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.

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.

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.