Remake, Remodel

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!

 

New Work & New Gear

New directing jobs have started coming in and so I've been investing in some new gear.

Lately, I've been borrowing a friend's motorized slider to start dabbling in moving time lapse shots.  I'm a big fan of time lapse photography and it's something that I've wanted to start adding to more of my directing work.  Adding movement to the shots makes them a lot more dynamic and interesting than just watching sped up action.  My friend has the Kessler Pocket Dolly Traveller Edition which has a 2-foot track and is perfect for travel and short moves.  I decided to get the Kessler Pocket Dolly 2.0 which has a 3-foot track.  It's still short enough to pack in a suitcase or a tripod bag, but that extra foot can mean a lot in moving shots.

What makes this slider different from my Glidetrack Hybrid is that it's belt driven, which means that you can use a crank to move it, or attach a motor to the slider and use that to drive the carriage.  I bought the ElektraDRIVE Bundle with the basic controller which is what I've been using so far.  My buddy Tyler Gorell has the Oracle Controller which gives you a lot more control over time and movement and allows you to control the Revolution Pan/Tilt System, but the expense was just too much for me to justify right now.  If it turns out that I use this more and more, then I'll probably upgrade.

The motor can be used for live moves (though it's pretty noisy unike the Glidetrack which is almost totally silent) or, you can have it move incrementally over long times (up to 7-hours to move the length of the track) for moving time lapse shots.  Most of the time, the 6.5-foot track of my Glidetrack is overkill, so it'll be nice to have a shorter slider for doing countertop moves in tight places or if I just don't want to have to carry the huge beast with me on a shoot.  Plus, the motorized control means nice slow, even moves for live video.  Even if it's noisy, it's still perfect for b-roll shots which is where I use a lot of my slider shots.

Still, I'm not getting rid of the Glidetrack for now, it's still a solid slider and I know I'll be finding some good uses for it on these jobs.

I've also invested in some small LED lights that are going to be great for small places.  I got 160-count LED's that have a pretty decent throw (about 7-feet).  They're powered by AA-batteries or Sony rechargable camera batteries if you happen to have those (I don't).  They're dimmable (a huge plus) and come with hard, plastic gels to give them a daylight or tungsten look.  They're cheap, only about $40 each, but I've used some from a friend and they've worked really well.  I'm going to be putting them on Manfrotto Super Clamps which I got at B&H.  These allow you to clamp the light to pretty much any bar or shelf or whatever.  I've tested them and they will even hold my 7D with a big lens on it.  Great for getting interesting angles.

One of the big goals for the 12 Films Project was that I would start directing more and more because of the work that I was doing and it's finally starting to happen.  April marks the first month where I have more directing work lined up than editing or graphics work.  It's a good feeling.

Local - Poster

Now that Local is starting to get into festivals (well, just one for now, but I've been submitting to others), I decided to start working on some press materials.  Spent a little time working on a poster design today and I'm pretty happy with how it's come out:

My next step will be to make a post card design that will be similar to the poster and a sticker that I've been playing around with.  These are just gimmies that you hand out at festivals and stuff, but it's a good way to spread awareness of your film and hopefully get people to come see it.

The Hill Country Film Festival

Of all the films I made last year for the Twelve Films Project, the one I'm most proud of is Local.  It was the culmination of a lot of the documentary work I did throughout year and I feel like it was the one doc that had a real cohesive through-line to it.  Because of that, I'm extra proud to say that it was just accepted into the Hill Country Film Festival.

Don't know the screening dates yet, but as soon as I find out, I'll post them up.  My short film, Sketch, played at the festival last year (it won Best Actress for Natalie Monsanto) and we all had an amazing time, hanging out in Fredericksburg, meeting other filmmakers and seeing some amazing films.  I'm sure this year will be just as good.

Busy

Wow!  It's been almost a month since my last blog post and things have been totally crazy.  Between moving into the new house, multiple jobs, shooting the Local feature, shooting Food Narrative and another project that's under wraps right now, I'm exhausted.  Plus, SXSW is going on right now and I'm trying my best to get out and see some films, go to some events and revel in all things hipster.

The new house is great, though the unpacking process is taking a little longer than we'd like.  Julie and I have both been incredibly busy and so some of the boxes remain taped up.  We're throwing a dinner party this weekend for some friends which I'm hoping will light a fire under our asses and force us to get more of the house set up.  For now, we've just got the essentials, the bedroom, living room, kitchen and my office.  The dining room is kind of set up and the guest room...well, that's the black hole where everything we don't want to deal with is sitting.  Opening that door is like opening the gates of hell...but with more cardboard, bubble wrap and packing tape.

