Sending the SOUND.. Reflections

Before 2020 my thoughts on sound for video were… let’s say minimal? I knew how to turn on a G4 and how to make a newscaster style “broadcast loop” for a clipped lav mic (thank you to my great former boss Schochet for the broadcast loop) 

I understood levels, tracks, poly wave files, and post-sound basics - but there were some technical skills I still had difficulty with. Chief among these: the invisible realm of radio waves. The RF spectrum was to me - a specter of that thing most unexpected: interference.

Forgive the ponderous prose - I would like to illuminate the fact that I have been reading Moby Dick. 

Over time, through trial and error, and lessons from mentors and peers.. all these myriad sonic quests have become simple. There’s narry a situation these days where I’m left perplexed at why something in my kit ain’t  working. I’m not a master by any means - there simply hasn’t been enough time -  but I do boast to have clambered into the territory of “expert”. 

I believe that the heart of all challenges with sound (specifically unscripted projects) lays within the following question: When to speak up? As someone who takes on a few documentary projects each year alone, I know that perfect sound can and should take a backseat to getting the perfect sound bite. I wouldn’t want my sound mixer to break an emotional moment or train of thought to remove interference that can be dealt with in post. 

All this is to say that I think deciding to speak up is the hardest part of recording sound on set. Living in that gray area is uncomfortable because it requires the recordist to step outside of the technician mindset into a place of discernment and storytelling triage. Prioritizing the best sound possible without stepping on a uniquely elusive moment that can never be recreated is a dark art. This is probably my biggest take away from recording people talk on video.

It has been so fulfilling to commit to going deeper into the world of sound and redefining myself as a specialist in this way. I am utterly thankful to every single person who has offered advice or trusted me with work when they didn’t have to. Every year around this time I find myself wondering if I want to continue this path. Perchance it’d be better to find a job more stable and predictable? Maybe! But I still remain with the feeling that I have not yet accomplished all I have set out to do in this chapter. The challenge of learning new skills and pushing into the unknown is too addicting. I wouldn’t want to miss out on further lessons - no matter how humbling they may be. 

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”

• Herman Melville 

(Pic of Julia and me )

Documenting Design and Swiss Posters

An excerpt from a documentary I recently created in collaboration with MoCA CT: New Haven-based designer Tom Strong details the origin of the "world format" pioneered by swiss poster designers.

The full doc is screening now at MoCA CT in Westfield! Stop by and check out the installation of beautiful Swiss posters selected from Tom's massive collection.

Freedom to Read

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Class Action Collective, a graphic design collective working for social change, on a project called "Freedom to Read" with New Haven Public Schools to raise awareness about the growing issue of book bans and lack of funding for libraries, both locally and nationally.

This was one of my favorite projects of the year because of how close to home this cause is for me, as both my mom and many friends are librarians and educators. It was an honor to witness these students and teachers calling for their freedom to read in the streets of New Haven.

Thank you to Evyn at A Candy Sto, LLC for rocking the Gimble and to Julia Hopkins for always finessing graphics.

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Lantern Media

In 2023 I started freelancing full time as a sound mixer, camera operator, and one-man-band video creator.

One of my goals for 2024 is to market my business more seriously, so I am launching Lantern Media - my little production company. I'll be sharing clips and edits from projects I have worked on.

I want to express gratitude to everyone who I have crossed paths with personally and professionally. I am so thankful for all of the friendship, mentorship, and trust that I have been on the receiving end of this year - those gifts make it easy to keep finding inspiration and confidence to keep growing and learning.

Follow along to see some of my favorite projects.

Mixing my first feature

Wrapped on “Before Never” - The first feature I have mixed from start to finish. 10 long nights with an awesome cast and crew. Happy to log heavy hours with my kit and continue this new adventure into sound. Thankful to everyone who has helped me.. psyched for more to come 😁✌️♥️

Hoops and Video

Thanksgiving is around the corner and I am approaching 5 years in Boston. This will mark the longest period of time that I have lived anywhere excluding my hometown in the Santa Cruz mountains. In terms of work, this year started out with a lot of editing and post production, which then shifted over to recruiting and managing a freelance team, and finally the closing months of this year have been very production focused. The shifting of responsibilities from one initiative to the next has made the time go by quickly. Things at work are looking to be busier than ever as next year’s schedule populates.

