Remake, Remodel

TRACE :: Lawrence Kocurek

Been in Washington D.C. for the past few days on a directing job.  Leaving today to fly to L.A. and then Hong Kong where I'll be spending the next week, directing a series of culinary films for a client.  Then I'll get home and sleep for as long as I can.  

A lot of other stuff in the pipe as well, looks like I'll be in Los Angeles for a week, directing a launch piece for an eco-fashion brand as well as some fun directing work popping up in Austin as well.  Looks like it's gonna be a crazy summer.

Wanted to post up a film I did for The W Hotel in Austin.  They recently apponted a new head chef for their restaurant, Trace, and it turned out to be a good friend of mine, Lawrence Kocurek who I met while making my Charcuterie documentary back in 2011.  Sadly, their business went under about a year and a half ago, but they both bounced back quickly and now Larry is heading up one of the best restaurants in the city.  The guy is a rockstar and you can learn all about how he plans on putting his mark on Trace here:

I directed a second short doc for The W which will be going up mid-June.  That one is a bit different and I'm excited to see it when it's finished.

I'll try to post some stills and stuff from Hong Kong, might be too crazy there, but we'll see...

 

 

Taking Off

Got back yesterday from a 3-day trip to San Francisco where I was directing a micro-doc for a national brand (can't talk a lot about it just yet).  I took Paul Toohey with me to shoot 2nd cam and run sound during interviews.  We landed in SF on Sunday morning (the 6am flight from Austin hurt) and were going to be shooting with a chef in the city, but she had to cancel.  With all this time on our hands, we decided to head to Chinatown and get some soup dumplings.  One amazing lunch later, we headed up the coast to Davis where we found our hotel (the always wonderful Comfort Inn), dropped off our gear, saw a movie (Pain & Gain - It's horrible), had dinner, went for a swim and then crashed out.

Day 1 was a long day, we shot on three different farms, and it's already getting hot in northern California.  After a 12-hour shoot day, we drove another two hours southwest to our second location.  We checked into our hotel (this time, a Best Western) had dinner and I stayed up until 1am dumping footage and backing everything up.

Day 2 was much easier.  We were at a winery in the morning, really beautiful stuff.  Shot there for a few hours and called it a day.  Drove down through Napa, stopping along the way to see the sights, have some lunch and taste some wine.  Finally made it back to the SF airport and hung around there until our red eye flight left for Houston at 11:56pm.  Landed in Houston at 5:20am (got no sleep on the plane) and our flight to Austin wasn't until 9:20am.  Hung out at the Houston airport (which is GIANT) and finally got home around 11am.

Only took three days, but it felt like a long trip.

Wish I had today to relax and sleep, but I booked a directing job for this morning (which is why I'm up at 4:45am) that I'm actually pretty excited about.  More on that later.

On Monday, I'm off to Cincinnati for a 4-day shoot (unrelated to SF) with my buddies at Production For. Once that shoot wraps, I head straight from Cincinnati to Grand Rapids, MI (meeting up with Paul) for 3 days, to pick up more footage to add to the SF shoot.  

Back home for a week and then I go to Washington D.C. (again, with Paul) to finsh up the SF project.  I'm there for 3 days and then go straight to Hong Kong (D.C. to L.A. to HK - something like a 20-hour flight, thank god for business class) for 8 days on another directing job.

Julie's threatening to marry Ryan Gosling, can't say I blame her.

Moretti Shoot

Directed another spot for Moretti Beer on Sunday night.  My buddy Paul Toohey was there with me, shooting.  We loaded in at 9pm and left at around 4am...'twas a long night.  We shot at a great restaurant in Austin, Sagra.  I made a short film about Sagra a while back, but since then they've moved to a place on the east side that is really nice.  Made for a great location.

Here's one of the product shots.

Catch Up (Catsup or Ketchup)

SXSW was a crazy couple of weeks and I came out of it busier than I'd been in a while.  Both panels went really well and it was really fun to be able to hang out with some very cool people.  

The first panel (which is supposed to be available online but isn't yet) was a lot of fun.  We had about 100 people there and from the comments afterward, it seemed that people got a lot out of it which was nice.  We talked a lot about creating your own online videos, finding a niche and promoting them.  I originally thought we'd get a lot of bloggers looking to move into video, but talking to people afterwards, there were a lot of different people there, a couple guys from newspapers (one all the way from Canada) as well as some documentarians looking for ways to promote their short docs.  Great to see the diversity.  Here's a picture of me with my name really big on some paper.

