"Heart Strings" Award Wining Short Film

For the past three years I've taken part in the 48 Hour Film Project in Des Moines. In just 48 hours you have to write, direct, shoot and edit a short film.

This year the genre of film the River Run team had to make was romance. A cast and crew of 14 began shooting just before midnight on July 25 from a script I wrote with a heavy dose of improv. With Amy Anderson as the lead actress we shot until just after sunrise. With a little sleep here and there Paco Rosic edited "Heart Strings" and we turned it in before the cut off. 

It's fun to push yourself and try some different things in a short time span on a limited budget. It helps you appreciate when you a have a little more time and money to pull off a quality production.

August Update:

This year there were a total of 40 teams in competition and we made the top 12 best of the cities screening and ended up winning best cinematography and honorable mention in directing. This is the third year in a row winning best cinematography at the 48 Hour Film Project and this year I had the pleasure of sharing the award with co-director of photography Jon Van Allen (shown here holding his HVX camera) in my office. 

Google Shoot

This week River Run Productions offered production support for a shoot for Google Ads. I was production manager for a one day shoot in Cedar Rapids for a success story Google is doing on Mike Miller and his company Mobile Demand which makes rugged tablet PC. So rugged in fact that you can throw a baseball at it and it will still work.

Check out this video Mike did for his company where he drove his car through a car wash with his computer strapped to the exterior of his sunroof. Tough computer and creative guy--no wonder Google will be featuring him. 

How High's the Water Mama?

It was hard not to think of the famous Johnny Cash flood song as the water kept rising along the Cedar River near my home and the office. Just two blocks from our offices Tuesday is where the sandbagging began. And it was a wild 20+ hours of watching a community come together in a single effort.

When the water crested Wednesday there was a colorful wall of sandbags, thousands of tired volunteers, and fortunately the water didn't come over flood walls. Unfortunately some homes in the flood plan in both Cedar Falls and Iowa we damaged or lost altogether.

The artist Paco Rosic who own a restaurant in Waterloo, Iowa (and who River Run has produced commercials and web videos for) fought around the clock to keep the flood water from damaging his building.

We were spared the damage that Cedar Rapids has experienced when water went as high as 10 feet in downtown buildings.

Feature Film Scouting in Iowa

A couple weeks ago we received a call from Mandate Pictures in Beverly Hills to do a couple days of scouting for Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It! The film is a coming of age story centered around contemporary roller derby (whose popularity is on the rise). The story is based on the book Derby Girl by Shauna Cross and takes place in Austin, Texas.

So I spent two days driving over 300 miles looking for places that could pass for Texas; B-B-Q joint, 50's style ranch homes and so on. I shot in a neat little town called Vinton about 45 minutes from Cedar Falls and thought it looked like a small Texas town.

But I found out that Mandate has decided to shoot West Texas, New Mexico, and Michigan. But nonetheless it was nice to rub shoulders and work for the group that produced last year's surprise hit Juno. Which for the record won screenwriter Diablo Cody an Oscar. Cody is a graduate of the University of Iowa.

And that's not the only Juno-Iowa connection. Juno start Ellen Page is over in the Des Moines area currently shooting Peacock which is also being produced by Mandate.

Parkersburg Tornado

The Parkersburg tornado that caused so much destruction this past Sunday was a little too close to home.  River Run's Marc  Reifenrath and his wife and dog were in the basement of their Parkersburg home when the tornado went directly through there house. Just 45 seconds they were looking at the sky. 

Shaken, with a few less belongings, but glad to be alive.

I went out yesterday to shoot footage for Farm Bureau Insurance and couldn't believe the destruction from the tornado. I've been through a major California earthquake and a Florida hurricane but they don't compare to the force the first EF5 rated tornado to hit Iowa in 30 years..

  

What Happens in Postville...

What happens in Iowa is apparently broadcast to the rest of the world.

Most people in Iowa have never been to Postville, Iowa and would have trouble placing it on a map. But one week ago today it became a little more well known as it became the place of the largest immigration raid in US history. We received a call from Univision Network in Miami to shoot some interviews and b-roll in Postville.



Postville is about an hour and a half north east of Cedar Falls. It's an interesting place with a mix of the original settlers of German and Norwegian decent mixed with those from Mexico, Guatemala and the Ukraine who work in a meet packing planet run by Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn.

It's an interesting enough place for Univ. of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom to write a book on the town. In "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America" Bloom writes, “I look at Postville as a social laboratory to test the limits of diversity, tolerance, and acceptance.”

The families of those arrested in Postville found refuge at Saint Bridget's Church and awaited news on what was going to happen next. Meanwhile I used an ABC satellite truck to do an uplink with Univision so the footage I shot could find its way on their news broadcast later that night.

Is there any doubt that immigration will play a roll in the Presidential elections at the end of the year?

Sign of the Times

We had a white winter and a rainy April but the signs of spring are finally here; Warm weather and blue skies.

