Alia + Josh

Masterpiece? They're all masterpieces these days. So proud of how well Sandbox Love is moving!



Editing this film was one of the hardest tasks I've ever had. I had footage from 4 days of shooting that all had to be packed into a 15 minute piece. Well, I just couldn't make it fit, so it's about 20 minutes. But it's a good 20 minutes. An amazing 20 minutes.

For SO long, I would bring up the project, look through the footage and decide that I wasn't in an inspired enough place to take on what I knew would be one of my best films yet. I had all the tools there, but it was the approach. There were SO many good stories that I wanted to tell. There are some amazing parts to Alia and Josh's story that didn't even make it into the video. Because of that, stay tuned for a little Part II action.

Me and Vitalie shot pretty much the whole thing, with Shaun helping out the first day. As you can see, everything about their wedding weekend was beautiful. I felt incredibly blessed to be part of such a wonderful experience and meet so many wonderful people.

SlideRocket for iPad

Here is a commercial we did for Sliderocket, a presentation creator and viewer that makes presentations look super polished. Definitely check them out!



We shot this in two days in a ton of different locations. It was a long shoot, but very worth it. The hardest part is getting those overhead shots, as it means setting up the large jib. Fortunately, by the end of the shoot we got pretty efficient and can now set that thing up in no time.

WeVideo

Made this one, freelance style, for a company called WeVideo who offers a pretty baller product. They let you do all of your video editing in the cloud which means more collaboration, more flexibility, and the amazingness of being able to edit anywhere with a wifi signal. No hard drives to lug around. Just your footage in the ether, ready to go.



We also made an AWESOME behind the scenes video that shows our process of packing, filming, and then editing the commercial using WeVideo. Because we had such a tight turnaround with the video above, we had to be very clever with our coloring, uploading, and editing. I can't wait to show you how we made this, it's going to blow your world.

Lots more WeVideos to come!






Producers: Jesse Tarnoff, Ben Tuller, Pierce Templeton
Executive Producers: John Canning, Magnus Kristiansen
Director: Jesse Tarnoff
Director of Photography: Vitalie Ungureanu
Screenplay: Jesse Tarnoff
Sound Design: Matt Schwartz
1st Assistant Director: Pierce Templeton
1st Assistant Camera: Richard Paganini
Audio Recording: Nick Ainsworth
Editing/Color Grading: Jesse Tarnoff
Rotoscoping: Cameron Clark
Production Assistant: Shaun Goo
Freefall Cinematography: Iwan Van Der Schoor

Inception Spoof - Launchsquad Holiday Video

The hardest we ever work at Launchsquad is during the one week period we have to make a 30 minute holiday film involving everybody in the company. Imagine not sleeping for more than six hours in an entire week. Filming skit, after skit, after skit. It's a ton of fun, but I'm pretty sure we shaved off a couple years of our lives.

During one of those nights, Brett, Nick and I were up all night filming the Video Team's skit. Christine, our Producer and Project Manager has a kid, so she got to go home early :) But check what we did for the Video Team's segment. We rocked it, Inception Style.



This is one of those nights you like to look back on as a filmmaker. Brett, Nick and I were coming up with ideas left and right, figuring it out as we went along. Did we plan ahead of time how we were going to fake the antigravity? No way. And we kept plussing each other. Someone would come up with one thing, and then another person would add something to that, and it just got plussed and plussed until it was this beauty of an inside joke tied into inception.

I still feel sleep deprived from that week. But it was probably one of the best weeks of 2010. So down to do it again.

Dolphin! For Android and more!

Love this quick little project we shot for Dolphin, Android's most popular browser. This project was really spurred on by the Evernote Peak video that we made at LaunchSquad. However this time, we really wanted to add a little style to our production design. Good choice...



My calves got such a workout shooting this. In order to shoot down on all of our mini sets, we had to get the camera pretty high up. And we definitely don't have a ladder laying around at "the pad". Some I was pretty much standing on the tallest chair we had, on my tippy toes, trying to get everything all set. Definitely made the case for getting an external monitor :)

Love the style. Love the look. And 220,000k views on this video ain't bad. And it's still climbing.

J. Hilburn in Cancún!

This was a pretty rad trip that Brett Marty and I got to take. J. Hilburn, a company you guys now know all about, rewards it's top sellers with an annual rewards trip. This year, they headed to The Ritz Carlton in Cancun!

You can see that everything about this trip was a beautiful experience. Lots of fun, beautiful weather, and a chance for the partners to take a break from their lives back home.

Shooting this project was right up my alley. With all of the wedding and event coverage I have done with Sandbox Love, this felt like something that came totally naturally. The goal was to try to capture the feeling of the trip. You know, how were did the partners feel being there? Relaxed, free, positive, and with a hint of reflection. I think that really comes across in the video.

Also, it was a great chance to hang out with some of the folks I have been getting to know who are involved in J. Hilburn. I am continually impressed by the caliber of people in that organization and honestly believe they will soon be a fashion powerhouse. It's just awesome that I've been able to see their business grow into what it is now, and I can't wait to see it progress.

J Hilburn - Experience

Check out this video we made for one of my favorite clients eva. Since starting work with J. Hilburn, I've pretty much become an evangelist for their products and business. Love everything about my experience with them. Here is a video we made at Launchsquad to promote their custom clothing.

Obviously there is a lot of cool stuff that went into this video. Visual effects, sets, baller cameras, and lots and lots of practice. This was a pretty big production with months of pre-visualization. We had days of auditions to get the right guy, editing and pacing tests, visual effects tests. It's crazy how much pre-production and planning went into this thing.

Here is a video of the behind the scenes for The J. Hilburn Experience. It's mostly behind the scenes of production, rather than of pre-production and post. But it's still pretty cool.

If you want to take a look at one of the previous videos we made for J. Hilburn, check it out.

BACKtotheWOODS - The Society

Well, this shoot certainly brought be back to where I got most of my filmmaking background. Before I hit film school, and before I even made my high school films, I was a skater. And I made skate videos.

I shot this with my buddy Zack Heffner, a wicked photographer turned into a wicked filmmaker. The shoot was so sick, we went up into the woods and basically built a little makeshift skatepark. The riders you see in the video are sponsored by The Society and so it was cool to do a skate shoot for an actual company, rather than the typical "for my friends" kinda deal.

While we were shooting, I was amazed by how resilient these skaters were. They were taking falls and hopping right back up to try the trick again. I guess I had forgot about the beating my body took 7 years ago.

I love the video. It's got style.

Evernote Peek

This video is way rad. In the middle of all the crazyness that's been going on, we got word that we needed to make a video for Evernote's new product, Evernote Peak. We had something like 48 hours to put something together for their launch. Take a looksie at one of our most viral vids...

We did the shooting in about 5 hours and then I spent about 2 hours with it in editing. Came out so well. And here is a little secret: all of those hands are my co-workers at Launchsquad (except the kid).

The video took off, getting to about 140,000+ views within 24 hours. Looks like folks just needed a short and sweet, cute and fun, incie wincie little video. AND the product is pretty clever too. Definitely better than the flashcards I used to use back in the day :)

UPDATE: 200k Views! And it looks like the video is going to be a commercial you will be seeing on Hulu :)

Jumio goes Viral

Well it's happened again. Another video we have made at LaunchSquad has spun upward and out of control. And this time, it's something we were intending. We created a video for a company called Jumio who is still in stealth mode about what they actually do. So, the little bit that I know, I can't tell you. But what I can tell you is that Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin (Yup, the dude from The Social Network) invested a substantial amount in the start-up.

And Jumio being the cool and edgy client that they are wanted to do something that would stir up some conversation around their company. And so here is what we came up with.



The Path to Viral.
When the Huffington Post wrote an article on Jumio's funding from Saverin, they embedded our video into the article. The Huffington post of course gets a ton of reads, and a lot of those readers checked out the video. And what they saw was not what they were expecting from a company that changes the way we handle electronic payments. Most of them viewed the video as a horrific example of scare tactics and propaganda. They accused our expert Sebastian Cole of being a liar and a fear mongerer. The comments shot up on the article, and there was quite a bit of controversy around the video.

We wanted to take it as far as we could, to the point of being over the top. Very few people seemed to get this video was made to be tongue in cheek. When the video went viral, Wade Roush wrote this Xconomy article on the video itself. He even interviewed Nick Markham who played "Sebastian Cole". And Nick definitely held his own both in character and out.

Making It

When making this, I tried to shoot the dollar bills in as menacing a way as possible. That shot of Lincoln sitting there is way creepy. I mean, there's really nothing happy about the dollar bill. I also did a bunch of post grading on Nick's interview to give it that orange and blue look. It was really the first time I had played with that color spectrum. Editing it was pretty easy since the main force comes from the narrators voice and the creepy images. I kept bursting out laughing when I would roll playback.

I love how everything turned out. It's awesome that so many people, even doubters of the technology, know the name Jumio now. And honestly, I still laugh every time we see that baby and hear the thunder clap. "It could kill our children!" People took that seriously? Lawl.

More Jumio video coverage: Zippy Cart.

Clairmail Fraud Solution

I recently had some fraudster put about $350 on my account. It sucked. I knew it wasn't me because I there were two charges at a place called "House of Chicken" which is definitely not me. As you know, I'm more of a cereal guy. So, coincidentally I was working on a video at LaunchSquad for one of their clients, Clairmail. Clairmail works by sending alerts to your phone when they detect fraudulent activity AKA someone tries to spend $100 at "House of Chicken" when you're a cereal kinda guy.

Here is the video:



Nick Markham and I shot and directed the video. It also stars an actor/filmmaker friend of mine, Ben Tuller. I'm really happy with how the video turned out. It's got great production value and is crystal clear about how their company saves folks from losing money to fraud.

A Whole Lotta Savings!

Brett Marty, Nick Markham and I got to head to Chicago in early November to film a bunch of videos for Savings.com. They were having an event called the Save Up where they invite the most influential people in the "savings and deals" blogosphere and have a little conference. It was held at The James Hotel which was super nice. Like, really really nice.

It was cool getting to meet all of the people behind such a forward thinking company. They're really trying to build a community of money saving experts, and it's pretty cool to see all the backgrounds of their "DealPros." All in all I edited about 30 videos for them from the footage we shot while in Chicago. Wild right? Most of them were interviews with their DealPro's on how to save money during the holidays. But we also did a couple of other videos that were about the conference. Here are some vids for you to check out!







We also shot a bunch of awesome tilt shift footage while we were on the rooftops. Some day I'll edit that stuff together for ya :) And here is us goofing around on the trampoline that was on one of the rooftops while we were timelapsing!

Swanman Travels Live Show

A while back, Vitalie and I went up to UC Davis for the Whole Earth Festival to film my brother's band, Swanman Travels. Unfortunately, the band isn't around anymore as a few of the band members moved away from home. It's a shame, cuz they have such a wonderful sound and energy. As you're about to seeeee...



It was hard to string together one piece out of their whole performance, since it spanned the entirety of the sun setting. Some shots it's bright out, some shots it's very dark. I tried to take some creative license in in giving the brighter stuff a more of a gold color tone, so that it didn't look like it was meant to be part of the performance, but rather, almost a flashback of the beginning of the show.

I'm hoping these guys get together again and make some more music. Love their album!

On Top of New York: Towerstream

Brett Marty and I got to go over to New York for a couple of days to film this for Towerstream, one of LaunchSquad's clients. I was pretty siked when I was told we had unrestricted access to the coolest and tallest buildings in New York. Here's what we came up with!



There are a lot of really cool shots in here of skylines, clouds, and giant towers. There was one night where we were chilling on the top of the LaunchSquad New York office with a six pack, timelapsing footage of the Empire State Building. At the same time, we were doing a "Dolly Timelapse" where at every interval, we pushed the camera forward on our Glidetrack. It was funny, because we were doing this every 30 seconds, and we would sit down in between the intervals. So Marty and I had a lot of short, 25 second conversations: which is perfect for our rapidly declining attentions spans.

Me on top of "The Hub".
Marty on top of the Empire State Building.

Timelapsing sunrise from the top of the Empire State Building might be one of the coolest things I've ever done. We got a ton of beautiful footage for this film. We're excited to go on top of Chicago and Miami next!

J Hilburn - Revolutionizing Men's Clothing

About a month and a half ago I rolled to Dallas to film for an up and coming men's clothing brand called J. Hilburn. What they do is pretty awesome, and I had a blast getting to know the guys behind the idea. Check out the video, I think it does a good job of explaining how their business model works, and why they are able to offer top of the line custom clothing for less than half the cost.



I shot this with Vitalie Ungureanu, who's quickly becoming my go to shooter. Both days we shot were scorchers, luckily the 7 million dollar mansion we were shooting in was pumped with AC that felt almost as valuable. We used two 5DmkII's, an assortment of lenses, and the 'ol glidetrack. We got tons of good footage, some of which you might see more of. Every interview we shot was just packed with soundbites. It was a very successful shoot.



Going into filming, I knew that I wanted to include some elements that made the video look a little more "magazine-esk." I had a couple of different aesthetic choices in mind, and we ended up going with a merging of the different looks. Nick Markham did the visual effects in the beginning of the video, as pretty much his first dive into After Effects. So excited to see how far we're going to go with motion graphics and visual effects. We've just begun.