When it comes to passion projects - my focus has turned to my ever present basketball addiction. Kept away from competing by a revolving door of minor injuries, I’m searching for ways to stay close to the sport. I looked into coaching youth basketball but it turns out my travel schedule at work will simply not allow for that. In lieu of being able to commit to a team in a coaching capacity, I have been taking steps to produce some basketball video content. Lately I have been inspired by the combination of my two favorite artforms: video and basketball. More to come on this hopefully! 

Winter 2021

Over the few months my coworkers have inspired me to learn DaVinci Resolve. I needed some footage to play with on the timeline so I took my A7SII to Rhode Island with Julia and captured some BROLL of the dogs during the Christmas snowstorm.


Song: Ab Ovo by Joep Beving

Signal Fire Media LLC

I’ve gone corporate again, that is, I have formed my own company. Today marks the inception of Signal Fire Media LLC. The reasons for creating this LLC are the regular ones: tax deductions and fortifying my brand *inserts airpods*.

A quick explanation for “Signal Fire”: If you know me, you know I love Lord of the Rings – and anyone who has seen those movies will surely remember the iconic lighting-of-the-beacons scene in which Gondor calls for aid via a series of signal fires upon mountain-tops. You just have to love it.

Another reason for choosing Signal Fire has to do with a project I have been working on at the Old North Church in Boston about the history of Paul Revere’s ride and the beginning of the American Revolution. I have learned that the lighting of a signal lantern in the steeple of the church played an integral role in spreading word about the British mobilization before the battles of Lexington and Concord. I also should mention that working on this project has been a great experience where I have grown as a producer, director, and editor.

Oh and the Killswitch Engage Song “Signal Fire”.. Banger..

I love the motifs of light as knowledge and hope – and of course filmmaking owes everything to light as well so it seems appropriate.

Vacation in North Country

12.27.2019

Hello hello hello. Here I am on what is essentially my winter vacation – in Watertown, New York of all places. The cold, desolate North Country is honestly beautiful as hell - but much colder. Like Bilbo once said – this city feels spread like butter scraped over too much bread. In Boston or the bay - the urban sprawl just keeps going until its impeded by some kind of swamp, ocean or forest, but here the sprawl just starts to crawl and the buildings become more and more dilapidated as ya reach the end of town. I really do enjoy the unique vibe going on here though, the city isn’t far from lake Ontario and because of that there’s a near constant inflow of gnarly weather and gloom. This picture is rather grim I KNOW, but there’s something really cool about North Country. Julia has helped me see that with her coverage of the region for the Watertown Daily Times.  The people seem to work insanely hard here and there is so much focus on family and community. Also, there are a lot of young mothers about with babies and little kids. Didn’t expect that - but hey its great that this is still going to be a place where people are from. There’s a real feeling of ~hearth~ going on – which is really cool, and sure as hell can be hard to find in Dirty ‘Ol Boston. 

I can’t wait to come back for some summer month and feel the change.

Back to Boston soon and back to the grind.

Podcasts?

11.30.2019.

Another thanksgiving come and gone at the behest of the WICKED WIND OF TIME – we turn endlessly towards the sun and away from the frigid onslaught of ice and air. OK. I’ll stop.

At work I have been assigned as the audio engineer for the pilot episode of the company podcast – the content of which mostly has to do with real estate news, analysis, and speculation. Riveting stuff. My tone may be sarcastic, but in all seriousness our human lives are hugely impacted by the high-level real estate transactions going on all around us. The vast majority of us humanoids are born in hospitals, rent apartment buildings, work on developed land, and are buried in cemeteries. The unifying strand is land B) Our greatest advantage with this new project is the expertise that the CoStar Analysts have. These men and women are eloquent presenters and know everything there is to know about the financial ecosystems of their respective  cities.  So I think this podcast has a good shot at being a powerhouse in its field.

