Check out these latest videos I cut freelancing at Bitter Jester Creative for Mrs. Prindables, the gourmet division of well known Chicago apple candiers, Affey Tapple.  These tasty apples are coated in so many layers of goodness, they weigh up to two pounds and are the size of a person’t head!  It was awesome working with Nic DeGrazia and Dan Kullman up at Bitter Jester, great creative producers to work for, that really care about getting the project right.

The check out videos in context on the Mrs. Prindables website, see:

http://www.mrsprindables.com/about/testimonials.asp
http://www.mrsprindables.com/story/index.asp
http://www.mrsprindables.com/about/serving.asp

Check out this branded video I edited at Grand and Noble Productions that was recently broadcast on BetterTV.

Better TV is a nationally syndicated branded tv show about home and lifestyle, targeted towards women. It is produced by NY-based agency Meredith (makers of Better Homes and Garden magazine). In Chicago, BetterTV is broadcast on WPWR-50 and WFLD-32.

I just finished cutting my second episode of Fooditude, a new web series that changes kids’ attitudes towards healthy eating.  The series is produced by Elise Jaffe, executive producer at Big Teeth Productions and Jodi Balis, a registered dietitian at Red Lentil Consulting. I have taken the reigns as editor for the second series, building upon my existing food/cooking broadcast experience (Kai Time on the Road, BetterTV).

Each series consists of five webisodes, featuring Chef Joshua, and kids Charlie, Lydia, and Keaton. This series is about a food all kids love, pizza!  The first episode takes the kids to Apart Pizza, a unique pizzeria in Chicago that specializes in nutritious pizza creations.  Watch the episode above to learn about their highly unusual pizza toppings.  In the second episode, the kids head to Bennison’s Bakery to learn how bread is made.  The series will continue with more episodes exploring the pizza theme, including heading to Chicago Green City Market to pick vegetables for toppings, learning about where produce comes from, and then the kids will make their own healthy pizza inventions!

The videos are paired up with teachers’ curriculums for schools, so students are studying healthy eating lessons in the classroom that are reinforced by the content of the web series.

While I have experience working with food television, this was my first time cutting a show that specifically featured kids. Their excitement and youthful enthusiasm on their path of discovery make these stories so much fun to cut! I hope to be doing more kids programing in the future!

Keep an eye out for the next webisode coming in a couple weeks.  In the meantime, please check out www.fooditude.tv to learn more about this program!

Our film, entitled “Condemned”, was honored with the “Best Use of Character” and an “Audience Choice” award at the Best 0f 48 Hour Film Project event on August 24, 2010 at Lincoln Hall.

The 48 Hour Film Project is a worldwide competition in which industry professionals and filmmaking enthusiasts are given a randomly selected assignment on a Friday night, and then have 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, and deliver a completed film.  All teams were requited to incorporate the same prop (mug), character (Duncan or Denise Kerry, a salesman), and line of dialogue (“I am sure you are mistaken”).  Then random genres were pulled from a hat. This year we were assigned “Western”.  As soon we received our genre and required elements on Friday night, the race was on to make a film!

I have participated in this competition several times when I lived in New Zealand. This was my first time participating in Chicago, and my first time stepping up to the role of producer – previously I’ve edited, directed, and run lights.  We had an absolutely amazing ensemble team! We based ourselves at Brella Productions’ worldclass studio and postproduction facilities in Evanston. From Brella, we had director / cameraman Marc Morgan, writer Margaret Dill Andrea, soundman Ray Araldi, and editor Spencer Parks.  From Adelstein Liston, we had assistant editor and production assistant Peter Molinaro and graphics pro Warren Rudd.  We had costume-maker and art department director Rebecca Miller, experienced in designing costumes for the stage.  For music, we had Bainard Panic Defense. We had the incredibly gifted puppet-maker / puppeteer Noah Ginex of the Noah Ginex Puppet Company (famous for his recent Barenaked Ladies music video).  And performing we also had established screen and stage actor Jim Parks of Minute Navigator and T0day’s Green Minute.  Post continues here…

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Hi all! I am back in Chicago, and have been contracting at a political PR media firm called Adelstein Liston.  We have just started a big PR media campaign for American Federation of Teachers.

It’s all over the news. We are in the midst of a huge national education funding crisis.  Teachers are being laid off and schools are closing across the country. Teacher layoffs, according to reports on the Today Show, April 22, 2010, include 15,000 in New York City, 17,000 in Illinois and 22,000 in California. Total national reports of layoffs top 300,000 teachers by the end of the school year.

