Court this morning. But let's hold up on discussing that. I want to get sad. Okay, and this is Community Matters, and we have a special show here today. We're calling it, Why Not Consider a Career, a Future in Video. And we have a father and son combination, Craig Wagnill, an old friend of ThinkTech and been on many shows with us. And he's a practicing lawyer. Hi, Craig. Hi, good morning. Thanks for having us here. Thank you for having me on the show. Nice job. That's Parker, Parker Hideo Wagnill, Craig's son. So this is a study of the connection these guys have to video and the connection they have to ThinkTech. Let's begin with you, Craig. What's your connection? I mean, you've been practicing, but somewhere along the line, you got involved in our radio show, probably 2008 or 2009 about that. You did a number of radio shows with us, yeah? Well, that's right. I mean, thanks to thanks to you. And I had done some radio before that. Oh, that's right, in Japan. In Japan, in college. And then when I was in Japan, I was at disjockey for a radio station there and came back. But none of that was the type of talk radio that you were doing and sort of that that my my foray into that was thanks to you and the opportunity to ThinkTech, which was fantastic. And did that show for what a little over a year and a half or so. And got a chance to interview a lot of really neat people and really enjoyed it and such. Yeah, we did it from my law office. Yes. In the conference room, we had all these wires and microphones. Everything all looked up in there. That's right. That's right. Those are good old days. And just for, you know, just to follow that history from there, we went to, let's see, from there we went to the Davies building for a video studio and for a while we did video and radio. I think you came down a couple of times in that. I did. In that studio there. I did. You were on the video. And then recently you've been around too. You've had some other shows with us recently. You've given me the opportunity to help interview some people for the triple digit thing for the bar association. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Things like that. So take a moment and talk about that project because you were instrumental with that project. That, well, I can't take a lot of credit for that one. I was very fortunate that, you know, that came a couple of years after I had served as president of the bar. And Greg Markham, who was then serving as president, had the idea of honoring during his year the people, what he referred to as a triple digits with the people with only three numbers in their bar number. And by the way, I have more than three or four numbers in my bar number. But one of my partners, Bernie Bays, who I got the chance to interview along with others, had three digits. I mean, they were some of the earlier members of our bar association and practice law. In fact, long before I had come to Hawaii and I was in high school, et cetera. So I got to be a part of that program. And one of my contributions to that was getting to, you know, come into ThinkTech and video. These are tapes that are being archived and kept of members of the Bar Association, these attorneys, and their stories. It was fascinating. Yeah, you were great at it. You're natural. It's a lot of experience for sure. But just so that everybody knows what it was, it was called what the three digit, three digit law program. And it was about the lawyers who only had three digits in their bar numbers, their Hawaii bar numbers. And that means the first 999 lawyers submitted in the state. That's right. But we don't, you know, even when you say that, we don't have all of them. Many of them have passed away, unfortunately. And so there's a limited number that are still with us or available or haven't moved somewhere away out of the state and were available to participate. So that made it even more exciting to do that and then be able to honor them at the annual dinner in August. It was, what, a year ago? Maybe, yeah, a couple years ago. A couple years, a couple of Augusts ago. That's right. That's right. That was fabulous. Because we had, we'd strung together all of those interviews for all those people that were, hmm, I would say 50 of them, maybe more, and played them little pieces of all of them. It was fantastic. And not only was it well received, obviously, by those that were essentially being honored, the three digits and so on. But, you know, their families were there, their firms were there, their partners and longtime, you know, business associates and the rest of us that may not have known many of these people and they had these stories that made them real people and made them interesting and you appreciated a time of practicing law that was well before when I, you know, started practicing. It was great. And they were historical figures. Some of them were, you know, larger than life. Some of them really had an effect on the development of the state either before or not too long after statehood. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And most recently, you and I collaborated on the Leadership Institute of the Hawaii State Farm Association. Yes. Well, I didn't do that. I was there to just, you know, help you guys along and you were monitoring, you know, serving as the monitor and the moderator, I'm sorry, for that program and that was fantastic. And it was extremely well received, of course, by each of the members of the Leadership Institute. Yeah. Well, let me say that as usual, you presented as a follow-through person. And there are two kinds of people in the world. I hope you're listening, Parker. Two kinds of people. There's the follow-through people, the ones who follow through and what they're supposed to do and the others. That's the two kinds of people in the world. And you want to be the follow-through. Yes. You want to be the follow-through. That wasn't obvious. Yes. That's the goal. Okay. Now, Parker is a student at Mid-Pak Institute, which is a very high-tech school, as far as my observation is concerned. In fact, we made a movie there a couple of years ago about the iPad. Somebody gave some, maybe it was the Weinberg Institute, the Weinberg Trust, Howie Weinberg, yeah, gave a lot of money to the Mid-Pak Institute in order to, dedicated to buying and, for every student got an iPad. Right? And then that changed the school because all of a sudden, the students were teaching the teachers. The teachers really appreciated that. But I'd like to, I'd like more about, about Parker. And I wonder if you could, this is going to be great. I wonder if you could introduce your son, Craig. Well, I'd be honored to introduce my son. I had planned this, so it'll be off the cuff. But, you know, I couldn't be prouder. You know, Parker is one of these kids, he's extremely hard worker. And he's very interested in, you know, as we'll talk about, he's interested in the video stuff. But he's interested in very creative things, which I love. And he has no fear when it comes to, you know, he'll make videos, he'll do other things that are creative. He's always been an artist, loves drawing and such and, in ways that I was never good at and such, so I envy his talent and such and that. But I also envy his, you know, lack of inhibition or fear in going into something new. And that isn't, you know, that isn't limited to, you know, this type of artistic endeavor. I mean, you know, he loves eating and trying new foods. He loves going to new places. He loves challenging himself. I mean, you know, Parker here's ran, you know, at 11 and 12 years old, has ran the Honolulu Marathon twice. Oh, whoa. He's right here at this table talking to us. That's pretty fantastic. He came to me wanting to do it. And I've ran the marathon a number of times and I'd said, well, you know, you're a little young, this is a little early for you, you know, said, I really want to do it. I said, well, if you're going to do it, here's the deal. And we made a pact. I mean, you, we're going to have to, here's the training plan, here's the schedule, you need to follow all this. And if you're willing to do that and put in that effort, if you complain or you don't like it, it's fine. We won't do it. But that's, that's the give and take. You have to put into it. And you have to, and if at any time you decide you don't want to do it, we never need to do it. So that's fine. We won't. He made it. Every run, he never complained. He worked hard. And as a result, we had a wonderful, we actually ran it together as a family. My wife, the three of us ran it. Well, that's fabulous. Full time. But he tells you something about his, when he wants to do something, he'll put in all kinds of effort to do it. And I really love that about him. So I don't know if that's a great introduction. There's so much more. But it tells you a little bit about the kind of kid he is. So Parker, how much of that do you agree with? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, I like trying new stuff. And like this, like, I didn't know what to expect coming into this. But I wanted to just try it out to see what it would be like. Because every time like I saw the news, I wanted to like, feel like how did they do it and how it looks. And I'm very impressed like how how everything is like in the studio. Yeah, fine Swiss clock with all the all the parts engaging with each other. Everything not good. Everything working. So what got you involved in video? I mean, it's wonderful to have a life of creativity, you know, you know, the generations before you may not have had these great opportunities, but you do. And you can find yourself in the creative life, actually. Well, what got me into videos was I was watching a lot of movies, and I was wondering like, how did it? How did they do it? And then I was actually a lot of behind the scenes stuff. There has to be like a way to do it. So it started when I started watching videos on how to use Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Wow. And then those are professional programs already. Yeah. But like I was very interested. So every time like, I would like take a little step like I would put the video clips onto the frame. And then I would like practice on cutting a frame and editing it out like deleting it. And then after that, I moved on to having text on video. And then to chroma key and then a lot of other stuff. We need you to do that. No, you're in the eighth grade now, huh? Yeah. So when did you all start seventh grade, sixth grade, fifth grade? When? The interest started when I was in like fourth grade. Yeah, I started like, I got really interested into it. Okay, let's look at your video. I want to see what it looks like. We have a very short video from Parker. Let's play it and we can, we can critique it. Okay. Tech Hawaii. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I really appreciate it. And it's something I really wanted to do. So thank you for the opportunity. All right. Well, it's just like, where did you do that? I did it in my room. I saved up my money. I saved up like, I forget $224. Like, every time I got like, I'll get money to model on it. So let's save up from that. And my goal was to get a green screen that work. And I started off of nothing, like I had this like green blanket that I'd use as a green screen dedication. And then once I had enough money, I bought this like small film studio, I had my own lights, like it was kind of box light box lighting. I had two of those. And then I had the bar green screen where you would put the green screen on the, to hold it up. So then I moved on to that and I really enjoyed using it. Then I wanted to keep up saving up to get a microphone and start getting better at like, doing what I love to do, which is video film. We're talking about serious commitment here. This is, this is professional already. And it's taking up a lot of his room. So the one nice thing is that when you green screen and you do that, you can't see all the mess that's going on behind that. It's a whole other matter of conversation. We'll talk about later. But well, I'm very impressed. Why if for no other reason than the chroma key we saw in that short clip, that was really good. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it looked like he was there in that in that background. Thanks. I tried my best. Like, there's always be some green area. So I'd have to like, turn up the density and turn it down like the transparency of it. Yeah. Now, how did you learn this much? You looked at YouTube movies? What did you read? What did you do? Well, I looked at YouTube, and then at Midpack, they have this course called digital media that you can take. And they helped me, they introduced me to using, like, better stuff, and like, like, turning it up the way like you need to and teaching you step by step. And it was very simple at the beginning, but you learn, and it was kind of like a building block. So I learned from that. And then I moved out and teaching you. Are you part of it? No, it's coming soon. But you're part of Craig's faculty, your dad, you teach him, don't you? Well, he teaches me all the time. I have no idea what he's doing. But I can tell you as a parent, one of the challenges a lot had, particularly with this new technology and all the games and all the other things are, you know, I worry about how much time are we spending on this stuff? How much screen time do we have and every, I mean, I think every parent is challenging that one. But I'm more inclined and desired to see him expending his energies doing things like this. I mean, if he wants to make videos and play with them and all that, I don't have the same issue with that as I do if we're just sitting around playing a game, you know, shoot him up game or something. This is his form, this generation's form of drawing or other artistic type talent. And so it's, to me, it's kind of exciting. And I enjoy seeing him doing that. I don't have the same problems with that that I might if we were spending our time doing other things with his iPad. Okay, we've now we've seen a little about how this works. We can take a short break. We're gonna come back, we're gonna find out what your future is going to be in video, and how you're going to make a box doing video and how you're going to support your parents later and make them feel happier than they've ever felt before. We ready for that. Sounds fantastic. We'll be right back. Thank you. Bingo, we're back with back with Craig Wagner and his son Parker. And we're having a wonderful time exploring the future of a career, maybe in video, because he's already catapulted himself over the past three or four years. Amazing. Okay, so how do you see the future in this? I mean, is it too early for me to ask, are you going to make a career in this? Is that where you're going? Well, that's my goal, because I want to make a career into something that I love doing. And that's one of my hobbies. So I would love to like do that for a living. Okay, you realize there's many sides to it. It's not just the technical side of producing the video. You got to get the content. You got to find guys like you, who and who you can talk to and who talk back at you. You got to find news to read the paper every day. Yeah. So what side of it do you like best? Huh? Sorry, you like the technical side? You like the content side? You like the dissemination side? I like the technical side mostly because like, I love doing that. And I also love content because like, I love because sometimes a storyboard my sketches, I knew we're going to get to storyboard. Of course, we're going to get what is a storyboard? Tell the people what a storyboard is. A storyboard is when you have an idea. So you have a start to end. So all movies have it. And it has a long list of everything that happens, so that you don't go like shooting blanks. Right. Exactly. Have you told