ANYWAYS – the point here is that I am super stoked to work on a podcast of my own. Heck I live with two amazing musicians and we all ravenously consume podcasts on our own time. I’ve been enjoying moving the waveforms around and learning the twists and turns of finicky audio equipment.  THE ingredients are all here.

Here’s my idea:

A podcast is made up of segments. (not worrying about time/length right now)

Each segment can focus on a person who we interview. We learn about their life:  what they are up to on most days? What is their favorite aspect of that routine?  We can go with subjects on little journalistic trips and collect B-Roll Audio.

Every segment is tied together by a question though:

Imagine your 23-year old self was standing here, what piece of advice would you give them?

The way I see it – the audience that I am able to connect with most directly at this point are the legions of kids not so unlike myself who are graduating college and trying to figure out what the heck to do with themselves. Ideally this podcast could provide some solace to the masses of confused youths by unveiling the uncertainty felt by every person at that stage in their life.

First Snow.

Bostonians are bracing themselves as the winter flurry sweeps through the city. - As the cold returns I am filled with a certain nostalgia for all of last year’s winter experiences (my first new england winter).

Last winter was marked by figuring out the post-grad work world, walking the dogs a lot, driving plenty of Lyft and Uber, and generally enjoying all the random bits in between the side hustles.

Here are a few highlights since the spring:

• I moved to a house in Brighton Massachusetts with 3 new friends and an old Lab named Baxter

• I’m working full-time downtown as an Associate Producer at tech company Called CoStar that deals in commercial estate data.

• I’ve been able to bicycle nearly every day since I moved closer to the urban center of Boston

• We’ve been playing dungeons & dragons!! (DM)

• I’m still recovering from the woeful state of the golden state warriors :*( (I predict a finals push in 3 years time)

• Julia is killing it as a photojournalist up in frosty Watertown New York for the Watertown Daily Times. (What a g, she’s returning in January)

• Overall seeing more live music.

Anyways - here is a little montage video I made last spring and set to the amazing music of Days N Daze:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LBuAAxspnc

My next goal:: FILM MORE RANDOM STUFF (to make fun videos like this)

The empty memory card →

VLOG??

Camera department, SLAM

Changing batteries, swapping cards, taping things, carrying tripods, squinting at monitors while pulling focus, wrestling with ~magic arms~, shaking the camera you just built while saying “let’s shmake a movie” –these are all duties of the Assistant Camera (AC). Earlier this month I had my first legit AC gig – building a run and gun A7sii and an ARRI Alexa for Director/DP Macaela Vandermost on a Jenny Craig reality series. Although the camera build was quite simple, I still feel really proud of putting that cinematic chonk on a tripod so it was ready to go. There are two more episodes to shoot on this project and I cannot understate how stoked I am to keep learning the ways of the AC. Not that I don’t LOVE being a PA – (I vow to never be too proud to carry pelican cases and grab coffee in the name of movie teamwork) – but I would like to climb the mountain a little in this industry.

This past week I filmed an amazing event for Raymond Productions – the event was a Stories-on-Stage style of gathering. Young, middle aged, and older women spoke about their experiences with raising families, or choosing not to raise families. I was damn near in tears through while listening to these tales behind the camera.  It’s not surprising but I came away feeling really blown away by the gravity of the life touchstones many of the speakers shone a light on that night. The amount of bs women in this society have to put up with is crazy and I’m very proud of the ladies in my life who continue to navigate these waters so bravely.

Read more about SLAM here! http://deliveredslam.org/  

The "what am I doing"s, PA work, Interning, driving a cab,

It’s true – I have been silent on the blog for months now – but I am resolutely typing with intent to post tonight for my correspondence with this page is long overdue!

