Human beings are built for widescreen. Our peripheral vision spans horizontally much more than vertically.

Yet perhaps with proper motivation, “tall screen”, or whatever you might call it, could yield some interesting results.

This is a proof of concept piece.

Shot on a Canon Rebel T2i with the basic kit 18-55mm lens. Edited with custom sequence settings in Final Cut Pro.

*also, I apologize if the video doesn’t fit on your screen. It barely fits on my laptop and I know there are plenty of screens with lower resolution out there. If you click on the full screen button, it will resize appropriate to your screen.

Southside is a cool place. A photographers playground, a serene destination hidden in plain site. A short walk away, interstate 70 traffic speeds by. Further North, Denver International Airport moves thousands of people daily all over the world. Yet amongst the constant motion, Southside stands still.

Shot on Canon 5D Mark ii with a 17-40mmL and a 30 year old Kiron 80-200 f4 Pentax K mount lens.

Enjoy

A short film about inspiration, momentary love, art. Harmony was developed over 3 weeks and shot in Wash Park, Denver. Overall, the production process was wonderfully simple. Planned camera movements were simple and subtle, only two actors were required, and the whole film took place in one location.
The biggest challenge was the timing. I wanted the project to take place during the transition of summer to fall, which is hard time to predict in Colorado. A sudden cold front can instantly change the scenery from green to dead with little or no transition of color. We got lucky when we had a moderate storm come in the week before production, enough to loosen a few leaves off of the trees. During a few shots (many of which didn’t make the final cut unfortunately) leaves were falling around the actors, a very cool effect.

This film was planned, shot, and edited in Denver Colorado. Shot on the Canon 5D Mark ii with a few Canon lenses, primarily the 100-400L.

A quick piece about an abandoned farm in Eastern Colorado.

This video is a part of my exploration in using wide lenses for video on the Canon 5D Mark ii. The majority of shots in this piece were shot on a 17-40mmL Canon lens. As you can see in the weeds, the DSLR does NOT like fine details. Aliasing is everywhere. It hides behind compression on the web, but the original h.264 files.
Biggest lesson learned: anything close to the camera (5-10 feet, with a few exceptions) is usually excellent shooting material, anything further needs to carefully considered and probably shot on a different camera.

Music by George Winston. “Plains” from the Plains Album.
amazon.com/Plains-George-Winston/dp/B00001O2V3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1271223391&sr=8-1

Music used with permission.
“Andare” on the album “Divenire” by Ludovico Einaudi Purchase the album at:  amazon.com/Divenire/dp/B001GL2EC4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1278802397&sr=8-1

Our original goal with this documentary was to give a voice to the Haitian mothers who don’t have the opportunity to have a voice.

However, in light of the recent and tragic earthquake in Haiti, Nate and I have shifted our focus towards capturing the evolving developments.

Back in November, we spent 2 days at For His Glory Orphanage. For His Glory is called a kresh, meaning all of the children already have parents waiting for them in the US. The process to adopt these children takes a lengthy 2 or 3 years, so the children stay in Haiti until all of paperwork has been completed. Nate’s family is adopting two little Haitian girls from this orphanage, which we got to meet and hang out with back in November.

After the earthquake, the orphanage was stranded with no food and water for 5 days. The orphanage put a sign on their roof so the many helicopters flying overhead would notice. The sign said something along the lines of, “We are an orphanage and need help”. This led to news coverage from fox news.

During this time, Nate’s family has been constantly worried about the children because contact with the orphanage after the earthquake has been rare. So rare in fact, that they learned that they were evacuating the children from the orphanage from watching Fox News. After a string of developments, the children from the orphanage were granted humanitarian evacuations to come to the US to their expectant US families. This is great news for the adopting families!

The battle isn’t over yet. Adopting families now face their newest obstacle: paperwork. The children were supposed to be in the US Friday, which didn’t happen because of immigration problems. Haitian paperwork has always been notorious for having problems, and to compound the issue, much of that paperwork is now gone after the earthquake. So the children sat in the airport.

Hours later, the red tape was cleared and 32 children were on their way to the Orlando, FL on a donated United flight. Nate was able to find out that children would be landing in Denver near midnight on Saturday January 23. Both of us were ecstatic to have first hand news, so we called up our Haitian friend Neil, who speaks Creole, and made our way to DIA.

Upon arriving at DIA, we were informed that the flight had again been delayed and wasn’t expected to arrive until 4am. We waited around for a while, and by 12:30am, the flight hadn’t left Orlando. It was silently understood that the flight wasn’t coming for a while.

We went home discouraged, more for the kids than for our video coverage. Early the next morning, I received a phone call from Nate informing me that the children were landing at DIA around noon on the 24th.

A Haitian girl takes her first steps in cold Colorado Air.

Wrapped in a blanket, a young Haitian girl walks towards her adoptive US family in the nearby terminal

The three of us, Neil, Nate, and I, hustled over to DIA to find 4 news teams, the Denver post, and some other media affiliates. Things seemed to be going the right direction. After managing to convince the Denver Police Department that our lack of “news” credentials wasn’t a security issue, we were able to get onto the landing strip. Minutes later, the plane landed, and slowly but surely, Haitian children, some bundled in blankets, were taken off of the plane.

Five children were immediately rushed to the hospital, though we didn’t get any details on what their conditions were. Many of the other children came off of the plane smiling, some waving, walking towards their new life in America. Unfortunately for us, the media was restricted to the landing strip, so we didn’t get any footage of the kids reuniting with their US parents.

After more than a week of trauma, a young Haitian is carried towards her adopting US parents

Freedom at last! Almost… Nate just informed me that the adopting parents and children have yet again been detained at the airport for failing to fulfill some paperwork obligation.

As the story continues to develop, we will do our best to follow it and understand it.

Our original goal for the documentary has been pushed to the background with all of these new elements to our story. Because we were in Haiti in November, before the earthquake, we are in a unique position. We captured the difficult life of Haitians before the earthquake. The last few decades have been extremely hard on the Haitian people. Political instability and nonexistent infrastructure prevent the country from escaping the notorious cycle of poverty. Haiti will be in the media spotlight for a while, but as with all disasters, the aide eventually decreases and the world “forgets”.

Once the media spotlight moves on and the aide begins to decrease, our hope is to take the footage from before the earthquake and reveal to the world how bad things were. Our message is simple, we don’t want to rebuild Haiti to what it was. This terrible earthquake is the ultimate chance for partners to stand with Haiti and see lasting, necessary change.

Trailer:

Drum circles provide many health benefits and are fun to be a part of.
Above is a conference that took place for a corporate group, below is a promotional video specifically for a drum leader. Enjoy!

Learn more about their innovate product at www.paintbeltpro.com

7 shots in this commercial can be credited to James Drake Films!

This commercial aired on Comcast’s local Denver Channel between December 2009 and January 2010.

A wonderful wedding in small town Cairo, IL. Shot on the Canon 5D Mark II.

The 2009 Future Stars National Championship at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO.
The 61 best 10 year old gymnasts in the US!

Shot on Canon 5D Mark ii with 100-400mmL

Camera: Canon Mark 5D Mark ii
Lenses: 50mm f1.8, 28-105mm, 70-300mm

This snow fort was made in our backyard. Shot and edited in one day.

Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Lenses: 17-40mmL and 100-400mmL

A short film we shot in one day in the summer of 2009.

Shot, edited, directed by James Drake.
Camera: Canon Mark 5D Mark ii
Lenses: 50mm f1.8, 28-105mm, 200mmL

The town of Cairo, IL is one of the most history-rich and diverse places in the US. The economy has been struggling for decades, parts of the city are in disrepair, but there are individuals that resist all of the negative elements and demonstrate what human determination is all about.

Song, “An Island, A Penninsula” by Bitcrush available for purchase here

Camera: Canon XHA1 HDV