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.

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?

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.

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.