While Ryan, Kevin and I were in the Northeast, Chris was holding down the fort in Oakland, and working with the NorCal region of Whole Foods to create some radio commercials to be aired in the bay area. I think they turned out great and I am excited to hear them on the air. Take a listen and let us know what you think.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SPOT 1

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SPOT 2

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SPOT 3

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SPOT 4

Another great project that Chris produced while we were away was for the new marketing program at Delicious Living Magazine called MIX - short for Media Interactive Experience. This is a really cool new marketing idea and something we are proud to be a part of. More details will be coming soon.

Shortly before we left for the Northeast, we were contacted by the MIX folks to discuss creating a video that would help explain how their unique combination of strategies helps companies deliver better sales results. The idea was to shoot a high energy piece set against the back drop of the Bay to Breakers - one of the most colorful events in the bay area. Even though the day was not so cooperative weather wise, our crew was able to capture some good footage of the MIX strategies in action. We are now in post-production on the final piece and will post it soon.

You would think two weeks in the Northeast would have been enough time for me on the road, but I decided to squeeze one additional trip on the end because that is just how I roll. Nuts might be a better way to say it. In any case, I flew from New York to Denver for two days of planning meetings for the SNAP event we will help produce in September. For those of you unfamiliar with SNAP, it is really an awesome event that I highly recommend to you. The whole experience is about changing your perceptions in the areas of Science, Nature, Art and People. The event was founded by Peter Roy, Drake Sadler, Steve Demos, and Doug Greene and the goal is to produce a “fire hose” of content. Check out the website for more information on who is coming, etc…

This year we will be moving the event from Austin to the Boulder Theatre in downtown Boulder. This is a really cool deco style building that gives us a blank canvas with really good sound and lighting to produce something spectacular. I am really excited about how this will come together this year. I will make sure to get some pictures of the production for everyone to see.

While the meetings were great, I was definitely ready to come home by friday. My only regret was I didn’t have enough time to stop by an see my favorite Allegro Coffee folks in Thornton. Next time. However, two really cool things happened on the way home. First, as I was driving out of Boulder, I looked out over the landscape whizzing by and saw a field full of prairie dogs sunning themselves.

The day had been overcast with pockets of sun and they were taking full advantage. I wish there had been somewhere to stop and snap a photo, but I was late for the plane and it was off the side of the freeway so you will just have to take my word for it when I say it was one of those special little moments when nature rewards you with something spectacular. There must have been three or four hundred of them.

Secondly, as I was waiting in line at my gate in Denver, I made friends with the two Southwest pilots flying me home. Our plane was delayed - big shock these days - so we had a half and hour or so to shoot the breeze. You’re probably thinking, why is this important - well, it helped me clear up something I have wondered about for some time. A few months ago my step-dad had told me a story he had heard about how Southwest planes speed on the tarmac during taxi because it was cheaper to pay the speeding ticket than it was to suffer the wrath of customers who were late. It made sense to me, especially since I am so rabidly loyal to Southwest, but I had always wondered how this was enforced.

Also, when Chris and I were in Vegas recently, our pilot pretty much had the plane off the ground on the taxi to the runway, so I was curious to know.

Well it turns out there actually isn’t a speed limit, but rather it is up to each pilot to determine the safe speed in getting the plane to the runway. Apparently you can take a Boeing 737 up to 250 mph on land without taking off, so I figure the guy in Vegas was doing at least 200. I mean, our tires screeched as we turned the corner onto the runway. I love it. I would so much rather have it this way then the “Jet Blue Experience” where you board early just to sit on the tarmac while they walk you through their unbelievably legalistic safety speech and then crawl out to the runway. I say go for it. But that’s just me.

Boulder and SNAP were awesome and I can’t wait for the event, but in the words of my new favorite pilot - “let’s get the hell out of here…” - I have some pancakes to make.

