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.