Looking forward into 2012, I’m proud to announce that I now offer a Sony FS100 in house to compliment the other camera systems.
The intent is to use the Sony FS100 to replace my beloved and often used Canon 5D camera system. The camera sports an S35 sensor, crazy low light capabilities, resolves more resolution and retains more sharpness than current DSLR video cameras. It also has 2 XLR audio inputs, which saves a bit of time on the editing/post side of things.
Not retiring the 5D yet, but it will become more of a “B” camera for now!
2011 has been a busy year, tons of productions still in the works! It has been a pleasure working on all of them.
Everything in the reel above I shot and I produced, edited and directed most of them.
There are exceptions on the larger crew shoots, especially the narrative pieces where my only role was DP.
Some really really great stuff that doesn’t really fit into the “conventional” reel. I’ll make a second reel at the end of 2011 to showcase a different perspective on my work.
Thoughts, tips, advice, otherwise? Leave it in the comments below!
Music: Gold Panda, “Snow & Taxis”
Published by Wichita Songs Ltd / Domino Music Publishing Co.Ltd.
P&C 2010 Notown / Ghostly International
iamgoldpanda.com
It begins on the coast of California, finally ending on the East coast in Georgia.
2605 miles.
10 states.
Zach Crees is a burn tech and surgical assistant inspired by stories like Don’s and will ride his bike across the US to raise funding and awareness for burn survivors starting July 2011.
This video features Don Keller, a triumphant survivor of a fire that has found inspiration through cycling.
You can give to the Burn Unit by visiting this link
Shot on the Canon 5D Mark II with Technicolor’s Cinestyle picture profile.
Tim Tebow has taken the front and center spotlight not only in Denver, but around the US. I had the opportunity to work with Fox shooting an interview before the thanksgiving football games, 2011. I was hired as a camera operator, but also fulfilled many roles as the crew was small.
We shot on three Sony F3 cameras with Ultra prime lenses (love that glass) and about 15 lights spread around the Broncos indoor training facility in Denver.
Accellos has fantastic Warehouse Management Software that helps large warehouses management a vast number of SKU’s and varying product. They wanted a video to show off some of their hard work, so we flew into Seattle to create a client case study on Norvanco.
It was great to see the video found it’s way onto the front page of their website!
Erik, my primary contact at Accellos, also wrote a generous endorsement which you can read here.
Our original goal with this documentary was to give a voice to the Haitian mothers who don’t have a very loud political voice but have stories that need to be heard.
Watch a short portion of the upcoming documentary:
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.
Terralux is a company doing big things in the LED lighting space. This short piece looks at some key pieces to how they plan to revolutionize the lighting industry.
Denver Academy wanted interviews from their alumni to show the strength and success of their program. I was hired as camera operator to work on this project. The challenge with these videos was that all of them had to be in one location around the same time because of the time constraints of working with busy alumni, but they still all had to have some variation… We decided to shift around the room and use different artwork for each interview.
Shot on the HVX200a.
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!
