“…and the Emmy goes to…”
I know it’s been a long time since I updated this site, been just flat out busy, however I wanted to share the exciting news of June 10th. We won an Emmy for “Return to Auschwitz: The Survival of Valdimir Munk” with the Boston New England Chapter!
After so much work it sure was gratifying to receive this award with my colleagues Bruce Carlin and Julie Canepa. We have also won the Indifest Award of Excellence and placed in Montreal and Berlin Film Festivals. It’s been quite a run. The documentary has also aired on 97% of all the PBS stations in the country and is now available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, VUDU and VIMEO on demand. Check out our webpage for more information on those: https://returntoauschwitz.com/
The biggest thrill was handing Vladimir his award at a special encore screening at his retirement home on June 28th, 2023!
I hope you find the time to watch this documentary. It’s so important to never forget the past. It’s also a great way to honor those who lived through it all like Vladimir!
Thanks to the entire community on social media who supported us on this journey!
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Check any of the videos on my site from the past few years and you will hear the quality of their music in them. I wouldn’t recommend just any company unless I REALLY believe in their product.
JUST DO IT!!! (well, after you check it out of course :))
Return to Auschwitz: The Survival of Vladimir Munk
This. Now THIS is a special project. Only once in a career does a project like this present itself. A story so special you feel compelled to work on it. There is no funding in place so this is representing the first time I’m a part of crowd funding a project. Here is our trailer:
Return to Auschwitz: The Survival of Vladimir Munk (Trailer) from Paul Frederick on Vimeo.Vladimir is a special man. So full of life and charm. He smiles with his eyes. I can’t help and wonder what horrors those eyes have witnessed. He had never been back to Auschwitz since 1945. This year marked the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp and he was asked to go back on January 27th, 2020.
To learn more about the story and to support out project please visit: Returntoauschwitz.com
New Year…catching up!!
I’m not the best at adding new videos to my site! Usually it’s because I’m so busy I can’t find the time, but sometimes it’s because of client confidentiality. My New Years resolution is to try and stay more current adding samples of my work.
(I’m currently working on a new passion project that may take up considerable time this spring but more on that soon!)
Here are some videos I made this past year for clients that I wanted to share, in no particular order:
Dino Roar Valley is a new seasonal attraction in the Lake George are featuring animatronic dinosaurs! I had the pleasure of working with some very dear friends on it too so that’s always a bonus!
DinoRoar Valley rough cut 1 from Paul Frederick on Vimeo.
MAGIC FOREST is the sister/brother park connected to Dino Roar Valley! It is a very old and charming place with lots of nostalgia for parents who may have been as kids themselves.
Magic Forest Promo Video FINAL from Paul Frederick on Vimeo.I can’t believe I didn’t post this video on St. Lawrence University’s ADIRONDACK SEMESTER program yet. It was one of my favorite projects this past year! Students spend a whole semester in the Adirondack wilderness. No power (solar panels only) and no cell phones. A complete re connection with nature and outdoor learning at its finest! It’s been a great year working with Tara Freeman and the team of creatives at St. Lawrence. Can’t wait to see what the new year brings!
Also for St Lawrence University were videos for celebrating fall on campus:
And a fun one for their Holiday video!
And last but not least they honored me by asking me to put together a highlight reel of my favorite shots from the year!
In other work…..I also completed a documentary for PBS stations with Producer Vin Tabone called The Hudson River School Pt 2: Cultivating a Tradition. Here is the first 2 minutes of that program. It is available on Amazon Prime and you can also see it on PBS stations around the country!
I’m still doing TV commercials for Curtis Lumber and now some “Day in the Life” spots as well. These highlight what certain positions are like in the company. Here is a sample of what one of their delivery drivers does:
….and a Stager.
That’s along post but I needed to catch up! Have a great New Year everyone!
Documentary style Real Estate videos
I have been making documentaries for almost 30 years now. In this day and age of shorter and faster, it’s nice to still be able to tell a story with some feeling in it. I’ve been lucky to work with Merrill L. Thomas in Lake Placid NY for a few years now. They believe a good story is as important, if not more so, than how many bathrooms and bedrooms a place has. Here a few of my favorites we have done recently in this style.
