Production Notes: Pulling off these groundbreaking interactives required a huge team of people. For more details and behind the scenes notes follow the links to: George Bush Exclusive, Democratic Debate Mashup, Republicans Up Close and Personal, and Condolezza Rice Exclusive.

Yahoo! News Underground was a regular Yahoo! News feature series that explored fringe culture in America with reporting brought to life with original songs and music.The series included produced video, photo and written reportage, and made in-roads in the social media space with user generated content and interaction. Here are just a few of my favorite clips from the series.

Production Notes: The majority of this show was produced by myself and the show’s creator, Brad Miskell (yes..2 people and one big budget… we got to know each other well).

Richard Bangs and company made our next destination the cloud forests of Africa, trekking into the mountains to meet the mountain gorilla – and taking along actress Daryl Hannah for the journey. But Expedition Rwanda wasn’t just about the “charismatic megafauna,” but the remarkable turn-around in Rwanda’s national self-sufficiency in the wake of its tragic civil war of the mid-1990s. So we undertook a new kind of mission, based on what we came to call “adventure with a purpose” – to seek out stories of people who work consciously to improve their lot, and the world as a whole. (In association with the Gorilla Organization.)

Production Notes: One of the goals of Richard Bangs Adventures on Yahoo! was to bring a sense rawness and immediacy to our audience of armchair adventurers. We did this by delivering at least one webisode (and in many cases 2 or 3) per day. The idea was that the audience would return each day to the site; essentially following along the adventure. This deliverable schedule required a well oiled field production machine consisting of producing, shooting, and editing within extremely short time frames. Turnaround time from from rolling the cameras to delivering a finished piece was anywhere from 4-12 hours depending on how much hiking, driving, swimming…etc…

The day after Christmas, 2004, an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered a natural disaster in which nearly 200,000 people throughout Southeast Asia lost lives and several million their homes. But in the midst of this catastrophe, on a small archipelago in the Andaman Sea, a tribe of several hundred villagers escaped almost certain extinction by a simple precaution: they listened to the prophetic dreams of their elders. With ex-pat John Gray, we searched for the secrets of the sea gypsies on Expedition Thailand: Survivors of the Tsunami.

Rocketeers Episode 1

Clip from our exclusive interview with George W. Bush. It made history as the 1st online only interview with a sitting president.

We started with a short walk and talk in the oval office and then finished the interview in the Roosevelt room. Lots of local and national media (TV, print, and online) picked up the story. David Letterman used it in his monologue and Jon Stewart ran with it on his Daily Show.

As far as shoots go it was pretty routine; set up the cameras, lights, mics, etc…. What wasn’t routine was the opportunity to roll the cameras on something that had the potential to make national or even worldwide news. And sure enough “the boss”, as his staff affectionately call him, did not disappoint. Portions of the interview were picked up by all the major networks, but the highlight was the controversy that erupted over his seemingly benign comment about why he stopped golfing which caused MSNBC’s Keith Oberman to go ballistic.

Why he stopped golfing
http://tinyurl.com/697paf

MSNBC’s Keith Oberman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RlD8FEwe2k

After the interview was over, our crew hunkered down in a conference room in Washington DC, chopped the footage in snackable clips, which were published immediately. Very little editing was actually done other than adding some photos and b-roll here and there. We did not touch Bush’s answers. We did not edit for brevity. What you see is exactly how it went down.

Here are all the clips. Bush’s “Dr. Evil” impression is getting some great play around the net (some might say it went viral).

These links take you to the Yahoo Video Player and once you are there you can browse all the clips without having to come back to this post.

Bush does ‘Dr. Evil’
http://tinyurl.com/6xzfyw

“I’ll consider” gas tax holiday
http://tinyurl.com/5mcods

Global warming “is real”
http://tinyurl.com/6l7svb

“America doesn’t torture”
http://tinyurl.com/68tmqd

Why not pull out of Iraq?
http://tinyurl.com/5z8a6p

Was Bush misled on Iraq?
http://tinyurl.com/5gca2r

Why he stopped golfing
http://tinyurl.com/697paf

The Middle East: What’s at stake
http://tinyurl.com/5qp4ue

Father of the bride
http://tinyurl.com/6l5m6c

Bush’s Dream Team
http://tinyurl.com/62z3hq

‘Assure fans like me’
http://tinyurl.com/3ryrug

Who will win on ‘Idol’?
http://tinyurl.com/69wvz8

The full interview
http://tinyurl.com/4sp2ve