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 :)

Anyclip

Hey guys, sorry it's been a while since I posted anything. Things have gotten crazy busy with Sandbox Love ramping up, Launchsquad Video ramping up, and a bunch of cool freelance corporate opportunities. But the good news is I have like 20 videos in the "to be blogged" queue.

First Up! Anyclip!

Here is a video Nick and I made at Launchsquad for a company that basically takes the idea of all of the Low Quality versions of real movies on Youtube and makes running across them a non issue. If you search for a scene in Anyclip, that scene actually comes up; in a high quality, fullscreen-able viewer.

As you can see, the video is motion graphics heavy. We've been dabbling more and more in motion graphics and I'm happy to say that we've made some huge progress in what we can achieve. Just wait til you see all the other good stuff coming up!

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.

Thrutu - An Awesome App

I love this video. Nick and I recently made this for one of our clients at LaunchSquad: Thrutu. The application basically lets you use your phone to easily send information while talking on the phone. So if we were chatting and I wanted to send you a picture of where I was, I could easily snap a photo and send it through the phone call. Check it out:



When we brainstormed for the video, we tried to come up with some of the most meaningful and useful ways to use the application, but to also make it meaningful. We shot this over a few days around San Francisco. And if you watch the second half, you'll notice an adorable kitten. That's Clocks, my old roommate's kitten!



Really excited about how we're pushing the production quality higher and higher. More good things to come.