In August I moved to the Boston area – I am living with my sweet and generous Aunt and Uncle and their two dogs in Natick Massachusetts. It’s a medium-large sized town about 30 minutes outside of Boston proper (without traffic, which is near constant). Coming from living alone on the cape – I cannot overstate how grateful I am to be around family again. Every day I drive to the Riverside subway train station and commute into the city with intentions to broaden my world here. So far the world-broadening process is going pretty! – I would estimate that my Boston reality has widened from 100mm a 35mm at least, but hopefully approaching some kind of off-brand pancake lens soon. Not go-pro though, never go pro.

– The months since school permanently ending my green vessel has encountered some of the stormiest seas I have ever splish-splashed in. The “what-am-I-even-doing”s have subsided to a near bi-weekly basis, an inspiring improvement from the hourly spot they once held on my daily programming. The answer is repetitively clear – I’m doing what I said I would at the beginning of this day or this week or this month; surviving and trying my best to help people out.

If I were to start an viral movement based off my last few months I think it would be a picture of myself eating Wendy’s with the following caption:

 #OddJobsGalore #SetLife #BrokenFromEmotioniallyRivettingPodcastsAtWork #IDriveTrucksNow #FumbledElevatorPitch #AspiringDP #ProfessionalPizzaPhotographer #PPP #SubjectingUberPassengersToPopPunk #FIDLAR? #B)

The defining experiences of the last bit have been mostly through being a PA. PA stands for Production Assistant – basically the monkey at the bottom of the totem pole on and around any set doing whatever needs to be done to make sure the production ends up going to plan. It’s a lot of loading and unloading, quite a bit of driving to the story to buy a screw with specific dimensions or some cleaning supplies. Lets see.. I have been lost in at least 3 super-malls while returning tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of costume clothing for the wardrobe department. Oh and truck-driving, a lot of truck driving.

You haven’t known purpose until you have driven a cube truck – I swear its not as difficult as it looks! Truck driver the most noble of PA jobs, so little time spent idling – wondering what your true purpose is. There’s no time for that when you are being citizen’s arrested by an angry Bostonian that you cut off in traffic while the production manager was blowing you up with ‘WHATS YOUR ETA’ texts. In those moments of traffic-derived passion, the purpose becomes all the more clear as a godly voice reminds you that “you drive this cube truck so that JET Blue will have all of the fake leaves they need for their yard work commercial”. Reassured, you thank Set-God and calmly proceed to cut off the angry driver once more. You are in a cube truck and that means all your traffic wishes will come true…because they must come true.

I digress – but being a PA has really shown me what sets are generally like – I say generally because no set is like another and that is exactly what I love about working in production. The lifestyle is erratic and the revolving door of familiar coworkers creates exciting new group dynamics.

I also fill my weeks with interning 2 days a week at Engine Room Edit – the post production company that introduced me to the Boston film scene in the first place. I love being around these people.

Tired now but going to post soon about my experiences as a Taxi Driver!

Portrait of a Place: Graveyard

This last year I was assigned to create a “portrait of a place”. To capture a location through the lens in a way that conveyed your personal experience of that place’s essence. My buddy Ryan and I headed out to the town of Martinez, California armed with video and audio equipment. The location we chose to focus on was a graveyard bathed in golden light that looked down on the town from a hill. The graveyard was really a beautiful place. The light shrouded headstones were reminiscent of a coming of age story I never had – one where kids would skate and scooter over the cracked pavement in their longest venture from the cul-de-sac to date. Later on they might sit as young lovers on gravestones in the moonlight gazing down at the town they grew up in. It’s was super zen and relaxing to just look for details that defined a place’s character.

Being Comfortable with 'Lostness' - Thinking Small

I want to start doing a thing where I examine a photo that I took (or am in some way connected to), and write about it and whatever it brings to my mind.

Today’s photo is this one that Julia took of me sitting in the bathroom of this broken down house across from a Cape Cod church. We were giddy at the time with the rush of trespassing somewhere beautifully decrepit.  I remember at the time this photo was taken I was processing consternation that I wasn’t feeling present despite being in my element (on a risky adventure in a broken down building). The inspiration of the moment would subside into a formless, low humming anxiety. There wasn’t one particular thing that was bothering me that I could point to or address– this has been happening a lot recently. I think it’s about the general feeling of growing up really quickly all at once – the infamous sensation all beings are trying to avoid.