your father about these things? Does he understand what a storyboard is? Actually, he's the one who came up to me with being a storyboard. I never did a storyboard before he told me. Well, that and he's been able to use and Midpack has been fantastic about this because they have a number of courses where the assignments are the things that they have an opportunity to use different media to do you could write an essay or you could present it via video or you could do it in some other way. And he's a number of times elected to do that by video. When he did that, I think what we found was that it started out and he had an idea, but it was this gem or this kernel of an idea that really didn't have the direction set out. I said, Well, that's that's where storyboarding comes in. You need to sit down and say, Here's what I'm going to shoot. Here's where we're going to go with this. I want to do it all right here or do we want to do this and then move to this. And so we made some videos where we moved change location in the house where we use the green scheme other places we didn't. It was actually really fun. But once we had that storyboard out, then we knew, Okay, now we're going to do this. We also realized you can shoot, you know, this part, this part, this part, you know, three parts, and then, you know, mix things around afterwards and such. So three parts of the green screen, we can do all those at once, even though they won't be right next to each another. I definitely think you should include your father in your movie company in Los Angeles. Yes. Into the management at a high level, you know, I'll say I'm well. If you do that, that'd be great. It's a future for you. So have, you know, creativity. I mean, your dad's a lawyer. And for lawyers, creativity is sort of contained. I mean, it's it's a limited box of creativity. You can't go too far outside the box, I think. But but for a person in film, I mean, the world is your oyster. You can do anything. So how do you see creativity? How do you see the expression of creativity for yourself now and later? Well, I see creativity as like, it's unlimited. And like, I love pulling ideas. And like, sometimes I'll say, like, oh, that's not a good idea. But then if I like the idea, I'll keep on working on it. And if it doesn't work, I'll do the whole thing. Sometimes, like, my ideas go so crazy, I have to shoot like 20 times to get it right. But like, I love like being creative like that and finding new ideas, because there's unlimited ideas that you could do. You just need to find them. And we didn't rehearse this either. This is coming spontaneously from Parker. I'm really impressed. Well, let's move on, though, to the idea that for a while this summer, Parker is going to be our newest intern, which is fabulous. Thank you very much. And I'm really delighted with that prospect because he's so dedicated to the subject. What you're doing is what we do in our own way. So how is that going to work? Do you have a sense of how it would work for you? And what do you seek? What do you seek in the experience of being an intern here? Well, anything you need me to do, I can do because I like, thanks to the chance letting me like come over here and like be an intern because like, I don't think that there would be any other job that I'll do that I'd like more than this one because I'm interested in editing and like looking at a production, like become an actual like thing. Oh, you know, one of the hardest things that we have here is operating the tricaster and switching. Oh, is that right? No video switching during the show, actually creating the broadcast, you know, and I sense, I sense that's that's in your future Parker. You're going to be doing that. Walk away from this internship as a broadcast switcher person, top of the line. Yeah. And Ray, I'm talking to Ray, our engineer, Ray, I hope you remember this conversation. Well, that's that's quite a skill. So I mean, the chance to even just learn about it and see how it's done and such, I'm excited for him to have that opportunity. Well, what do you expect for for Parker from this experience? I mean, so that I know and that he knows? Well, boy, that's the biggest challenge with that is this is his first experience like this, you know, at 13 he hasn't had part time jobs, hasn't done that. And we've talked about we're treating this, you know, this is a job and this is a part time job and I wanted to learn and act as if it is and pitch in and learn. But I also I hope that he is able to absorb all about this area that he shows such an interest in such a passion for and that if he takes from that and is able to sort of parlay that into what he's doing at home and such, I think that will be very exciting for him. And I, you know, as a kid, you know, everybody had their different areas of interest, rarely do we have the opportunity to have such a great, you know, internship type experience and I'm so happy for him. Well, video video has turned out to be the most incredible, democratized, you know, technology that I can think of because people watch video all around the world. YouTube has made it ubiquitous everywhere. And so that's what we do. And that's what you by the way, before we go any further, what is your YouTube channel so everybody can go watch all your other stuff? It's CGP Productions. And you can go like, subscribe because I need it. I give him a thumbs up. CGP Productions. Yeah. Okay. All right. How many videos you have up there? Oh, 6,000. 