PS - The landing in Oakland was great. Buttery smooth

HEADING TO THE NORTHEAST

Well - it has been some time since I last posted. Sorry. We were in New York for two weeks shooting for Whole Foods Market Northeast Region. What a trip it was. We shot in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island. The Northeast is one of the strongest regions in Whole Foods and we had a great time meeting many of the amazing people that make it such a good one.

The first part of our trip was spent shooting in all of the stores. The schedule was a little insane - we averaged four locations a day and the first day we did five stores in Manhattan. We filmed team members as well as customers asking them a series of questions related to Whole Foods. For example, we would ask team members, how do they give “excellent customer service”, and we would ask the customers, “how does the customer service at WFM make you feel?” As you can imagine, over the course of 17 locations, we gathered a pretty good amount of footage and faced the daunting task of editing it down in two and half days before showing it live at their “Vision Day”. Lets just say we were really familiar with the inside of our Hampton Inn.

Here is a picture of Larhn and Kevin after filming at Union Square in Manhattan.

While it was a ton of work, it was also a really great opportunity to really get a sense of the Northeast and the areas surrounding NYC. Every morning we would pile into the Subaru and head out for the day. From the Bronx to Greenwich to Harlem, we logged a lot of miles and met some amazing people. We even went to the first and probably only Whole Foods Market diner in West Orange New Jersey. I have to tell you folks - if you ever find yourself in West Orange, you have to stop here - it is amazing. Real food served diner style, it just doesn’t get much better. I had a house-made veggie burger, hand cut fries and an Earth Univeristy banana milkshake. Now if we could just convince WFM to put these diners in the airport and urban centers, we would have it made. Watch out Johnny Rockets.

The West Orange Whole Foods Diner.

Kevin and I both celebrated our birthdays on this trip, so on friday the 16th, we celebrated with a dinner out in Manhattan. Larhn found a great place called BLT Market featuring local and organic fare. We were able to find a Dry Creek Pinot, and each of us had spectacular meals. The place was full of little thoughtful touches and the food choices were very unique. Ryan’s salad featured deviled quail eggs and my fish was served in a Le Creuset cast iron baking dish with creamed celery root, for example. The waiter even noticed when Larhn’s knife had become sticky and promptly replaced it. It is amazing to experience excellent customer service especially when you have been filming people talking about it for the week prior.

One of the other notable food experiences while in New York was having a real bagel at H&H Bagel. Next time you find yourself in NYC, you really owe it to yourself to try one. Not your average bagel to be sure. I talked about it for the rest of the day.

After all of the filming, we moved hotels from Fort Lee, NJ (Not somewhere you really want to visit), to Queens to be closer to the venue for the Vision Day which was in Brooklyn. We faced a two day edit marathon consisting of sorting through all of the footage, picking the best stuff and assembling it into several pieces to be used live. In addition, we readied music play lists, graphics, and the like. Even though it was a long couple of days with very little sleep, we all appreciated not having to fly out, fly home, and then do it all over again.

Once the Vision Day arrived, we headed over to Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy yard - my favorite factoid about Steiner is that they shoot the Mac vs. PC commercials there - and prepped the venue. As with most events, when the day of arrives, it goes by in a very quick blur, however, this was a really great day. John Mackey spoke, we had a really fun blooper real, and most importantly, we really felt the unified energy of the region. It was a fantastic event and really fun to produce.

We always love working for Whole Foods and this trip no different. I want to say thank you to all of the awesome Team Members in the NE region for hosting us so warmly. Until next time!

This week we completed the first shoot for our newest client, Mighty Leaf Tea company based in San Rafael, California. Mighty Leaf is a very cool group of dedicated tea people that specialize crafting in artisan whole leaf blends. This was a very fun shoot, and one that smelled incredible. From yerba mate infused with cinnamon to herbal and green tea blends, the studio smelled like a wild meadow filled with herbs and flowers. We started early, so it was very nice to have several cups of the caffeinated varieties throughout the day. Mighty Leaf will use this first video at the NRA show in Chicago in mid-may and we are excited to work with them on helping to share their stories.