It’s interesting because I used to love being in the fog – I used to love uncertainty. Only looking at what is directly in front of you. But lately I have been straining my eyes and mind to see further past a wall of mist that is ultimately opaque.

I’m tired of scouring every panorama for a deeper understanding – colorful views are rendered unsaturated in my mind’s eye.  It’s like I’m at this juncture where the inspiration so closely associated with summer just won’t flow for more than a few hours.  I struggle to accept that my brain just isn’t the romantic blob of humanity that I know it can be - for right now at least.

Contentment with the ‘lostness’ of this chapter – that’s my goal. Everyone’s lost and purpose is an illusion – but a sense of purpose is as real as you choose to let it be.

So here are some of the things that remind me to wake up and get out of bed every day – and why I think filmmaking can be such a valuable thing to pursue to improve the world.

It’s as simple as making something that will make someone else smile or release a feeling of any kind. Art and passion chip away at the weight inside of people.

To tell the story of anyone and be in a receptive state to see the beauty in every lifeline I intersect with.  To continually re-realize that everyone has an equally complex existence regardless of the surface appearance.

So for this picture I want to recognize it for what it means to me, and for what it will eventually mean:  a time where I was really unable to appreciate being surrounded by beauty. This picture may remind me that landscapes, artifacts, and panoramas really have nothing to do with the physical world.

Thinking small

New Brunswick, New Jersey

I was driving from Boston to Raleigh for a family reunion and decided to take a detour through New Brunswick, New Jersey, the home of all my earliest childhood memories. I grew up to the age of seven on the 16th floor of the Colony Building, a creamy-manila edifice that towered over the lush, to-the-point-of too-lush, Buccleuch park. I hadn’t been back to this place since I was 7. The scale of the map and distance between memory locales had of course shrunken – but I was surprised to find so many similarities to the images in my mind. I took pics of the details that stuck out to me for one reason or another. To recreate the scenes from my memory. - The rough concrete surface under my thumb forms a smooth contour of the lions face.

- The dugout bench and the warped chain-link fence. Im glad they still haven’t fixed this place up.

-The adult-sized swings and my babysitter telling me about her ex as she sadly dangled there while I excitedly pranced around the playground vowing to battle the X, a new unknown enemy apparently at large in the world.

-My sneakers sinking into the red clay by the creek bed – the area most likely to be rich with dinosaur fossils (I wanted to be a paleontologist)

-The place where @alexandermwirth and I made a “ball catching machine” in the outfield during our baseball team try out. I forsure didn’t end up playing. 

This was a low-hanging-fruit of personal reflection that I’m glad to have sunken my teeth into it. This post may be considered the fibery, sucrosy residue left around my face for the world to see. It was ripee aand umm yeah this metaphor is ready to be finished.

Speculating on the Cape

Cape league.

At the beginning of July I moved to the town of Harwich which is on cape cod – vacationland New England. In this next chapter of moving to Massachusetts I am really going to be hitting the job search hard. I’m trying to define what kind of filmmaker I want to be and where I want to be within the industry. Thus far I have had full control over every part of the process of nearly every major project I have given my time to. I know that working professionally might mean narrowing my focus to a single dimension of production – specialization.   

I think in the short term I am going to pursue a position where I can work directly with clients from beginning to end. So far it seems like the first and most valuable part of the process is access. Gaining to people, spaces and events through conversations and friendship is starting to seem like the most valuable skill to hone. Of course I don’t meant to undermine any authenticity in these prospective friendships – without authentic relationships to stand on nothing can really be accomplished with any real fervor or passion.

After arriving in Harwich I began making some speculative videos for the Orleans Firebirds, a baseball team that plays in the prestigious Cape League. I made little post-game documentaries and am working on a couple player features. I want to continue this theme of taking the initiative with my work into the Metropolis of Boston – where there are so many opportunities that they can be overwhelming. 