My manager Alex flew in for the second panel and we had an amazing time meeting with a lot of cool culinary people while he was here.  Here's a photo with Sara Robertson (Creative Director at KLRU, Austin's PBS station), my manager Alex, me and Aaron Franklin after our panel discussion about culinary on the web.  You can listen to the panel here if you're interested.

Once SXSW was done, I slept as much as possible and then launched into a few new projects.  The first was directing a pilot for an online cooking show with the very talented Kendall Melton, pastery chef at Contigo and owner of Fat Cat Bakery.  Kendall and I had been talking about doing something for a while and we got Alex involved with the idea to pitch it around to some online culinary destinations.  Here's Kendall whipping up something delicious.

At the same time, The W Hotel here in Austin contacted me about making two short films for them, one was to introduce their new Chef de Cuisine at Trace, Larry Kocurek, and the other is something that I won't be able to talk about for a little bit.  Both films need to be finished to premier at the Austin Food & Wine Festival which is at the end of the month, so I'm shooting like crazy for those right now so I can start editing right away.

Going to be traveling a lot coming up, heading to Cincinnati, Northern California's Wine Country, Washington DC, San Francisco, Colorado and Hong Kong, all within the next few months.  More on all that as it gets closer...

Very excited

Everything really starts tomorrow, but I picked up my badge for SXSW this morning.  Very excited to see some films and sit in on some panels.  If you're not doing anything on Sunday, come check out my panel about producing video for the web.  Gonna be a barn burner.  

Okay, maybe not.

SXSW Panels

Having been in Austin for almost 3 years now, I've grown to love and hate SXSW.  Love it, because I've seen some amazing panels and films during the festival, and hate it because for that two weeks, you really can't go anywhere or do anything without a HUGE wait.

I've always been a specator for SXSW, but last fall I was asked to speak on two panels during the festival.  The first panel (during the Interactive portion of the festival) is called, "Shooting, Producing, Selling : Secrets of WebTV" and focuses on creating your own content for the internet and then selling your idea to a web channel or network.  I was asked by the panel moderator, Tolly Moseley, who hosts the Austin episodes of the HungryTV show, "Hungry In..." that I directed last year.  Also joining us on the panel is Camille Styles (who I made the Entertaining With... film for last December) and Jillian St. Charles from HGTV.

The second panel takes place during the Film part of the festival and is called, "Visual Bites: Culinary on the Web".  This panel discusses the trend of food films on the web, how brands are using them to promote themselves (even non-culinary brands) and how chefs are not waiting to get on Top Chef anymore, but rather creating their own content.  One such chef is Aaron Franklin of the world famous Franklin BBQ here in Austin who will be joining me on stage along with Alex Kakoyiannis (my manager from The Culinary Agency) and Sara Robertson from KLRU who produces Aaron's YouTube show.

Couldn't be more excited to be a part of SXSW this year and I really hope, if you're here for the festival, you come by and check out the panels, they're gonna be a lot of fun!

No Satiation - Part 2

Here's the 2nd part of my interview with Will Burdette for his No Satiation food podcast.  We talk a lot about how I shoot food and why.  Huge thanks to Will for thinking of me for the interview...glad we were able to finally connect!

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No Satiation Podcast

My friend Melanie Haupt put me in touch with a guy named Will Burdette last year.  Will hosts a podcast here in Austin that focuses on food, food news, local Austin food and more.  Will was interested in interviewing me for the podcast, but with the baby and then the holidays, we could never seem to make it work.  

Once the dust settled on the new year, we got back in touch and scheduled a time to talk.  Will brought his audio gear over to my house and we talked for over an hour about food, film and how I've managed to carve out a weird niche for myself.

The first part of the interview is available now (and is also embedded below), and the 2nd part will be available next week.

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A Culinary Equation :: Episode 1 - Ramen

Here's the pilot episode for a new web series I've been developing called, "A Culinary Equation".  Each episode breaks down a classic dish into its basic components, talks about them and then brings them together at the end.  Shot this one here in Austin at Ramen Tatsu-Ya, a traditional ramen shop that serves an amazing Tonkotsu ramen.  If you're ever in Austin, you gotta check them out.

Perception

My buddy Paul has some food trucks in Austin that serve high-end product, like delicious foie gras, quail and eel.  We were talking about how perception plays a big part in what you eat and how, just because it's a food truck, it doesn't mean the quality is any less.  So we made a little film about it.