I've been doing this stuff for a good chunk of my life - the only career I've ever had. And so when I'm talking about the quality of a day--the light, the crew, the shots, the vibe--I've got a fair bit to compare it to. Thousands of days on set. That said, today ranks pretty high on my list of epic days.... read more ›
Mar
25
Mar
24
Hallelujah, what a turn of fate. Awoke this morning at 6:30am to a sky chock-full of gently falling flakes and 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground and trees. What earlier this week looked like a burned out ski town in late May, now looks like mid February again. Mother nature has hit the full... read more ›
Mar
23
It's now day 4 of this project. But it's the first shooting day. And shooting day 1 of any campaign, film, or project is always full of excitement, anticipation, butterflies. Doesn’t matter if you’ve done it 1000 times or only 10. Our shoot day 1 had another rather friendly call time of 8am. Breakfast... read more ›
Mar
22
This morning's work work was fun and not too hardcore. An 8am call time & roll out. We scouted our remaining locations for shot details--all of them are reasonably close to where we are staying. We're now comparing all our locations to creative briefs and earlier notes/findings on specific locations. Much of the work today is referred to as "tech scouting". That's a more... read more ›
Mar
21
In case you're dropping in on this post out of context, you should read yesterday's post and things will all make sense. In short, I'm doing daily 'diary' entries while working on a campaign for REI in lovely Telluride, Colorado in hopes of shedding some light on what photographers and directors types like me actually do on a... read more ›
Mar
20
My alarm goes off. It's 3:45 this morning. I snooze till 3:56. Now I'm up, but barely. No shower. Pull on dirty bluejeans. Tshirt. Brush teeth. Some quick math tells me that I’d just enjoyed a luxurious 3 hour and 15 minute night of sleep. Moving. Slowly. And then I remember more clearly. Ah yes..heading out of town again. Excited--but remembered that the cab to the airport is due here in 20 minutes. Finish packing... read more ›
Mar
18
How to succeed as a creative. How to fail. How to translate stills to video. Gear. Insight. Fear. Challenge. Agents, education and more. Your questions and mine answered. If you missed--or want to re-watch--the recent LIVE broadcast of chasejarvisLIVE: a conversation with Vincent Laforet, here's an edited 35 minute version for your perusal. The full 90-minute version of the original live broadcast, featuring extra Q&A, is available via our new audio-only podcast. Click... read more ›
Mar
17
Over the next week, I'll be holding onto the last few official days of winter - shooting a next year's holiday campaign up in the mountains. In prep for the project, we were perusing a few reference images from my archive and I stumbled on a few I like. Here's one above, and a few more after the jump. While I AM looking forward to the spring and summer just as much as anybody, I'm... read more ›
Mar
16
More often than not, the underlying vision behind a great piece of art - a photo, a film, a painting, a play, a whatever - comes from a single source. Dostoevsky hatched the vision for The Brothers Karamozov, Andreas Gursky for his huge surreal images, Warhol for his Brillo boxes. But in almost every case, making art, sharing it, selling it, giving it wings, and cultivating it's adoption throughout popular culture requires that the creative... read more ›
Mar
15
I stumbled on this a while ago and forgot to share... The controversial UK teen show came to the USA. Let's skip the debate about the morality of the content--whether it's exploitative or informative or neither. On a purely visual basis, I'd say Writer/Director Evan Silver comes up gold in the promotional intro to MTV's "Skins" about the youth gone wild. IMHO it's dope. Inspirational cinematography that's not over the top technically. Well written. A... read more ›