Happy Anniversary!
My wife and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary this past memorial day weekend. We ended up in Lake George, NY (Had a shoot scheduled but it was cancelled at the last minute). As I usually do, I brought a camera to keep from going stir crazy! If I don’t have it with me, I always see things I wish I could capture. Luckily my wife Teri is used to it now and accepts that she will likely be the subject for many shots as well.
When we got back I put a bunch of the shots to a catchy, thoughtful little song I found on artlist.io called “Next to You”. Many of the words are spot on perfect to how I feel about her. I hope you enjoy watching it. Sort of a personal peak inside our relationship, but that sometimes makes for a great video.
Two different videos…one event!
For the graduation ceremony at St. Lawrence University this year I was asked to create a highlight video. Get as many shots during the ceremony as I could, then take some sound bites and edit something together for facebook, youtube, etc.
I then found a real cool song on artlist.io that I subscribe to for music clearances that was called “One”. The Lyrics are about taking your best shot to being a success but was definitely geared toward a younger audience. I pitched the idea of doing another version to this song for instagram. Luckily the college agreed to give it a go!
Its an interesting view to see the two different videos done COMPLETELY for two different audiences. First is the more formal/traditional one, then the 1 minute version that was on instagram.
Student profile Mini-docs!
I’m thrilled to be continuing my work with St Lawrence University! Recently we created some student profile videos. Little mini-documentaries on their experiences and their lives. This is right up my alley as I started with making documentaries at PBS close to 30 years ago. The big challenge now is keeping them short enough for today’s young audiences! Check ’em out…more to come!
Zach Latinville-Inside The Studio
Zach is a friend of mine. He has his own real estate company, The Z Group, but also makes incredible furniture and cutting boards in his garage during his “spare time”. He’s recently been asked by NBC to submit a video for a possible role in an upcoming TV show they are working on. Anyway, I really like doing small “mini-documentaries” on interesting individuals and Zach fit the bill. Shot this on my Sony A7III in about 4 hrs one day while they were getting some group photos done. We then shot over to his very cool garage on a blustery cold winters day to finish up some shots of him making cutting boards for the holidays.
St Lawrence University-Holiday Greeting
I was asked by St Lawrence University to help create a video that the President could send out as a “virtual holiday card”. Tara Freeman worked with some very talented students to write an original song. I felt it would be best to get it recorded and then we could shoot to them lip syncing to keep it consistent. There wasnt much snow on campus at the time we had to shoot this so we utilized older campus winter video and shot them on a theater stage. A little smoke, some fake snow near the end, and voila!
St Lawrence University-Capital Campaign
St Lawrence University launched their capital campaign with a gala weekend of events in October 2018. I had the pleasure of working along Tara Freeman, the Director of Visual Communications in crafting a video to highlight the weekends events but also promote the message of the capital campaign launch. We shot this in a 2.5 days and edited it in a couple more days for a quick turn time. The audio content is from the University President’s speech at the formal dinner.
Due to the run and gun situation of trying to cover many events around campus I shot most of it with a gimbal carrying my Sony A6500. I also had my SONY A7III with a 28-75MM lens for getting closer shots handheld as needed. The drone shots were with my new Mavic 2 Pro drone. The image quality is much improved from the original Mavic Pro. It has a new Hasselblad lens and an improved camera system. Shoots 10bit 4k HLG video in H.265 format which vastly reduces the mosquito noise in the image.
The video has been widely received by both alumni and staff at St Lawrence University!
Chazy School: A Look Inside
This is a video I made to highlight Chazy Central School. The origins of the school date way back to 1916 when William H. Miner started it as the first centralized Rural School in the country! At the premiere of my “Heart’s Delight” documentary on William Miner’s life, I was approached by Chazy School administrators to help make a video on what the school is like today. They are a small school but with deep passionate roots and quire a few events and activities that make them very unique! The idea was to put this on their website to give people that are thinking of moving to the area an idea of what the school system is like.
More Real Estate Videos!
