The Twelve Films Project

Some good press...

Farm To Trailer has already been getting some good press here in Austin.  It's been showing up on some of the local food blogs and even some of the local news blogs as well.  The biggest mention that it's go so far was on the front page of The Austinist website.  It's a cool little write-up and I have to say, I'm pretty proud.  You can find the article here.  I love that it also mentions the Twelve Films Project as well.

I've been getting some inquiries from other sites, so it may be popping up on some of the other Austin news blogs and sites this week.  I'll post up any interesting articles...

The May Film - Farm To Trailer

Farm To Trailer - Done

Farm To Trailer is finished, compressed and is now uploading to Vimeo.  It's a big file (2.6 GB, even after being compressed down from a 1080/24p ProRes422 (HQ) file to a 720/24p, h264 file) and will probably take a bit of time to get up to their server, so I thought I'd do a quick post.

First off, the film now has a website which you can find here.  Right now, it's just a landing page with a small synopsis, but I'm hoping to put a larger site up in the next week or so.  I'm really happy with how the doc turned out and I've decided to start submitting it to festivals which is why I've created a website.  My hope is to not only feature info about the film and the people involved, but keep it periodically updated with info about Farm To Table, local farms and the local Austin food scene.

Creating my first documentary was amazing and I'm ready to do another one.  My hope is to do either a narrative or mood piece in June and then shoot another documentary in July.  I really feel like I learned a lot from making this one and already have ideas on how to go about shooting the next one.

Check back later tonight and I'll have the film up on the site.

A farm outing

As this documentary is about Farm to Table, it was important to me to get the perspective of the farmer.  I met one of the local Austin farmers at the farmer's market last week and he was really excited about appearing in the documentary...and that's how I got to spend the day with Farmer Kris out on his farm (Milagro Farms) in Red Rock, Texas.

I got up at 5am, put my equipment together and drove out to Milagro Farms which is about an hour east of Austin.  The farm is big, especially since Farmer Kris works the land pretty much by himself.  There's a lot of trees, big fields for the chickens and a small lake right in the middle.

I arrived at 7:00am, just in time to shoot Farmer Kris starting the chores which included moving the chickens from one patch of grass to another.  Kris is an amazing farmer and a great teacher.  He gave me a lot of really valuable information about what constitutes "organic" from a governmental standpoint, versus what most small farmers consider "organic" to be...it's all very fascinating.

I busted out my Glidetrack Hybrid slider and mostly shot with that, getting some really epic dolly shots of his farm...the crops, livestock and his beautiful land.  They're really going to be a beautiful part of the documentary.  The new light stands that I'm using held up great, especially since the land was very uneven, rocky in parts and muddy in other parts, and I'm really happy that I got them.

May Documentary - Winding Down

I've been shooting a lot for the May documentary which is now officially titled, "Farm to Trailer".

Last week I spent a full day at the Odd Duck trailer, shooting the prep and service on a Wednesday.  It's amazing how much gets done in such a small space.  The trailer has a wood-burning grill inside it which puts out quite a lot of heat.  Now, it's not quite summer down here in Austin, but the temps are getting up there so you can imagine how hot it gets inside that trailer.  Pair that with the incredible amount of smoke that comes off that grill when there are fifteen orders of pork-belly sliders, sausages and quail cooking and it's hard to believe that these guys do it day in and day out.

At one point, my eyes just plain gave up.  I was shooting the grill, lot's of smoke coming off right in my face, and my eyes just shut...and they would not open.  I squinted my way out of the trailer, tears streaming down my face, and drank half of a big bottle of water.  It took me a good fifteen minutes before I was able to get back in there to shoot.  The next day, my body was not doing too well.  A lot of coughing and dizziness.  While shooting, I was drinking tons of water, but it was almost instantly coming out my pores so I think I may have got a bit dehydrated.

Last Saturday I went out to the Downtown Austin farmer's market with Bryce to shoot him buying produce, meat, etc for that week's service.  I'm a big fan of farmer's markets and it was cool to watch him wind his way through the stalls, seeking out the freshest stuff.

