video | Naples Property & News

Naples video production companies is an art used to produce artistic video shows by means of a video camera, video editing tools and, inevitably these days, video editing software. The video may be ultimately targeted for a business purpose or it might be just an amateur production meant for home display. It may be a corporate production project that can cost colossal amounts of money or it might be just a video to mark a personal special moment like a birthday party or wedding anniversary. More traditionally, video production has for almost a century been used for movie making aimed for screening on big screens in cinematic theatres.

The very first television camera was invented in the early 1920s. Back then images were recorded on film. A few decades later, some companies were looking to invent a way of recording live images from television. This lead to the invention of a Video Tape Recorder (VTR) in 1951.The VTR could record these images directly from TV cameras and save them to magnetic tape in the form of electrical pulses.

In 1971, Sony sold their first ever Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) and in 1981 they unveiled their first digital camera which made use of a fast rotating magnetic disk of about a 2 inch diameter.

In a period running from the late 1970′s to early 1980′s, two technologies were invented and had brought profound changes to the art of video production. The two technologies were Time Based Correctors (TBC) and Digital Video Effects (DVE). The two techniques work together to take in an ordinary analog video signal and converting it into digital format internally.

In 1986, Sony introduced their first digital format and branded it Sony D1. This technology made it possible to record an uncompressed standard definition component video signal wholly in digital format as opposed to analog formats. A later version known as Sony Betacam was much cheaper and allowed for better compression. In the 1990′s, the Apple Corporation introduced their QuickTime product which allowed for time-based streaming of digital video formats.

The 1990s were a seminal decade that also saw the rise of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats of digital encoding. These formats allowed playback capabilities too. The DV tape followed soon after, and for the first time consumers could record directly in digital format and simplifying the video editing part. As these systems could be integrated onto desktop computers without ever having to use separate and complex equipment to do the recording and playback people who were not video experts could perform video production and turn in sterling products.

In the last decade a lot has been witnessed in the area of video production. From high-definition television signals such as HDV, AVCHD and DVCPRO-HD that have transformed television and film viewing, there have been plenty of new technologies that make use of less bandwidth compared to the standard definition analog signals.

Video production has moved to new heights in the last few decades and this has made the discerning video enthusiast something of an expert for all the techniques there are to master and make use of.

Provided by Rick Scott for Governor

Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott said people started suggesting he run for governor after hearing him speak out about how the federal government needed to stay out of health care.

Whistleblower says

“He was a fairly hands-on CEO,” said John Schilling, a former reimbursement supervisor in the Fort Myers division office. “He should have known being CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. He should have known what is on his balance sheet.”

Corporate attorney says

“You’re over-lawyering this,” Nashville attorney Jerre Frazier recalled Scott telling him. “He’s an optimistic kind of guy. He doesn’t like bad news.”

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A whistleblower in the Columbia/HCA fraud case said Rick Scott should have known of billing practices at his hospitals that cheated the federal government out of millions of dollars.

A Nashville attorney brought in for his auditing acumen remembers talking to Scott about significant compliance problems.

“You’re over-lawyering this,” Jerre Frazier recalled Scott telling him. “He’s an optimistic kind of guy. He doesn’t like bad news.”

These former corporate insiders are bewildered by Scott’s candidacy for Florida governor, let alone his dramatic rise in the polls.

Voters are seemingly discounting Scott’s forced resignation in 1997 shortly after the FBI began widespread raids of Columbia/HCA offices. Ultimately, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States paid a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud.

In television ads and on the campaign trail, Scott has repeatedly said he takes responsibility for what happened at the company and says he learned from it.

“Initially when I first saw he was running, I didn’t give him much chance,” said Schilling, 48, who has lived in Naples since 2001. “You can buy your way into the candidacy.”

Schilling didn’t know Scott also lives in Naples until he began research for his 2006 book, Undercover, detailing his life as an FBI informant in the case. The two have never run into each other in Naples.

“He’s putting on what people want to hear,” Schilling said of Scott’s candidacy. “People are always frustrated at inefficiency of government.”

Schilling was hired at the company’s Southwest Florida division offices in 1993 as a reimbursement manager. Six months into the job, he sensed something was wrong. A Medicare auditor had made an error that resulted in a $3 million gain at Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Port Charlotte.

District executives conspired to keep the mistake under wraps and keep the ill-gotten gain. He soon found other record irregularities going back at least 10 years.