From a technical standpoint, this was also a fun shoot for us as we just invested in the RedRock Micro 35mm lens adaptor and we were really excited to give it a thorough workout on this project. We have debated heavily internally about which 35 adaptor we would purchase and after attending NAB, we decided the RedRock was the way to after many hours of discussion which will be the subject of a future post.

In the meantime, we are very excited to welcome Mighty Leaf to the InHouse client list and we will be excited to begin telling their story. If you haven’t checked out their products, you really should as they are absolutely fantastic!

This past week, Chris and I traveled to Las Vegas to attend our first NAB conference. For those of you who aren’t familiar with NAB, it is the largest trade show in the universe for those of us in the production industry. With companies representing nearly every facet of the creative industry, we were like kids in a toy factory. As I described to someone recently, it was a million square feet of geeks and it was wonderful.

Seriously though, this was a really worthwhile trip, even though it was in Vegas. We were able to discover many new innovative products and services that will help us to serve our clients more effectively. For example, the Indie Dolly, which allows all of us indies to achieve incredible camera movement without the massive expense of a Matthews or Fisher. Or the very cool products over at Zacuto, which we will be purchasing soon. We even had the first chance to play around with a Red, which I promise you completely lives up to the hype. Founder Jim Jannard was even in the booth shooting new footage while we were there. We stayed at the Hilton which adjoins the convention center and we were able to walk from our hotel to the show.

Among the highlights from the trip was the chance to see the 103″ Panasonic Plasma, which I assure you is absolutely insane. The rep we talked to said the new 150″ makes the 103 look like a baby, but it is hard to even imagine since the one we saw was so incredibly big. We also had a chance to see all of the new advancements in lighting technology - specifically LED’s and ceramic offerings from ARRI. And, we had the opportunity to meet the folks at EZ FX, who really make a fantastic jib for the money. We even stopped by the K-Tek booth and gently recommended they produce a more rigid shock mount that can actually stand up to the abuse of traveling. They assured us the newest model can, and whet our appetites with a promise of an upcoming case that can receive a complete boom setup with shotgun attached. This will certainly be most welcome when it is announced.

The only low of the trip was the food we consumed. Our first dinner was at Benihana - otherwise known as MSG and a show. Chris called it when he said it felt like his head was detached from his body. The next morning brought the quality selections at the Paradise Restaurant in our hotel. Who knew there was a VIP line for the wannabe Denny’s? Only in Vegas. The only saving grace was when my old college friend, Scott came to take us out to Sushi which was very good. This was the only decent meal the whole trip.

All in all, it was a great time and the plane ride afforded the rare opportunity to forward think after all of the stimulation of the conference. I probably wont attend every year, but it was a very positive experience this year. I even stuck to my “No Starbucks” policy!

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago we were meeting in my living room in Emeryville. The thought of an office, a team, or even owning a camera was a goal far off in the distance. At least this is what was running through my head as our team gathered at Stinson Beach on April 11. Here we were - all of us - on a perfect spring weekend gathering to discuss the future of the company.

The weather could not have been any better - seriously. It was 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Our house overlooked nothing but ocean and a short jaunt down the steps put you right on the sand. The house was very cool and laid out around a courtyard. In the back, there was an outdoor eating table that looked out over the water. There was even an old school Webber that got a serious workout around dinner time.

We almost ran into trouble early when Kevin discovered the rental company had double booked the house and the first group that showed up got to claim it. Thankfully, he was hiking on Mt. Tam and was able to make it over early and claim our spot. We would have been seriously bummed. As it was, some poor group was stuck trying to figure out what to do in Stinson with nowhere to stay. We felt bad for about 10 seconds and then walked out to the bluff and saw our view.

The weekend consisted of eating, sleeping, massive scrabble battles, reading on the beach, and most importantly thinking through what the next year of our company will look like. On saturday, we all sat down with a formal outline and discussed how to take InHouse to the next level. What a good feeling it is to look back through all of the progress we have made to this point. We realized there will be challenges - we will get bigger, the economy tightening, etc, but we also felt a sense of camaraderie and confidence in our past experience. I believe the ideas we co-created at the beach will come true over the next 12 months and when we gather next, it will be a wonderful sense of accomplishment to know that our collective efforts made it happen.

