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.
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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.
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