“I exposed a double set of books,” he said, adding that one set was inflated cost reports for the federal government and the second was for internal purposes.

“The second was stamped confidential and don’t show to Medicare auditors,” Schilling said. “We estimated alone in 10 years over a billion in overpayments to the chain.”

Quotable

“I exposed a double set of books,” Schilling said, adding that one set was inflated cost reports for the federal government and the second was for internal purposes. “The second was stamped confidential and don’t show to Medicare auditors. We estimated alone in 10 years over a billion in overpayments to the chain.”

In time, Schilling joined forces with James Alderson, an accountant at a Montana hospital, in a whistleblower case against Columbia/HCA.

Scott’s way of doing business was to have his chief executive officers at regional offices play hardball with acquisitions of other hospitals, doctors’ practices and bottom-line profits.

“If you didn’t cut the mustard, you were let go, if you didn’t meet budget goals,” Schilling said. “That is the way Rick Scott ran the company. He gave goals on notecards. He created a culture that the individual pushed the limit. Bonuses were 50 percent or more of a salary.”

* * * * *

Frazier, the Nashville attorney brought in to troubleshoot compliance issues, recalls Scott as always polite and personable.

“He was not a tyrant,” said Frazier, who now lives in Houston. “He stood in line in the cafeteria.”

The same day he was ousted as CEO, Scott didn’t flee the corporate premises _ instead he shook hands with employees.

“There were three buildings and he went around and expressed his appreciation to people,” he said.

Scott’s downfall nonetheless was the corporate culture he created that went bad, Frazier said, explaining that hospital managers and division chiefs were relentless in meeting Scott’s mission of creating a unified health-care and hospital company.

“I did not see Rick Scott act in bad faith but what I did see is the corporate culture he presided over. I did not see Rick Scott to be inclined to do anything criminal,” he said.

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Home of Rick Scott, Naples, Wednesday, June 16, 2010. Photo by Tristan Spinski

Corporate attorney says

“I did not see Rick Scott act in bad faith but what I did see is the corporate culture he presided over. I did not see Rick Scott to be inclined to do anything criminal,” Frazier said.

Still, Frazier isn’t certain how aware Scott was of the consequences of the corporate culture he created.

“I’m not sure he understood how much his lieutenants twisted arms,” he said. “People did not report bad news to him.”

Television campaign commercials in Florida, aired by supporters of opponent

Bill McCollum, may be truthful that impoverished seniors and uninsured pregnant women who were unable to pay were turned away at Columbia/HCA hospitals. But he doesn’t believe that would have happened if Scott were on the scene.

“I don’t think Rick Scott would have left someone outside, I don’t think he would have left someone to die,” Frazier said. “That is not the right thing to do and I do think he would have said it was not the right thing.”

Still, bottom-line driven hospital managers with sights sets on their bonuses were more than likely to find ways to exclude services to the poor and uninsured.

“Turn people away? It may have been a little more extreme at HCA,” he said.

Schilling, the Southwest Florida whistleblower, said he’s certain those kinds of things happened at Columbia/HCA and other hospitals.

2010 Elections

“What I did hear sometimes in the trenches, some cost-cutting measures did have impacts on the quality and nurses were stretched thin. Patient satisfaction (surveys) showed high results. Who is compiling those surveys and how valid are those? Was there an independent source?”

For certain, when the federal investigation went into overdrive, a mountain of lawyers was retained, Frazier said.

“Three law firms were hired, each undermining each other. There was sort of mass confusion,” he said. “The lawyers did have control over who had access to Rick Scott.”

“CEOs blanket themselves with attorneys,” Schilling said. “They dodge the bullet of not being questioned. He never gave any information or assisted in the investigation.”

Although Scott has stated that he takes responsibility, Schilling doesn’t think that should satisfy voters.

“I give him credit for taking responsibility for those things but again, he stated he wasn’t aware of the fraud,” Schilling said. “I find it somewhat ironic, here you have someone running a multibillion-dollar company and he is not aware of what is going on and yet he wants to be governor. Is he going to not be aware of what is going on in state government? I just wouldn’t trust him.

“It must be an ego thing,” he added, about his theory of why Scott is running for governor. “He must need the ego of being in charge. I don’t know. It’s not for the money so it’s got to be for the ego.”

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