100 something. Pretty good. Been busy. What kind of videos are there? Well, I like to make like challenge videos. And I also like making like vlogs and reaction videos to like, try not to laugh videos, because like I love doing those kind of videos. Playing with people. You want to you want to it's like that scene outside Buckingham Palace. We try to make the guy in the funny hat laugh. That's that's exactly what it's like, I think. Okay, well, I'm very impressed with that. But I like to know what you're going to teach us. This is a two way street, you know, Parker, what are you going to give us? I mean, what kind of skills are you going to, you know, demonstrate and contributes to our effort? We're non profit. We need all the help we can get. Well, I can't I don't think I could teach you anything that you don't already know. But like, oh, you'd be surprised. Well, like, I'm just I just want to try my best. Because I just like playing around with it. And then I do something that like, I do something that I love to do. And then I find out like how I did it. And I keep on doing it for every video. Yeah. And that's when you look on my channel, every video is always different. Yeah. How about the people side? You know, I was telling you before, there were incredible people that walked through the door and sit at this table, people like your father, people like that. And and how do you feel about them? Are you going to feel comfortable with them? Are you going to, you know, walk up to them and shake their hand and tell them who you are? Yep. Yep. Are you going to ask them questions? Are you going to, for example, find out, draw them out and have them tell you who they are? What are you going to talk about? My favorite question people walk in is, so what are you going to talk about? Tell me, it just all tumbles out. You can do that too, because they're a little nervous when they come in, right? Yeah. Who has come that question and all tumbles out at you. It's wonderful. And you warm them up that way, see the benefit. Feel like doing that? Yeah. Okay. All right. There's lots of stuff happening. And I showed you the three rooms, our reception area, our green room where we're sitting now, with any background in the world. What is the background? Okay, that background, if you like. That background. And our switching room, which is where the equipment is and all that. So we'll run you through all three of those rooms and you'll have the benefit of all three. Oh, there we go. Parker on YouTube, CGP Productions. All right. See, we are on it, man. Yeah. Okay, but we're almost out of time. So let me give you the penultimate opportunity to see, you know, how you feel about this experience for Parker. And, you know, what you think this relationship is going to be like? Well, you know, I guess from our family standpoint, and I think I can speak on behalf of our whole family about, you know, both how proud I am of Parker, but also how excited I am for him to have an opportunity like this to sort of follow his passions. And, you know, I'd encourage, you know, every parent wants this kind of thing. But, you know, I had asked you, and could you just come in and take a look? I just wanted to be able to see it. I knew that that would be so impressive. And we're terribly grateful to you for giving him the opportunity to do this externship. And I guess what I'd encourage every family is to look for those opportunities like this to get your kid involved in the kinds of things that they like. Even, you know, it doesn't matter what level and such. And it certainly doesn't hear. I mean, anything he does hear, he's going to gain from it. I'm very excited. I hope that, you know, we can help contribute back and be involved with ThinkTech for a long time. My involvement is going to... Great. Thank you, Craig. I'm going to give you two opportunities now, Parker. The first opportunity I'd like to get you started on the road to interviewing people. So I want to ask you, I want you to ask your dad one question. Interview your dad. What question would you ask him? Would you be interested in filming a video with me? Like sometime in the future? Yes. Very excellent. I'm showing you the danger of that one. Yes. You need to ask something more than yes or no question. Yes. I would love to do that. And I think that particularly after this, we're going to have to get together, storyboard, and do something exciting. Yeah. Okay. I got one more thing before we close. Yep. See that. See camera one right out there. Can you talk to camera one? Camera one are all your friends in school, those students, faculty, everybody. Can you can you make a statement to them and say hi? Shout out to mid-pack, okay? Okay. Shout out to mid-pack. Shout out to Ken and Alex. Thanks for being my friend for a long time, even though I probably did some stuff that made you mad. That's what we're going to go. Okay. You are very creative. And you are unfettered and you are curious. Thank you so much, Parker. Thank you for having me. We look forward to working with you. Great. Thank you for making this possible. This is fantastic.