Road Trip Documentary

I've been shooting since this summer on about 25 random dates for a documentary which I have been extremely privileged to be apart of. I wish I could share a few more details about this project (and eventually I will), but the entire process has made me very interested in exploring additional documentary work.

It's a unique opportunity to be injected into someone's life to observe all the fascinating details they may consider mundane. The fringe benefit has to be the new relationships that occur as a result.

Everything should be winding down for me around the first week of June, but I will be excited to follow the project as it starts to be assembled.

Mariachi Gringo

Even though Chicago is the closest big production city to me, I had not any work there until I got a call from my friend and 'Higher Ground' UPM James McKay about Mariachi Gringo. MG was a unique opportunity to work on a film that was shooting a week near Chicago and then moving down to Mexico for the remainder of the schedule.

Unfortunately I did not get to travel down to Mexico for the larger chunk of the film, but while near Chicago I got to work with some music video style playback scenes, a crowded dinner conversion, and some upper midwestern Illinois wind.

I got to meet a whole new group of Chicago based film makers who I hope I get the opportunity to work with again. I am excited to see the final project and follow how the work I did near Chicago connects with the stuff that was done in Mexico.

On The Scene

I rarely get to do production work close to home, so when I got a call to work two weeks on an EMS training video close to home I was excited. 'On The Scene' is a product designed to help EMT's and their managers make good decisions about dealing with issues that occur as a result of doing their job.

For me 'On The Scene' was an opportunity to try out Boom Recorder attached to my MOTU Traveler in an actual production environment. The setup worked awesome allowing me to easily monitor levels, make notes, and provide a mixed down scratch track to the two DSLR's shooting on this project.

It's always better to be working in the back of an ambulance as a film maker then riding as a patient. The challenges of diesel firetrucks, sirens, and landing helicopters always make for interesting production sound work.

Beer Commercial

St Louis is defiantly a beer town. A small little company called Anhuser-Bush has been making beer in St Louis for years, but when I got a call from my friend Sid to do sound for a beer commercial, it was not working for the king. I don't want to give away any product specifics because I can't find them showing up on the internet radar yet, but beer commercials are lots of fun.

This commercial had some great dialogue to record, some amazing atmospheric sounds, and the challenge of recoding something that got really loud very fast. Did I mention commercials pay pretty decent also.

Seriously if the guys who make commercials for that other St Louis beer need a sound guy, I am happy to travel back up to St Louis or over to Amsterdam anytime.

Stand Up 4 Marriage

When Jason, who I've worked with previously on a couple theater projects, called me about running a camera for a local live stage event, I was more then happy to be shooting camera only a few minutes from my home.

"Stand Up 4 Marriage" was billed as a comedy event for couples featuring Yakov Smirnoff, John Gray, Chonda Pierce, and Mark Gungor.

In addition to putting some great shots up on the jumbo screen and for the live event I also got some great MacGyver moments troubleshooting video signals and building last minute audio cables.

They say the show must go on, and tonight in front of a packed house, it did.

1901

While working on 'Higher Ground' I got to know Natalie Thomas, who was getting ready to start shooting on her personal short film project '1901'. After a few short weeks at home in Missouri, I flew back to New York and took the short ride upstate to the beautiful ski town of Hunter, NY were our small crew endeavored to shoot a turn of the century short drama in the amazing victorian subdivisions which surround Hunter.

We lots our first day of a four day shoot rain, but were treated to amazing catering and summer mountain views from the covered porch of the ski lodge styled micro resort we had exclusive use of.

Everything was exterior and mostly a few hundred feet off the road in the woods. These are the jobs when it really pays to pack light.

Higher Ground

During the end of production of 'On The Ice' in Barrow, Alaska James Demer, the sound mixer I had been working for got a call about working on a film in upstate New York. 'Higher Ground' also meant much warmer ground in Kerhonkson, NY and I was honored to be asked to boom again for James.

On this trip I decided to drive the 20 hours from Missouri to New York and ended up arriving at my new home The Yurt at about 2 or 3 in the morning. I was to share the place with James who was sleeping when I arrived, so when I got to the Yurt I crawled up into the loft and and went to sleep.

After seeing the Yurt in the daylight I was getting a little worried that the unique space might be a little tough for three people to share so James and I headed over to the production office to talk about our housing options. After a brief meeting, we decided that James and I would stay at the Yurt and the third person production was planning on housing there would be moved elsewhere. This was the beginning of the "Sound Yurt" which ended up being one of the truly awesome memories of 'Higher Ground'.

During the film we recorded some awesome live music, did some music video style playback recording, and plenty of regular production audio. We also did some pond swimming, made a giant slip'n'slide, sat by the fire pit at the Yurt, and spent a few nights with Danielle and the crew at Hot Shotz.

I hope I stay in touch with all my friend's from this film for a long time.