I have had the pleasure to work with Merrill L. Thomas Inc. recently doing more real estate videos for some amazing high end properties! Most are edited to music and are done mostly for social media use and promotion. (All of them live on the website for that properties listing too). Some however are more like mini-documentaries, telling the story of the property from a first person perspective. With my documentary background from working at PBS for 11 years, these are right in my swing zone! Below are some examples of both types that I have made with Nick Politi of Merrill Thomas.
If you have a great connection make sure and watch in 4K resolution!
“Caught in Time”
Another little video featuring my wife and a warm day in the Adirondack Mt’s of NY. All shot with the SONY A7III, a SONY 10-16mm, Sony 35mm F1.8 and a Sony 50mm F1.8 lens. Used a gimbal for only a few shots the rest were handheld.
I frequently head out to shoot stock footage to sell online. It’s one of my favorite things to do and occasionally I can bring my wife out with me! She is a real trooper about carrying tripods and lenses but also for being in my shots. I’ve found nature shots with people in them tend to sell a little better than just pure nature shots so it’s fantastic that she is so cooperative.
This is real short, the song I picked for it was only 1;15 long but I really liked it and felt it matched the mood of the footage and the day.
Always & Forever
Short film to test out my new SONY A7III. Sort of a love story to my wife! The early shots represent life without her, sort of stark, lonely, struggling to “get off the ground” (leaf), barely hanging on (blue tarp) but then when she arrived in my life all was “wiped clean” (car wipers) and we’ve never looked back! Shot in 1080p 120fps. I only had crop lenses to use at this point, mostly used a SONY 50mm F1.8 and and SONY 35mm F1.8. Shot with EOSHD ProColor 3 settings and then added a slight film grade with filmconvert. All shot completely handheld, which when slowed down to 120 frames a second looks really smooth.
The Stagecoach Inn – Lake Placid, NY
This is a promotional video I recently made for a beautiful Inn dating back to the early 1800’s. Decided to try and do it more “Documentary style”. I actually shot the couples first visit and then at the end of the stay did an interview to capture their feelings about it. Was meant to be mostly from the female perspective. It really is selling unplugging, relaxing and reconnecting with a spouse as much as this particular place. That’s a little different than most promo videos but I think it worked overall. It tells a story and that is more interesting I think than just having a narrator tell stats and scripted material about the property. I also wanted it to be told mainly from the woman’s perspective, finding the song was a key part to giving me the idea on how to put this all together.
The owners of the Inn are friends of mine that I got to know by filming their wedding in lake Placid in 2010! The couple visiting are also friends of mine that didn’t know the owners or had ever stayed at the Inn before.
Tech details: Shot with the EOSHD Pro Color 3.0 Picture profile for the SONY A6500 and a SONY A6300 on a Zhiyun Crane gimbal. Also used a edlekrone motorized slider for several shots.
“Living and Working in…” regional tourism videos
Last summer I had the pleasure to work on this series of videos for Northern Adirondack Board of Realtors. It was also a chance to work with my former colleague Kari Hoffman, who was the Producer on these. The idea was to highlight what select towns in the region are like to live and work in for potential home buyers. We shot the vast majority of it, but some select shots were supplied by ROOST. Kari did the rough editing in FCPX to flesh out the story lines, then I did the final edits by adding music and effects, B-roll and all graphics etc.
“Grace Guitarz” promo video
Nothing I like better than making a promotional video for a small company doing great things! Grace Guitarz is just such a company. It consists of two people (and their dog Bullock) making world class guitars.
Tom and Tracy are some of the nicest folks you could ever hope to meet. They converted their old garage into a wrokshop and formed GRACE GUITARZ. Their work is impeccable and if you get some time check out their website for some more information and high resolution to their work.
This was filmed over almost 8 months of time, thus the winter and summer footage in the same short video! Sometimes it just takes a while to make it come out just right. We were waiting for one of their house concerts in the summer to really show that they eat, sleep and breathe music!