Speaking of signs, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare has a new billboard up in Cedar Falls featuring a photo we took. The photograph was originally used for a commercial and print ad, so it was a nice surprise to see it up on the billboard.

The Planets: A Multi-Media Presentation

Tomorrow night (April 23,2008)  at The Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center there will be an event called Visual Art, the Big Screen, and Orchestral Performance featuring a video we produced of Gary Kelley's artwork and featuring the music from Holst's "The Planets." The music was performed by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony under the direction of conductor Jason Weinberger from the original full concert last November. 

That concert received a triple standing ovation by the over 1,000 people in attendance as well as a fine review by the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier. It was an honor to work with with such a talented group of artists and nice to see it be so well appreciated.

Gary Gute from the University of Northern Iowa will be leading a discussion and Q&A on the creative process of bringing together all of the various elements of the multi-media presentation.

Video with Nobel Peace Prize Winner

It's not every day that you get to meet and work with a Nobel Peace Prize winner. In fact, it's only happened once in my life. A couple months ago we received a call to video tape an interview with Dr. Norman Borlaug for Self-Help International.

Dr. Borlaug was a farm boy from Cresco, Iowa who grew-up during the depression and would go on to become one of only five people in history to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

His work in increasing agricultural production has been credited with saving billions from starvation in Mexico, Pakistan, and India. His 1970 Nobel Peace Prize was "in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply."

His work in the 1940's and 1950's is considered to be the spark of the beginning of the Green Revolution. In 1986 he started The World Food Prize which recognizes work being done for the world food supply.

Dr. Borlaug was 95-years-old at the time of the interview and when we took the above photo in Des Moines. His life represents a life lived to the full. This evening the video will be shown as part of a fundraiser for Self-Help International.

Winter in Spring

There were snow flurries as I drove to work today. No April Fools there. That's what I saw and I'm sticking to my story. Last week I had my first white Easter and from the first day of winter to the last day there was snow on the ground here in Cedar Falls.

Having moved to Iowa from Florida almost five years ago it was the first real winter of my life and in the top five winters, snowfall-wise, for the Cedar Valley.


So I guess it makes sense that I would get a call from Lost Island Waterpark in January to shoot an idea they had. They wanted to shoot the water park in all its winter glory for a tongue-in-cheek commercial. It was nine degrees when we shot and with the windchill it had to be below zero.


It gave us a chance to shoot with the Panasonic HVX 200 camera in extreme conditions. We shot HD footage onto a digital P2 card so we didn't have to worry about the tape freezing.


Here's the :30 spot that aired in the tri-state (Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois) area earlier this month as an ice-breaker as we moved from winter to spring and looked forward to the waterpark opening in May when things warm up a bit.

Addy Awards

River Run Productions picked up two Addy Awards at the recent MAC Addy Awards. One for a black and white photography for Covenant Hospital and the other for a video produced for the website of Beam Central Vacuum Systems - International.

The elegant and dynamic website for Beam/Electrolux International, and the Beam U.S.A site as well, were designed by Spinutech.

Bike Week Iowa Style

Happy Valentine's Day.

I looked through our stock footage from last year and I found this fitting shot from Ragbrai. A young girl had "Marry Me Lance?" written on her back at the 35th annual event. Every year during the last week of July it's Daytona Beach meets New Orleans for the bike ride across Iowa. A Marti Gras on bicycles. Up to 10,000 bikes.

Ragbrai is the longest, largest and oldest touring bicycle ride in the world. Last year Lance Armstrong road the majority of the ride and Lance sightings were legendary. This young lady didn't want to miss the opportunity.

We received a call from Franklin Films down Nashville way to shoot a group of Ugandans for the national television program Joni and Friends Television Series. That TV series began airing on TBN this month. The Africans we were taping were riding as a fundraiser for Child Voice International. It gave us an opportunity to learn to ride a tandem bike and shoot HD footage at the same time.

It was a picturesque two hour ride/shoot through the rolling hills between Stout and Cedar Falls, Iowa surrounded by corn, farms and one romantic biker.  

 

Shooting for National Television

The end of 2007 did not only bring opportunities for River Run Productions to video tape many presidential candidates leading up to the Iowa caucuses, but we also did two shoots for the nationally syndicated TV program The Montel Williams Show. The screen shot above shows the young man we shot on location in Marshalltown, Iowa. The other video shoot was in Des Moines.

I thought of this last week as it was announced that Montel would be stopping production after 17 years of being on the air. That's a long for any TV program. Montel won a daytime Emmy Award in 1996 for Outstanding Talk Show Host.

The Political View From Iowa

Where's Waldo? 

Can you spot the political candidate in the above photograph? I took the photo at the Iowa State Fair this past summer and it summarizes what Iowa (and the candidates) went though this past year in Iowa and what the rest of the country (and again the candidates) went through the last couple weeks leading up to Super Tuesday.

We received a call to do camera work at an event where six of the presidential candidates were speaking. Having only seen one candidate in my life I thought it was an excellent opportunity. Little did I know it would be up close and personal as I was within ten feet of most of the candidates.

