Over the past few months we’ve had the great pleasure of getting to know San Francisco fine artist, Ben Venom.
Hailing from the great state of Georgia, this southern gentleman welcomed us out on the town and into his home to talk about his life and work. Over the course of four shoots and multiple conversations, we discovered a kind, whip smart, quilting madman.
Catch that last part? I was listening to NPR when I heard a spot about an artist quilting with heavy metal t-shits. I’ve been sewing for the better part of three years, and knew I had to see this for myself. ‘Bay Area Now‘, an annual art show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was featuring one of Ben’s largest quilts to date. It not only dominated the galleries massive walls, but put Ben at the top of my list for our next Neighbors piece. I pitched the spot to Nick and Jason, reached out to Ben, and got everyone quickly and enthusiastically on board.
Our latest Neighbors short is in the works, but I wanted to share a few stills we captured along the way. Looking forward to sharing more of our collaboration with Ben Venom!
In today’s marketplace, local businesses have to compete on the level of their largest competitors — those chain stores have deep pockets with a dedicated staff for advertising at a local and national scale.
It can be intimidating for any new or established business to dive into this advertising space and compete. There’s a sense that without a marketing/brand strategy degree, it’s difficult to know where to allocate resources for advertising.
On top of marketing expertise, there are also varying levels of experience using technology. Without using a smartphone on a daily basis, for example, it can be difficult to understand the concepts of location based marketing.
In September of 2011 we canvased four cities, interviewing 11 local businesses, for Google AdWords Express. In this two week shoot production, we hit San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego, and New York. Here are two in a series of web spots featuring local businesses that use AdWords Express.
Brick and mortar stores are easy to find and advertise, but what about a business that calls a boat slip it’s home? We hopped aboard a sailboat with Marty, owner of Chicago Sailboat Charters
Three businesses, three different cities — Sandy of Tommy Gun’s Garage in Chicago, Sherri of Beauty Company in SF, and David of Sabella-Mills Studios in New York.
Official link to the “Success Stories” – google.com/adwords/express
Following the release of our TalkBin small business spots for P.Terry’s, Fraiche, and Coupa Cafe, the TalkBin by Google team wanted us to tell the story of one of their larger business partnerships.
Crate&Barrel is an early adopter of TalkBin. For this testimonial interview, we spoke with Tony the Store Manager, Linda the District Manager and Judi the Director of West Coast Operations at their Union Square location in San Francisco. With four floors and a Marrimekko Boutique (unique to just a few Crate and Barrel stores) the team members have their hands full on a daily basis. They graciously made space for our production, and we had fun talking business with our San Francisco neighbors!
Two special guests on set were our models, Erin and Nick. They were great additions to the set. At the end of a long shoot day they still had a sense of humor and productive focus on set. Couldn’t have asked for nicer talent!
Take a look at the final product above. We’re really proud of the team responsible for TalkBin’s continued success, and we know this won’t be the last glowing review from an enterprise user.
A few weeks ago AC had the pleasure of meeting Matteo Lopez at his elementary school in San Bruno, CA. Matteo was last year’s national winner of a drawing competition created by Google called “Doodle 4 Google“. Matteo’s re-imagined Google logo, titled “Space Life“, won him a scholarship for college, a technology grant for his school, and his winning doodle on the Google homepage for an entire day.
After talking to his parents and teachers, we were able to understand just how much winning this contest meant for everyone in the community. Matteo was interviewed on the Today Show, gifted a trip to space camp!, and the city framed a huge copy of his winning doodle to hang in the schools cafeteria (major primary school cred.)
With the technology grant, Monte Verde Elementary purchased a mobile computing lab. Teachers can reserve the cart of 25 laptops to teach their students math, science, reading, and basic computing. We were able to see a math lesson conducted with this lab, and it was a joy to see the whole class so engaged.
I encourage you to share this video (which includes a link to enter) with anyone who has, teaches, or knows school age children. It’s a breeze to submit a doodle and, as sweet Matteo knows, well worth it!
P.s. Here’s a link to all of Googles Doodles. Have fun clicking around!
Brought in the New Year with an amazing Sunset ride. 2012 is going to be a good one! enjoy!
A short film written and directed by Dominic Parisi. Dominic asked me to be his DP and Editor.
It was an awesome shoot, and the end result looks great.
Enjoy!
(Teru Kuwayama at the 1197.is conference. Taken w/ an iPhone4 and filtered through the Camera Bag app)
A few weeks ago I volunteered to help run the 1197 conference. The topic was mobile phone photography and it’s evolution, technological advances, and social ramifications. Speakers included the Instagram Community Evangelist Jessica Zollman, and the creator of the first camera for your phone Philippe Kahn.
It is here that I first heard of and heard from Teru Kuwayama, a documentary war photographer and recent TED Fellow recipient. As I signed him in as a speaker for the conference I offered to take his bag to the back room. He laughed a little and handed me his bag which I promptly dropped. Teru travels like a Marine, and his ruck sack is no exception at half of his own body weight. Needless to say, I knew he’d have some interesting stories to tell during his presentation.
On stage, Teru touched on a few of the projects he’s been working on while embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iraq, and Pakistan. After years of documentary work with bulky camera equipment he decided to take his iPhone and a small collection of lightweight ‘toy’ camera (plastic models like the Holga) on his next assignment. What came back was a body of work that was easily edited on the fly and shared, via social media, with personally invested friends and family back home.
His subsequent online project, Basetrack, logged the military unit’s physical location, included blog entries about what was happening on the ground that day, and pictures of his daily experiences. This was a way for Teru to skirt the editors and censors of the mainstream media, and keep people informed of the war that he said has been all but forgotten by the major news publications.
Teru has been busy, and a short blog post does his work no justice. Basetrack is only one of his ongoing projects. Besides his actual photographs (I’m still blown away by his iPhone-ography) Teru has been researching ways for photographers to show their work outside of the mainstream media. Making sure that the public is able to stay close to conflicts that are of great interest to them, and shedding light on those that aren’t covered in the media at all, has been his new career focus.
I encourage you to read more about Teru, Basetrack, and a few other social media projects he’s working on. Check out the links below.
A short video of Teru introducing himself and his work after he was awarded a TED Global Fellowship.
A TED Blog about Basetrack
Three of his blog posts on Idea Lab for PBS.org
New York Times feature on his iPhone photography.