Lee and I arrived in Oregon Tuesday where we’ll be spending the next few weeks crewing on a feature film. Lee is working as the Production Coordinator and I have the privledge of working in the camera department as the Second Camera Assistant or AC.

It’s a low budget movie called “The Presence,” which is being Produced by Tom Rice of Eight20Eight Productions. We’ve got a great cast in it and we’re shooting with a Sony Cine Alta F23 from Panavision. So I’m pretty fired up.

I just started a Flickr Set with photos from our trip so far. I’ll add more pics as often as I can. So if you want to keep up with what we’re up to, you can see those photos here:

www.flickr.com/photos/13027226@N03/sets/72157607234500012/

Faith Visuals was kind enough to interview me a couple of weeks ago about what we do here at eleven72. We talked for quite a while and so it’s a pretty in depth piece (thanks to Tyler Charles over there for doing and editing the interview). If you have a few minutes and want to learn a little more about us and our process for making the films we do, you can check out the interview HERE.

Thought you all might like to take a look around. You know, see where all the magic happens.

(Above) Lee kickin’ it in Edit Suite #1, as in we have one Edit Suite
(Above) My workspace, etc. Featuring a drafting desk my dad made for my
sister in 1983. I rescued The Virgin from the dumpster outside our office.

(Above) Check out the killer big screen where we watch movies
on Monday mornings.

(Above) What’s in the fridge? Nothing good, that’s for sure.

I was just thinking… You know because we get complaints about the prices of our videos and it twists me up inside to think that people think we’re somehow gouging them when really we’re trying our best to serve them… Did you realize that you could buy a $20 Sermon Illustration every week. That’s purchase and show a $20 video every week for a year and only spend $1040. Wow. I never thought about that before. That’s a video every week for less than it would cost to produce just one single video on your own. Good stuff.

Connect With Us

I’ve gone and got myself all into all these networking sites. I know. I know. I’m about a decade late to the party. But still, I’d love to be your friend :). Connect with us, check out our videos, learn more about us, etc, at:

Facebook (Storme)

Facebook (Lee)

Eleven72 on YouTube

Eleven72 on MySpace

Eleven72 on GodTube (not much here from us… yet)

Eleven72 on LinkedIn

A friend of ours, Travis Currin, out of North Carolina left a comment asking us about the origins of our name. People often assume, for obvious reasons, that eleven72 must be a chapter and verse out of the Bible. The problem is that not many books have 72 verses. The only one I am familiar with is Psalm 119. So… Our name isn’t out of the Bible. The name has really simple origins really. Nothing too clever. Lee and I were both born in November of 1972. 11/72. We threw around a lot of names early on, but ultimately we settled on something simple that has to do with who we are and where we come from. We had to put something on the application we sent in to start the company, right? And so, eleven72.

Really the name fits us well, because the company is just the two of us and our lives have a lot of similarities. Both born in November of 72. Both married. Both have two kids born relatively close together. Both of our firstborns are girls. And both of our youngest are boys. Both of us have a passion for filmmaking and storytelling. And on it goes.

Shooting the Better Off Rock’d show made me remember how much I want to do another music video. I worked on a couple of videos for a band called Slider’s Fault a while back. Here’s one I Directed. I’d love to know what you think. I’m looking forward to a time when I get to Direct my next one :). If you’ve Directed or crewed on a music video or have a favorite, send me a link so I can check it out. In the meantime, enjoy Last Call For Sympathy by Sliders Fault:

Here’s a link for feed readers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2PqJs-6nIw

The Art of Cinematography

I was just writing my new bio for our about page (look for it there any day now), and it got me thinking about one of my favorite things: Cinematography.

Wikipedia says a cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera (the art and science of which is known as cinematography). The Cinematographer’s roles are many and varied and the job varies from picture to picture depending on the Director, the crew, etc. But at it’s heart, cinematography is writing with light. Writing and light are two of my biggest passions and so I love cinematography.

The late Conrad L. Hall is my favorite cinematographer. The shot he captured of the boy standing at the edge of the water in the beginning of Road to Perdition is one of the most beautiful and profound images I’ve ever seen. And one of my top five movies of all time is a little movie called, Searching for Bobby Fischer, beautifully rendered by Hall in a style he termed: magical realism. I love the movie and I love that term.

To me, magical realism means showing the transcendent, the supernatural, in the every day. That God is all around even in the mundane moments of life. I hope I can one day photograph a feature that can capture and communicate that style.

My monthly cinematography guide is a magazine called American Cinematography. If you want to learn more about how your favorite movies are captured and the people who capture them, pick up a copy. It gets into the details of the way a movie was shot, the cameras and film stocks used, the types of lighting the used, the special effects. I’ve been reading it for years. I love it. They have a couple of articles online here.

Here are some great links and resources on cinematography:

http://www.cinematography.com/
http://www.theasc.com/
Wikipedia List of All the Best Cinematography Award Winners
The Cinematography Mailing List (a great resource - this is a forum where you can go looking for answers on how to capture the look and feel you want for your next film or video)