Back From Ecuador — Creo Chocolate

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

I’ve learned that culture-hopping is overwhelming. Being surrounded by others who don’t speak your language makes a person keenly introspective and self-conscious, especially when social rules and cultural norms are completely foreign. This project has broadened my understanding, humbled me far past my comfort zone, and left me with a fresh perspective, crazy excited to help bring a (delicious) piece of Ecuador to the USA…

This spring, Creo Chocolate, a family-owned bean-to-bar chocolate company, took me to South America in order to meet with the farmers who grow their chocolate and bring back this story to the US. Not only is this an awesome project, but the family I got to work with is one of the most genuine and hardworking that I know.

Dream. Come. True.

Not only did we learn about different types of chocolate and how they are grown and harvested, but we made friends, even among those with whom we had limited (if any) verbal communication.
Now, the journey is coming to Portland! This fall, Creo Chocolate plans to open a new kind of bean-to-bar workshop, where every step of their process—from the Ecuadorian chocolate bean to the Creo Chocolate bar—will be set up so that visitors can watch the handcrafting unfold. The unique chocolate workshop is scheduled to open in the fall of 2014, bringing to life the family’s dream of supporting communities and “handcrafting a bean-to-bar experience.”

There are at least half a dozen videos that will come out of this trip, but the first is finally live to share with y’all!

Check out CreoChocolate.com to stay updated on the progress of what this incredible family is doing for Portland and communities around the world!

Hatchery and Wild

We’re finally finished! After two and a half intense months of filming and editing, I’m excited to present the documentary that has taken up most of my life of late: Hatchery AND Wild!

 It has been an honor to work with so many talented, intelligent, and fascinating people throughout Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

 It’s been incredible working with Lance Fisher, a director who knows how to make the impossible happen to find the story, and his entire family who were gracious to let me live at their house during the packed days of editing.

It’s Bright!

Luhr Jensen’s Kwikfish ruled on the Nushagak River!

https://vimeo.com/78951024

Alaska!

It’s been busy… To date, my favorite project is one I completed over this summer: the homepage video for Alaska King Salmon’s website! Not only did I find the beauty of Alaska as incredible as I’d always imagined–the mountains surrounding Anchorage literally took my breath away–but the guys at the camp were fantastic people to spend the week with. Not only did they respect me and my work, but they were constantly making sure that every guest felt as comfortable as possible. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a group of guys work this hard. Check out the video below, and be sure to visit their site, alaskakingsalmon.com!



Alaska King Salmon Adventures from Outside Communications on Vimeo.

Sisters

This is a slider-practice project… crazy fun!

Plastic Cars and Smashing Pumpkins

As a new intern at Picture This, I’ve discovered a crazy exciting opportunity: taking available equipment home over the weekends. This first weekend, I just about flipped at the chance to take home the Sony FS700, a fantastic camera that stands out to me because it records video as fast as 960 frames per second, played back at the users choice of a standard frame rate (30, 24, 60, etc).

For my purposes (publication to the Vimeo), I chose the slowest frame rate that could maintain a pleasant 720p resolution: 480 fps. While I tried a few tests in 960 fps (the max resolution in 960 is SD), I didn’t see enough of a slo-mo “wow” difference (compared to 480 fps) to merit giving up that much resolution.

Ironically, after I spent a few days with this camera, I ran into a cameraman who’d used the FS700 for sports television. For him, the 240fps setting (up to 1080p resolution) worked great, though the lag time between clips made it difficult to capture every critical moment of action in the game. (Immediately after the camera captures frames live, it pauses to “record” to media, creating significant chunks of time where the camera is inoperable. The consecutive record time in slow motion is also significantly limiting: when I recorded a brief matchbox car scene with my brother in 480fps, the recording automatically stopped just short of the second that I wanted to stop recording.)

All the aforementioned said, I need more than a few days to get into this camera! With limited time over the weekend, smashing food became a priority. Some may debate whether or not it was worth the mess, but in my opinion, the half hour of cleaning was nothing compared to the fun we had!

Papers and Little Boys

Tis the season of paperwork! For the last few months, I’ve been on “production break,” doing the less-fun side of self-employed filmmaking: paperwork. Sometimes that necessary evil makes me want to scream. Besides financial and project-specific paperwork, the monster of Market Research awaits my trembling soul.

Looking back, I haven’t sat down for a day to dig deep into what’s going on in my field for several years. It’s far too easy to get obsessively consumed with my own projects while the constantly changing world of media moves on. So this week I made myself a cup of tea, found a comfy chair, and proceeded to visit Uncle Google and the sites of my cinematography heroes (Ray Roman, Philip Bloom, and StillMotion, to name a few).

Between paperwork and research, I’ve kept my creative side satisfied by shooting footage of my family. The following short film is definitely a personal piece, capturing a handful of precious moments. Please enjoy The Professor and the Ham: