Stories

I just recently completed this piece for the The Martin House Restoration Corporation who will be using it in their efforts to complete restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House Complex.

The restoration has been many years in the making and it was exciting to visit the complex with the Red One and help in the effort.

http://vzaar.com/videos/1084502

I spent the day yesterday at the amazing Darwin Martin House shooting footage with the Red One digital cinema camera system for a little video piece that will be used in raising funds to complete restoration there.

World renowned photographer Biff Henrich (below left) headed up the project and it was great to see the progress made in restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece here in Buffalo.

While working with Washington Square Films recently at Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, it became apparent that capturing footage of the house (without lighting it) would be difficult since even with their full house lighting, it was still too dark.

I suggested that I shoot timelapse, which is a series of still images strung together to form a video sequence, and was given the go ahead to try it out.

Not being one to settle for the easiest option, I decided to try a moving camera timelapse with my “slider” (a mini camera dolly) to take the subsequent footage to the next level.

I spent some time recently traveling around the Eastern end of New York State to some places I’d never been before (and to a few places I have been to), shooting interviews and portraits for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

The Columbia University campus in Manhattan was pretty impressive, as was the amazing TEC-SMART Facility of the Hudson Valley Community College.

I have to say – I really like the way the future looks.

I had the good fortune recently of serving as cinematographer for the esteemed Director, Paul Souter for a bit of work for Independent Health using the Canon 5DMKII HD camera system.

Paul shot stills using the same lighting and set we rolled on for online videos being produced for the HMO.

I was hired recently to produce a little intro video for law firm Goldberg Segalla which just so happened to coincide with their 10 year anniversary. We spent a single day in their Buffalo, NY office shooting interviews with a number of their attorneys, some of whom were mere minutes away from conference calls.

Nerve wracking? Yeah, a little. But they’re all so nice, we just rolled with it and came away with a nice little piece.

The St. John’s Law School Dean’s Report is out and it looks pretty nice.

“Valentina” is a prequel to “Davis”, a short film I shot for the 48 Hour Film Project. We shot “Valentina” in an evening in Niagara Falls, NY. Writer/director/actor, Aaron Doolittle had about a week to pull together a cast and find a location to shoot in, and we breezed through 8 or 9 hours of shooting while surviving a little car theft (no big deal).

Editor, Dominic Luongo created these promotional stills from HD footage I shot with camera operator/AC, Shannon Madden. I owe her some Chanel model 5 sunglasses, so if anyone knows where I can get some knockoffs, please let me kn0w (shhhhhhh):

Lull… Maybe a little one. It’s been an absolutely cray-zee year, workwise for me. I’m not looking forward to doing my taxes, but I’m feeling pretty positive about the quality of work I produced and the relationships that continue on into the present and hopefully, the future.

I just got back from Fort Lauderdale where I spent a week shooting and taking part in the set up of an elaborate 4 screen temporary theater that we produced video content for in the past 2 months back home in Buffalo.

In this “cube”, we sat 100+ people and projected video from the outside onto the 4 screens enclosing the cube (not in position in this shot). Here, John Takacs directs the final setup prior to the screening which was engineered by Daniel Brodie who is some kind of Watchout system genius.

Check it out!

At least that’s what Shannon called it. I just drove, and drove, and drove, and worked, and then drove some more recently while shooting stills and footage for Bausch & Lomb with photographer, Eric Frick and my Canon 5DMKII camera package. The weather was mostly cooperative, the food was mostly good, the camera equipment held up, and we flew home with gold plated imagery and footage.

Shannon’s a little shorter than Eric (as are most of us).

Sometimes it’s worth it getting up at 5am.

Keeping it real (warm) on a breezy 50 degree Florida morning.

Behold – the finest Tuna Melt ever created! (at Argo’s Diner in Apopka, Florida)