Remake, Remodel

Funny

So the Contigo - Day in the Life film has been making the rounds here in Austin and The Eater blog picked it up.  They wrote a very nice (and funny) post about it that starts like this:

"If you like your promotional restaurant videos to be beautifully shot, heart-warming odes to the enduring and essential humanity of the experience that is creating, eating and drinking food and beverages, you better sit the fuck right down, because Contigo is about to blow your everloving mind with this Christian Remde joint."

There's a little more so click on the link to read the whole thing, but I thought that first paragraph was pretty awesome.  Also, they called it a "Christian Remde joint" which finally gives me the Spike Lee connection that I've been so desperately looking for.

New Site

With so much new stuff on the horizon, I decided that my website needed a bit of a facelift.  The last time I had redesigned my site was about a year ago, and it was time for something new.

The last time I redesigned my site, I had wanted to make full-screen background images.  I'm not an HTML coder, by any means, and I know nothing about CSS or Java, so I ended up making a version of what I wanted that wasn't quite there.  It was fine for what I needed, but it wasn't as cool as I had hoped.

When I decided to re-do my site, I vowed (to Harold, the Norse gods of web design) that I would figure out the full-screen background image.  Turns out, it was both easier and harder than I expected and so it took me some time.  Once I got it figured out though, it all flowed pretty smoothly.  I was also able to find some software that allowed me to create video galleries with popup windows and all that fun stuff, so now everything doesn't have to go to an external Vimeo page whenever someone wants to view a video.

It's currently live and I'm happy with how it's come out.  I'll probably tweak some of the background images over the next few weeks and possibly add some stuff, but the basic site is there and I'm psyched.  Now, I need to get back to work on everything else.

Contigo - A Day in the Life

As I mentioned in the pervious post, I've been hired by an Austin restaurant (the award-winning Contigo) to direct a series of short films that help expand their brand and give people a peek behind the scenes.

Contigo has rapidly become an Austin institution.  After only being open for a year, the place is constantly packed and people talk about it like they talk about an old friend.  The food is amazing, the drinks are perfectly made and everyone is always welcoming.  I've eaten there more times than I can remember and never had a bad (or even just average) experience.  It's that kind of place.

This is the first short film that I made for Contigo, shot over one 21-hour day at the restaurant.  We arrived at 5am to shoot the timelapse of the sun coming up over the restaurant and stayed until they closed at 1:30 the next morning.  Long day, but it felt a lot more honest shooting it over one full day rather than piecing it together from multiple days.

Huge thanks to Ben Edgerton and Andrew Wisehart of Contigo for giving me this opportunity and Tyler Gorrell and Hugh Suh for coming out to shoot with me.

This is just the first of 12 short films that I'll be directing for Contigo.  We've shot four others and will be shooting more over the next couple months.  I believe the films will be released every 2 weeks, so keep checking back for more.  It's going to be a really fun series.

Radio Silence

A couple months ago, I signed with a company here in Austin, Strange Fruit, who are now repping me and my directing work.  Strange Fruit is run by a couple amazing ladies, Ali and Mary, who have a lot of experience working with food-related people (chefs, restaurants and the like) and took me on as a way to expand their business and start repping filmmakers.  They're handling my PR and acting as my managers as well...and they're pretty amazing.

After my food-related work from last year started getting press, a couple of the national food magazines started getting in touch with Ali and Mary, asking them if I'd like to start pitching ideas to them for their new digital editions.  The cool thing about magazines going to the iPad/Kindle/Nook/etc. is that they can embed video alongside their regular print stories, so that they can give the readers some extra incentive to buy the digital edition.

As it turns out, I had some ideas and I've been working on them, shooting in Seattle, Houston and here in Austin, at some truly amazing restaurants.  The first of the pitches has gone out and I'm waiting to hear back, which is crazy.  If you had told me a year ago, that I would be pitching film/photo/story packages to national magazines, I never would have believed it.

Closer to home, one of my favorite restaurants in Austin, Contigo, got in touch with me a couple months ago, wanting me to direct a series of short films about the restaurant, the food, the people and the experience.  Owners Ben Edgerton and Chef Andrew Wiseheart have been good friends over the past year and it was really an honor to be asked.  We've been shooting a lot over the past 5-6 weeks and the first of the videos is set to premier this week.  Once it's up on Contigo's site, I'll post it up here.

All of the above is why I haven't been posting much over the past couple months.  I've been working on a lot of stuff that I haven't been able to talk about, but I'm hoping that a lot of it is going to land over the next month or so and I'll be able to start posting it up here.

Commercial

Finally got my hands on a copy of a web commercial I directed last year here in Austin.  Shot by Michael Morlan on the Red One.  Enjoy!