Editing this puppy took a while; lots of late nights, chipotle, and scotch. But I think that we definitely got a winner here. I'm very proud of it.

Diapers.com

Made this for LaunchSquad's client, Quidsi (parent company of Diapers.com and Soap.com) for the press event and launch of Soap.com.



I loved shooting this video. The coolest thing about working with LaunchSquad is that our clients are all so innovative. It wasn't hard to understand why Diapers.com was #34 on the fortune 500. I mean, they legitimately save moms tonsssss of time, which allows them to spend more time enjoying their kids. Diapers.com is brilliant.

Morgan + Charlie's Love Story

We shot this with Morgan and Charlie two weeks before their wedding. All of their wedding guests attended the rehearsal dinner at The Lodge in Sonoma, and we had the chance to play this film for everybody there. After a very kind introduction by Charlie, I hit play.



When the lights came up, I looked around and saw so many teary eyes. The applause we received was pretty moving, and I didn't really know what to do. It was great though, it definitely set the mood for a touching and fun wedding the following day. Many thanks to Nick and Vitalie, who shot the Love Story with me for Sandbox Love. It's so inspiring to shoot with those guys, since we all see the world in different shots. When it's all added up, it always comes out well.

Allison + Craig Wedding Highlights

Allison and Craig's wedding was such a fun event. Check it!



This was the video I wanted to launch my wedding film company with. The joy, playfulness, and cinematic opportunity at the wedding was exactly the feel I wanted to base Sandbox Love on. For more about the approach to my company, see below or click here.

Going into the day, Nick, Rob and I planned out how we wanted to do most of the shooting. I rolled around with the glidetrack and wide lenses mostly while Rob "rocked" the 85mm close ups. Nick (quickly earning the nickname "Iron Nick") was using the glidecam to get all of the great sweeping shots. The combination of all of this is a magic combo. We should give it a name.

While we were taking a break and restoring some of our brain's creativity, Cassie and Dan at Los Gatos DJ Company played that first song you heard in the video. I turned to the rest of the team and said, "we're using this."

A huge shout out to Ashley Maxwell and her husband Jason who are incredible photographers, super warm people, and quickly becoming friends. We've shot with them before and can't wait to shoot alongside them again.

Swords, Power Tools, and Beer Definitely Mix

You guys have no idea how busy things have gotten. Well, maybe you do because you've seen I haven't added any new content to my blog. Well, this week will certainly have content! What have I been working on?

The major thing I have been working on is developing my new Wedding Film brand. It's a project I've been working on for almost a year, and it's finally getting to the launch point. Expect big news within a month, and a bunch of awesome new wedding films!

I've also been doing some commercial work for a candy store at Universal Studios. Very excited to show you what we came up with for them... footage looks legit.

I also made two videos for a huge author you may have heard of, Geneen Roth, who has been on Oprah twice now and has been at the top of the New York Times best seller list for a few months now. I also had some of my footage on Oprah, and had the first credit of the show go to me and Vitalie Ungureanu, who shot the videos with me.

I've also been working hard at my full time gig, LaunchSquad. Brett Marty and I have really pushed the video department far in the last few months. I have a bunch of content I am waiting to release regarding that stuff, just waiting for our clients to release the videos. Marty and I have been to Las Vegas, New York, Washington DC, and almost got to hit up Chicago. We're producing some very solid work, and are gunning to push into the advertising realm with some of our clients!

But for nowwwwwwww. Here are two more short videos I did for Shmaltz Brewing Company! Basically, just introducing the folks who are on the label's of Shmaltz' Coney Island Lager. To see the last video I made for them, and to see the equipment used, check it out here.





SOOO much stuff coming out this week! Stay tuned for the new 4QR98 Pass 48 Hour Film!!!

Diapers.com Fulfillment Center

This is pretty cool. I'm on a plane back from NYC where I was shooting for one of LaunchSquad's clients, Diapers.com. They just announced their new sister company, Soap.com. It's pretty sweet, it's basically an online store for everyday essentials and it delivers it to 70% of the country the next day, for free.

Here is one of the three videos we made for their launch presentation.



We shot this with Brett Marty up in Reno a few weeks ago. I actually had a lot of fun on that shoot. I got to hop onto one of those robots as it made it's way around the entire factory. At one point I actually got boxed in by 4 other robots loaded with stacks of Diapers boxes.

This video has got a lot of praise so far from media. It was posted to TechCrunch which was a nice outlet for exposure. Check it out here.

Also, major props to Nick Markham for doing a great edit. Stay tuned for the other videos. Very different content but solid films.

-Jesse Tarnoff