For those who are into production details, I used my Canon C100 for the interviews shooting in Clog profile. Then I used my Sony A6300 shooting at 120fps for the broll. This allows for those super slow motion shots seen throughout the film. I think slow motion is sometimes overused lately. However, I felt it really showed the detail and craftsmanship of what they were doing. I noticed things when playing it back in slow motion that I just didnt catch in real time. The bits of dust coming off the sanding block, the particles floating in the air during the cutting of the wood… all microscopic details that show when you can alter time!
Plants are cool, too! (NEW EPISODE)
It was back on the road this summer to shoot a couple more episodes of our plant show! This time we went to the central part of Pennsylvania. These are always so much fun to make. It’s a chance for myself, fellow producer Tim Kramer and host/producer Chris Martine to get back together. We all used to live in the same area when we started this series, but now Chris and Tim have moved away. Getting to see them and make these programs is like getting the “band” back together again!
Here is Chris’s explanation of what this video is about from YouTube:
“Many off-roaders think conservationists are all “tree-huggers”… and many conservationists think off-roaders are all “tree-killers.” But somewhere in between there is a sweet spot where forests are appreciated and cared for. In the case of the Anthracite Outdoor Adventure Area (AOAA), that sweet spot might even help to reinvigorate a local economy.”
We met some fantastic people making this one including a kindred spirit in Lance Schwartz who makes his own videos for ATV Rider magazine! He is in the video and was loads of help, and fast became a good friend!
Animals may get all the love on TV but……Plants are cool, too!
Timelapse video with the SONY A6300
Had some time this summer to shoot some timelapse cloud formations in the Adirondack Mountains. All the original footage is shot in 4k, but I edited it in an HD timeline so i could add some pans and zooms without losing any quality. I didnt use an intervalometer to do this in still photo mode, (triggering a picture every few seconds) instead I just recorded for 10 minutes or so and then sped it up in post. I like this way as I can control the speed of the clouds better and it looks smoother to me when it’s all edited.
Epic Great Camps in the Adirondacks!
Been having the honor and pleasure of shooting some fantastic camps/homes in the Adirondacks that are for sale. My friend Nick Politi of Merril L. Thomas Inc. asked me to shoot some of them. The first two here were just set to music.
This third one however the owner agreed to be interviewed for a more documentary styled video.
I hope you enjoy them and if you decide to buy one from seeing it here first…I’d be more than happy to come stay and film some more! 🙂
More Cumberland 12 Movie Theater policy videos!
These are always fun to make! This summer we made three new policy videos for our local movie theater. These run before the movie and are a lighthearted way to remind people to not bring in food, be annoying with your cell phone etc.
My friend and colleague Todd Brunner and his family were again used as “the annoying ones”. I also had many friends, neighbors and some theater employees help to fill out the crowd. Everyone was trying to keep from laughing as Todd and his antics are quite hilarious! The manager has said he has seen real results from the “Dick and Mary” spot we created last year, with fewer people talking on their phones during the movies. That’s always great to hear!
More Commercial work
I’m not the best at keeping up on showing examples of my commercial work. It seems like they get made, then it’s off to the next video project, with little thought of using them for my own promotional purposes. For those of you coming here to check out examples of commercials that I’ve done, here are a few. I’ve been doing all the commercials for Curtis Lumber (18+ locations in NY and Vermont) for the past several years. First up is two testimonial spots (actual customer interview and comments, not scripted at all) one for Kitchen Design and one for Deck Design that features a video jib or boom. Then a spot that is scripted about hardwood flooring with their spokesperson. She’s wonderful actress from the Albany region, Rachel Jenack. The fourth is an example of a scripted commercial from actual contractors, each reading a line that connects to the next to form a completed thought.
Next is a fun little spot for Pro-Care Hearing. We wanted to make a hearing aide commercial but didnt want it to be doom and gloom and talk about what people can no longer hear but instead be positive by having people say what they LOVE to hear!
Finally here is a spot I wrote, produced and shot and edited for RotoRooter in Plattsburgh. I worked with Charley Tagliarino of Growtrends in Plattsburgh. He lined up all the talent. You may recognize one guy in this and the ProCare hearing spot!
pfproductions 