AFT is the national umbrella organization for all the local teachers unions. They have launched a national media campaign to fight back against teacher layoffs. This consists of radio ads, billboards, signs on buses directing people to websites for each city where heartfelt testimonials from teachers and parents stress the importance of keeping teachers, keeping class sizes reasonable, and exploring alternative savings options to balance school districts’ budgets.

I recently finished cutting videos for the Cleveland campaign website. Please see the “Our Heroes” and “Our Supporters” sections.  The Teachers testimonial video is also pasted above. Post continues here…

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Greetings from Zürich, Switzerland, where I just saw Avatar in 3D at the Arena Film City cinemas. All I can saw is, wow! Such beautiful imagery! It was so amazing to see what the finished composited film looked like after seeing the raw green-screen footage two years earlier in New Zealand.  While I was watching the raw shots flicker through the monitors, my imagination filled in the gaps of what this world would look like, but actually seeing it was beyond what I could imagine!

I first became involved with Avatar back in late  October 2007, while I was working at the Dub Shop in Wellington, New Zealand.  The owner of the Dub Shop, Simon Reece, was an industry veteran, and I very quickly learned my way around the Kiwi film industry. I tracked down legendary Kiwi editor Mike Horton for lunch one day, and he referred me onto  Jonno Woodford Robinson (assistant editor on Lord of the Rings and King Kong), who helped put me in touch with Weta Digital. A couple weeks later, I got a call from Cyndi Ochs, the production manager on a film being shot in Wellington called Avatar.  They were looking for someone experienced in operating HD decks to work an overnight shift in the engineering truck running dubs of their dailies. A couple days later I had a night job. Post continues here…

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During a recent trip to Israel, I collaborated  with Dr. Shaunie Shammass, a linguistics experts on a project called Speaking Pal, an interactive smartphone application to teach English to non-native speakers.  Each lesson consists of an interactive video conversation. The virtual conversation partner prompts the dialogue, and the user has two options on how to reply, which they speak back into the phone.  The conversation then travels down one of many branches based upon the user’s replies. Post continues here…

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Another TV show I have been working on at Butobase, Minority Voices, premiers this Sunday 6th of December at 11.30am on TVOne.

Minority Voices is a 10-part half-hour documentary series tracking the challenges faced by refugees from around the world settling and adapting to life in New Zealand.  While many of these individuals fled persecution, violence, political, and economic strife in their home countries, arriving with their families in a country with a different language and culture presented a new and very different struggle. Personal stories relate frustration, adaptation, and successes of immigrants from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. A full synopsis can be found on TVNZ’s website.

For this series, I was responsible on working on the initial edit of several stories with Associate Producers Rebecca Singh and Dane Giraud, before they moved on for the fine cut with editor Tim Grocott and producer Julia Parnell. Post continues here…

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The TV series I have been working on at Butobase, Ngāti NRL Series 9, premiers on Māori Television this Friday, 9 October, at 9pm.  If you are home, please watch it, if you are out, set your DVR to record it!

Ngāti NRL is a 13-part series that charts the aspirations of young Māori and Pacific Island rugby league players who have left New Zealand for Australia to follow their dreams of playing first division in the world’s toughest rugby league competition.  Stories follow individual players, relating their challenges, shortcomings, and successes as they move up the ranks from U20s and feeder clubs looking for their first grade break.  The format combines observational documentary and sports highlight formats, documenting trainings, home life, social interactions, and cut-downs of the games to chart their development into professional players.  The show is bilingual, with voice over is in Te Reo Māori (Māori language) with interviews mostly in English.

For this project, I edited a number of the game montages and player interview stories.  I also peformed all the episode finishing, including colour grade, final QC, checking for double-uped edits, bad cuts, glitches, adding basekeys, soundtrack, and layback.

We are presently working on Series 10, so stay tuned for more!

Hey all! Greets from Auckland, New Zealand.

We had an awesome time in the 2009 V 48 Hour Film Fest!  For those of you who don’t know what it is, you have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a short film.  You are assigned a genre, characer name, prop, and line at the beginning of the competition.  This prevents you from writing a script in advance, since you won’t know what you get until 48 hours before the film is due!

This year, we got “conspiracy film” for our genre.   All teams were required to include a prop (a rock), a character (Alex Puddle, The Exaggerator) and a line of dialogue (“It doesn’t fit”) in their films.

Out team, called Shiner Bock, consisted of myself, Marcos Pelenur, Jonathan Jolly, Kate Erickson, Craig Bovaird, Cam Lenart, Lisette Ingram, and Donavin Wick.  At the brainstorming session, I wanted a story involving a romance with a rock, that led to a conspiracy, but somehow I lost out on this one (peraps a good thing).  The romantic rock does have a cameo though if you watch the full movie. Post continues here…

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