Archive for August, 2010

I want to say a huge and sincere thanks to Chris Mierzwinski — better known worldwide as “Chris M” — for all of his help, advice and friendship filming with me this last May and June. Chris and I share a lot in common, including many shared ideas and sensibilities about cinema, life… and epic women (of which we saw many this summer!) Poor Chris had to endure some tough times on that leg of the shoot, including all manner of blowouts, failures and catastrophes related to our RV. But we also managed to have a lot of fun and to kick plenty of ass with our shots. Living out of casinos in Vegas, chasing bears through Yosemite, breaking every permit law known to the western United States… I wouldn’t have wanted anyone but Chris with me.

Thanks, Chris, I owe you, man. And I hope to have you back out here soon!

First of all, just a quick update on how the film is progressing: fantastically. I apologize for the long delay in updating this blog, but we’ve been going to town on this film over the last few weeks. We’ve spent the last month or so based out of the town of Lee Vining, CA. Before that, we spent two beautiful weeks with the “Mobile Production Studio” parked off the grid at Green Creek, near Bridgeport.

As of now, my plans are to head out to Utah (Canyonlands, Arches, etc) at the end of this month, spend one month there, then spend the month of October at Lake Powell filming on the water, as well as filming surrounding locations like Antelope Canyon, Pink Dunes, Goblin Valley…. and of course a return trip to the “Holy Land” location in Arizona. November will probably be White Sands, New Mexico and possibly the Very Large Array, if I can get approval to film there. In December, I will begin to sort through my footage, maybe shoot some snow sequences, and sell the trailer. In January, I will travel to New Zealand to spend some time at the Rubber Monkey Studio with my producer and composer Nigel Stanford. At that point, we will begin to piece the puzzle together — to see how much footage we have, how much more footage we still need, how the music fits with the clips, and of course we will need to get serious about figuring out our post workflow.

Anyway, enough of all that, here are some pictures and videos from our last six weeks of filming:

Here is the trailer packed for the move from Bishop to Green Creek.

Filming at the hot springs near Bridgeport

Our camp at Green Creek

A Red MX frame grab shot at Greek Creek over 4th of July

Nilo built an awesome fire-ring at Green Creek

My producer and composer Nigel joined us for a few days at Green Creek in this stylish RV!

Dinner at Green Creek

On location in Nevada near Goldfield

Rainbow near South Tufa at Mono Lake

Here is one of the resulting frames from the Red footage

Shooting Canon timelapse at the Tufa

Location scouting the lake in boat. Nilo in foreground, Ryan Christensen from Bristlecone Media in red jacket

My arm after a couple hours on the lake...it's really salty

Nilo setting up the camBLOCK at a Yosemite lake

Testing out a prototype Kessler slider on Mono Lake

Sachtler 150mm head on Kessler prototype

Location scouting at Mobius Arch. Mike Flores joined us on this shoot

iPhone grab of the resulting Mobius timelapse shot

Our office for the afternoon

My intern Nilo horsing around on our new Manfrotto CF sticks

I picked up a new sponsorship from KATA Bags. Thanks, KATA!

Our Red MX camera fits perfectly into this prototype Grizzly-4 backpack bag from KATA, completely built

Typical camBLOCK setup at Bristlecone. (Photo by Shawn Reeder)

Here is the result - a single frame from the above setup

Sleeping under the stars at Bristlecone during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower

Here is a video showing a typical morning for us:

iPhone frame grab from the aforementioned Milky Way

Eric Kessler and Kessler Cranes have been a HUGE sponsor of this film. Here are some photos and videos of the crane in action, including a super-cool “Timelase Crane” modification Eric made for us:

Here is the resulting test shot:

Here’s a tour of our 30ft Toy Hauler:

Video of us packing the truck for a 2-day trip:

Another hard day at work:

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Special thanks for Ryan and Jonah from Bristlecone Media for their camaraderie and collaboration on our Mono Lake shoots. And also a special thanks to Shawn Reeder, Mike Flores, Larry Gebhardt, and of course Drew Walker for their friendship and help with this film.