This was truly a rewarding experience and one that will not soon be forgotten. As we all said, same time next year!

As if Tribal Gathering wasn’t big enough for us, we made an announcement that we are all really proud of - the commitment to offer our clients the ability to go carbon neutral on future productions. Check out our press release here. Last year when we listed the goals for our company, we were committed to figuring out an economical way to lower our carbon footprint. This past year we did an incredible amount of traveling and it was weighing heavily on us.

The perfect opportunity came this past December when we met Jenna Carl from Liveneutral.org. When we first we first met her, she had just moved to the bay area and was in the process of job hunting. A few weeks later, we received an e-mail saying she was taking the Executive Director role at Live Neutral. It couldn’t have come at a better time for us. We made the decision to use Tribal Gathering in Austin our first carbon neutral production. We worked with Live Neutral to determine our footprint for all of the travel, equipment electrical draw and trucking for the show. It is such a great feeling to know we produced one of our largest ever events with a much cleaner conscience.

Going forward, we will offer each client to take their production carbon neutral. We think this is a really cool idea and something that could easily be replicated throughout our industry. While film and live event production might be among the worst carbon offenders in the country, we can all take steps to help lower this and we are excited to be heading in this new exciting new direction.

It took us a while to find the right partner, but Live Neutral is certainly that - a partner. They work with us to help determine averages that make the process incredibly painless. Within the normal time it takes us to pre-produce a project, we can accurately tell our clients how much the extra expense will be and how much carbon we will be offsetting. Live Neutral works a little differently from other offset programs using a more market driven approach which really fits with our business model. You can learn more about how they do this here.

Anytime you accomplish a goal, it is a very satisfying feeling and this was a big one for us. We will continue to develop new and innovative ways to lower our environmental footprint, and we are now discussing how we can use our collective talents as a company to make this happen.

I work with Ted, Ryan, and Chris, and this is our new blog. Things have been going great since I joined the team about 7 months ago. We have been traveling all over the place, and working with some really great people and companies. I have nothing new to report as Ted has hit most of the major points in his previous posts, but I wanted to give a shout out to my friend Heather Kincaid from my home town of Lancaster. I went to High School with Heather but have always kept in touch with her. We ended up going to different colleges, but somehow ended up with at least one shared passion in common… photography. Admittedly she is much better than me (especially at wedding photography… my personal hell). We still have not had the chance to go out shooting together but hopefully someday we’ll manage to find the time. Check out her blog and website and definitely give her a call if you need any photography in So-Cal.

Even though we might be partially insane, we returned home from Tribal Gathering in Austin only to head right back out to EXPO West in Anaheim. While it was exciting to also have a booth, one of the highlights from the show was having the opportunity to work with the Organic Center on producing their VIP fundraising dinner. As a company we donated all creative services and offered all of our crew and equipment at cost to try and help contribute to the amazing work they are doing. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Center, you can check it out here.

The night was a huge success and they were able to raise a bunch of money to help further solid scientific evidence used in promoting organic agricultural methods. We worked with some very cool people too - like Sara Snow, Dr’s. Alan Greene and Andrew Weil, Margaret Wittenberg and many others. Certainly one of the highlights of the night was watching Steve Hoffman, the Executive Director of the Center assemble an unlikely cast of characters into the warm up band for the evening. If you look closely you might even see my dad.

One of the most important values in our companies is what we call “Empowered Profits”. We believe that business is the best avenue for change and it is important to make good on your promises. It was a very rewarding experience to give of our time and services and see their event turn out successfully. The vibe in the audience was very positive and I think people genuinely had a good time which is what we want more than anything.

We will work with the Center again next year and we are all looking forward to seeing them grow. I would encourage all of you to help spread the word about what they are doing for organics and to consider finding something for yourself in 2008 that you can give to. It is a really great feeling. We will post later in the year about other areas we will donate time and money too. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.