I recently produced this short video about Perry, a homeless young man who is choosing to stay at Covenant House in New York City instead of living with an abusive family. You might be surprised to hear that he’s a talented pianist -- completely self-taught -- and writes his own music. He has ambitions of going to college and working in the music business.

I volunteered to produce the piece for Do1Thing.org. The nationwide movement strives to raise awareness for the more than 1.3 million homeless youth in America by asking everyone to simply Do 1 Thing on Valentines Day, 2009. It’s a chance to help someone less fortunate than yourself.

This isn’t a documentary. I prefer to call it a “video portrait.” It’s 2 1/2 minutes long and should give you a sense of who Perry is.

Do1Thing was founded by Najlah Feanny and Pim Van Hemmen, who have recruited 26 Pulitzer Prize winners for the project. They also did an amazing job setting up the New Jersey Heart Gallery a few years ago. The portraits I shot for them in 2005 led directly to children getting adopted. It was an amazing experience.

I shot the video with the Nikon D90 and used the Nikon 14-24, 24-70, and 70-200 lenses. You can read more about the how I dealt with audio and put this together in my blog post:

davidbergman.net/blog/2009/01/09/will-you-do-1-thing-on-valentines-day/

My main site is: DavidBergman.net