In the months leading up to the January 3, 2008 Iowa Caucuses I photographed and or video taped a total of 13 presidential hopefuls. More than most states will have on their ballots today. While many of our productions take us outside of Iowa, most of these shots were taken within 10 miles of our office in Cedar Falls. The photos below are part of the fun of being a video producer based in Iowa:

Photographs & Memories

My office is full of memorabilia from various media productions I’ve worked on over the years. One of the oldest is a large photograph I took when I was a 24-year-old photographer in L.A. It’s of the 1985 Los Angeles Rams. I thought of it this week because the long time owner of the football team, Georgia Fontiere, died last Friday at age 80.

She moved the Rams from L.A. to St. Louis in 1995 and in 2000 the Rams won the Super Bowl behind the arm of quarterback Kurt Warner and "The Greatest Show on Turf." Warner played his college ball right here in Cedar Falls at the University of Northern Iowa. (Congrats to UNI Coach Mark Farley for leading this years football team to the school's first ever undefeated regular season.)

Before Warner became an NFL and Super Bowl MVP he famously was a stock boy at the Hy-Vee grocery store located just two miles from our offices. (Speaking of Hy-Vee, check out the work my buddies at Spin-U-Tech did for the Hy-Vee website.)

The Ram’s photo is special because it was the pinnacle of my early career when I was director of photography at Yary Photo. Yary Photo was started and owned by Ron and Wayne Yary who played football at USC. Ron won the Outland Trophy (the nation’s top collegiate lineman) in 1967 where he blocked for the Heisman Trophy runner-up O.J. Simpson. The Trojans also won the NCAA national title that year. Ron was the #1 pick of the 1968 draft and went on to play in four Super Bowls for the Minnesota Vikings and was an eight time All Pro. In 2001 he was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

A year after I took the Rams photo I was working as a 16mm cameraman/editor for Motivational Media in Burbank, California and did a film shoot at the home of the Rams star running back Eric Dickerson (#29). I took the team photo with me and had him sign it. Because Dickerson still (amazingly two decades later) holds the single NFL season rushing record the photo doesn’t feel dated.

Also, in the photograph is rookie Chuck Scott who I played football with at Lake Howell High School in Winter Park, Florida. Chuck went on to play at Vanderbilt University where he was a Sporting News All-American before becoming a second round draft pick for the Rams. My glory days claim to fame is when I was a senior in high school I was a first team all-conference wide receiver and Chuck was second team all-conference. Chuck works for Young Life in Atlanta and our paths cross every now and then. To this day, he's one of the nicest guys I've ever met.

Years ago when I was on a location shoot in Ohio I stopped in Canton to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I realized my path had crossed with several Hall of Famers. There was Yary and Dickerson, along with John Madden & Marcus Allen who I photographed at a golf fundraiser in San Luis Obispo, Reggie White who I videotaped in Tampa for a Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree project, and Jim Kelly from the University of Miami where I was briefly a walk-on player before walking off after separating my shoulder and having it operated on.

One of the fun things about being a producer is my job often takes me to interesting places where interesting connections are made. Two years ago I did a shoot in Charlotte and interviewed Frank Reich who was Kelly's back-up when they both played for the Buffalo Bills and had also thrown a touchdown to Chuck Scott in a college all-star game. It is a small world.

It’s hard to believe one picture can conjure up so many connections, memories and stories. When you’re dealing with photos and images you’re dealing with powerful stuff. The old saying is that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. According to my computer this one was worth 694. But in those 694 words are many fond memories.

Adventures in Digital Storytelling

It's snowing outside and a fitting time to reflect on the first year of River Run Productions (http://www.riverrun.tv/). The short story of the inception of River Run was when a video company and a web design firm (http://www.spinutech.com/) started a new venture that would focus on video for web as well as traditional video production. With the rise of You Tube, iTunes and cable Internet lines January 2007 seemed like an ideal time to set sail.

We chose the name River Run Productions because the Cedar River flows just two blocks from our offices (see above photo taken today) yet it eventually flows into the Mississippi River, which eventually flows into the Gulf of Mexico, which eventually flows around the world. That seemed a fitting metaphor for what we hoped to achieve; To be based in Cedar Falls, Iowa yet to do work around the world. It seemed grand, but not too lofty. After all, before officially joining forces, we did do a joint project together in September of 2006 that landed on the front page of Yahoo! and helped bring worldwide acclaim to artist Paco Rosic (http://www.pacorosic.com/).

Little did we know that four months after starting that we would be doing a shoot in Brazil that included a shooting from a seaplane over the Amazon River. The first year included developing an online cooking show for Blue Bunny Ice Cream, shooting two short films, producing various commercials and promotional videos, as well as camera support for several national TV programs.

The work ranged from location shooting in New York, Charlotte, and San Francisco for Reformed Theological Seminary to taping six presidential hopefuls just ten miles from our offices as they prepared for the Iowa caucuses. We look forward this year to working with our established clients as well as the new ones as we set out on new adventures in digital storytelling.