I also got to shoot with an Austin food blogger, Kristi Willis, who's blog Austin Farm To Table has been a big inspiration for this doc.  I interviewed her about the local Austin trailer scene, about Farm To Table and why it's a benefit to consumers and about the Austin food scene in general.  It was a fun afternoon and very informative.

On Thursday I'll be shooting my last interview out at a local Austin farm and that'll be it.  I'd say I'm about 70% done with the edit right now and it should be easy to slide in these new interviews and b-roll.  It'll probably by down to the wire getting it done, so you should all look for it to be posted next Tuesday on the Twelve Films Project website.

A small gear update

I've been using my Glidetrack Hybrid Slider more and more on shoots, both for the Twelve Films Project and for stuff that I'm directing and shooting.  Up until now, I had been attaching the slider to my Manfrotto Tripod on one end, and my old tripod legs on the other.  It was working fine, but it was always a pain to get it hooked up and then break it back down when I needed my tripod to shoot with.  Sometimes speed is important on a shoot and setting it up and breaking it down in the middle of a shoot was getting to be an issue.

I decided to get some dedicated support for the slider, so I looked around online and found some great light stands on B&H.  The two things I was looking for were weight support and height.  The slider, along with the camera, lens, etc, can get a bit heavy and some of the cheaper light stands can't take the weight.  So I made sure that, combined, the two stands could support about 14-15 pounds.  Another drawback to using my tripods with the slider is that I could never really get very high, so I wanted light stands with some height to them.

I decided on the Impact Air-Cushioned Light Stand from B&H.  Each stand can hold about 8 pounds and has a maximum height of 8-feet.  They arrived this morning and I'm taking them out to shoot the May Documentary today at the food truck.  I'll let you know how they are.

 

Back in the groove

Last week was not as productive as I had originally hoped.  I was going to be shooting for the documentary on Tuesday and Wednesday, but Texas-sized thunderstorms (everything's bigger here, you see) kept me from working.  Thankfully, it looks like the weather is cooperating this week, so I'm going to head out tomorrow afternoon to shoot the time-lapse and then Wednesday to shoot the trailer, prep and service.  The weather gods better not mess with me.

This weekend I'll be following the Odd Duck fellas to one of the many Austin farmer's markets to shoot some b-roll and maybe interview some locals about why they're shopping at a farmer's market and not a grocery store.  Then, hopefully, I'll be taking a trip out to a farm to interview a local farmer and sometime next week to talk to one of Odd Duck's suppliers.  

I've been going through Bryce's full interview and it's got a lot of good stuff in it.  His interview is going to provide the backbone of the piece, driving most of the narrative.

May Documentary - Update 1

After a brief hiccup last week (Bryce had something come up and we had to cancel) we regrouped and shot his interview this morning in front of his trailer on South Lamar in Austin.  It went really well, so well in fact, that I'm thinking of expanding the scope of the documentary a little to include some other points of view based on some of his answers.

Matt and I got to the location at 9am and I shot some slider footage of the trailer park and the Odd Duck Trailer itself.  Our friend Caleb showed up around 9:45am and then the sound guy came at 10am.  By 10:45am, we were shooting and the whole thing lasted until about noon.  Bryce was very cool and gave some very interesting answers to questions that I thought might be kind of stock.  He's a very engaging person and his love of cooking and the Farm to Table movement really comes through when he's talking.

Matt and I set up the shots (my 7D and his T2i) and then Matt manned the cameras while I asked the questions.  Caleb shot a roving "C"-camera on his Panasonic GH1, getting some really interesting angles and good cut-away shots.  Our one issue was that we were shooting outdoors with no cover.  Austin, even in May, is pretty hot and the direct sunlight really cooked the cameras, so much so that we got temperature warnings a few times and had to stop and let the cameras cool down.  Fortunately, none of the footage was corrupted (high temps can make for read/write errors or VERY grainy footage on the Canon cameras) and all we really suffered were some sunburns.

I'm heading back out to shoot some time lapse of the trailer park on Tuesday and then Wednesday I'm going to spend a full day at the trailer with Bryce and his brother Dylan as they prep and do a full service that night.  I'm hoping to interview some of the people as they're ordering and eating and get their views on the importance of Farm to Table.  Should be fun!