"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.