Work has been good and very steady.  I'm currently finishing post-production on a project that I directed for MetLife as well as three or four broadcast graphics jobs.  Production has ramped up on the Local feature and I've been shooting interviews with Paul Toohey over the past couple weeks.  I think we're going to be talking to more people than I originally thought here in Austin which might push the San Francisco portion of the shoot back to May or even June.

Food Narrative has had a slow start, mostly because everyone I've talked to about participating was busy leading up to SXSW, but now that the festival is wrapping up, I'm going to start shooting my first one next week.  Gonna be a good one.

I've been getting into motion timelapse lately, shooting some test footage for a doc idea I had.  Here's a quickly put-together piece with some of my better shots.  Still not perfect, but I'm really excited about what's to come with this gear.

 

Life & other stuff

The blog's been a little dead lately and I can completely attribute that to the fact that Julie and I are moving.  We found an amazing house in central Austin (the Brentwood area) and we're moving in at the end of the week.  Our apartment is boxes, bubble wrap and dust right now and, added to that, Julie's busy at work and I'm in the middle of a couple things myself, so it's really all I can do to get up in the morning.

Still, the house is amazing and we're just psyched to be getting out of this apartment.  We've got a painter in there right now, slapping up some color on the walls and I'm going to start running some of the more fragile stuff over there myself starting tomorrow.  The movers come on Friday morning and the hope is that Julie will leave for work in the morning, and come home to her new house, all moved in and everything...I really hope that's what happens.

I've been doing a lot of graphics work for my buddy Dan Korb in NY lately.  He's been directing some infomercials and I've been supplying him with some logo animations and text stuff.  Once they start airing, maybe I'll post some of it up.  Otherwise, I'm still working on the Food Narrative stuff and will start shooting the first one next month.  I'm also starting to shoot the additional interviews for the LOCAL feature next month as well as a new project that I'm not ready to talk about yet.  All in all, things are gonna get pretty busy right after this move.

NME = Awesome

A music video that I directed for Austin rocker, Deano, is being featured on the NME website right now which is pretty bad ass.  You can check it out here or just watch the video below.

 

Deano also did an interview with MadeLoud and talked about making the music video.  Very funny stuff.

2012 - New Projects

As the 12 Films Project was winding down, I started thinking about what I wanted to do in 2012.  For about 10 minutes, I seriously considered doing another 12 Films, but then I realized that I'd never get to see my friends again and my wife would most likely divorce me.  Plus, I'd have to forget working on any of the other projects that I really wanted to do this year.  All I knew was that I wanted to do something that was a lot less structured but much more specific.

As I've said before on this blog, I really love making documentaries.  I mean, REALLY love making them.  And the food documentary has kind of become a thing for me.  I love food and food culture and I've started (in my own very small way) to become a part of the Austin food scene.

I've decided to start a new film series for 2012 (and beyond) called, "Food Narrative", which will document the growing food culture in America by highlighting the people and groups who are making a difference, either by creating or educating.  The initial goal is to spotlight some amazing people who might not be known outside the Austin food scene and then work my way out from there, shooting stories about people and groups outside of Austin and even Texas.  I'll be working with some friends who I've shot with before as well as some new people who I admire a whole lot.

I'm still in the planning stages and probably won't start shooting until the end of February or the beginning of March and, most likely, there will only be 4-5 of them made this year.  There isn't going to be a set timeline for anything which I hope will mean that I can take my time and that the overall quality of my documentary work will improve.

I've put a website together that will probably grow a lot as the first video is finished.  There's a Blog, Facebook page and Twitter link, so feel free to join/follow to stay up-to-date on what's going on.

My second project for 2012 is expanding LOCAL into a feature documentary.  I had decided to take January off from film stuff, mostly to recharge and focus on some paid directing work, but now I'm starting to make calls, set up interviews and get the ball rolling again.  The goal for LOCAL is to shoot all of the remaining Austin interviews in March/April and then head out to San Francisco in April or May to shoot everything out there.  Once that's done, I'll start editing and will hopefully start sending it out to festivals and distributors in the fall.

As always, keep checking back for updates on these and other projects that I've got coming up.  Should be a fun year!