Who knew baseball would make a reappearance in my life this way? My last encounter was in 2nd grade when I resigned from little league after creating a “Ball Catching Machine” in the dirt of right field. But here we are! And I couldn’t be more impressed with the work ethic of the Firebirds Media team. These fellows are true students of the game and amicable people who have welcomed me into a summer of baseball coverage. I'm very thankful for that :) 

Boston, Journalism, New Chapters

Tattered Christmas lights drape over the flaking window sill. The jungle bugs of the New England nightscape outside keep us remembering that the world is alive and in constant motion.

“Everything is changing”

So I have been pretty off-the-radar the last month, but in that time my life has been transforming in a scary and exciting way.

First off, I graduated from UC Davis on June 15th with a BA in Cinema & Digital Media. A little about that: it’s been four years of constant evolution – traversing basins and peaks of an emotional landscape, feeling both inspired and tortured by the need to live as much life as possible.

 I’m going to miss being around so many of the people who I love and believe in. Forging friendships and coalescing communities whose cornerstones are the sanguine glances across rooms that say “Isn’t this just ludicrous in a brilliant way?!” Communities whose foundations are the words “stay fed, family” and “never change”.

The past looks like a funnel or a ladder of sorts; a series of sturdy, time-trusted rungs with good insurance policies, safety nets for short falls, and placards nearby that describe proper climbing techniques. And now here we are on the roof with only the sky above us – bereft of structure (just like how I always wanted) but now it doesn’t taste so sweet… I think it’s just going to take a second to realize how limitless our growth can be without the placards and rules and all that baloney.

I have been planning on moving out east after graduating for a while now. Plunging headfirst into the next chapter and leaning into discomfort until the anxiety is replaced by triumph and joy. I am formulating new goals, hustling for them, and now able to hold hands with a really cool person (Julia) all the time.  

About the new goals, a lot of people who know me or follow me on social media are probably aware that I have been working towards my goal of being a “professional filmmaker” for about three years now. So far, most of the videos I have made have been commercial in nature – selling products, brands, individuals, lifestyles, myself – I enjoy making these videos! It’s positive to sell products that you believe in. Noticing and highlighting traits you admire about the world is a fulfilling practice (and the easiest path to financial independence and autonomy) so I’m definitely not going to stop… but I do want to change my course. I will focus on story and documentary – to be more journalistic in my approach to film and life in general. Documenting our lives and the lives of others feels wholesome as heck and results in, simply put, more life lived. That means going back to basics and rebuilding my portfolio, reaching out for leads, following them, writing the stories, and then converting them into videos. I am coming to this game late but I want to practice my knowledge wizardry - I want to learn how to materialize value from any situation, to pull information from the ether, repackage it, and sell it across multiple mediums.

Although acknowledging that this is what I want to do now is inspiring as hell to talk about – I have been swimming in a tide of self-doubt. Why didn’t I get involved with a newspaper or even try to get media publications before when I knew it was the first step?

But there’s no room for regret right now. It doesn’t change anything. I’m fucking stoked for this.

So to anyone: when the writing on your skull wall reads “you are a failure so stop pretending” please know that you definitely aren’t! Surround yourself with people who can see that clearly and aren’t afraid to tell you.

Anyways, I’ll be in the Boston area for this next chapter. Let’s meet up and get inspired!

Desolation Wilderness - Hacienda Retreat 3.0

The final weeks of college for me are always marked by backpacking adventures into desolation. This trip was particularly significant for me because of the fact that it might be my last time in the Sierras for years. That thought is a lot to reconcile - so many memories and friendships have been forged in the wilderness. Arjun came up too and it was such a joy to introduce my best friend from back home to my web of friends in college. We were talking around the fire about how going out to the wilderness lets us really get away from people.. but I objected in the thought that out in the wilderness we were dealing with people more than ever. Sean chimed in that in the back country we just interact with people in a much more human way. There were times on this trip that each of us really needed each other - and we were there for one another.

Here's to the hacienda - the friends I made in college who I won't ever forget.