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meghan / 0 Comment

I made it to NYC this past weekend to catch a screening of one of our videos at the New York Civil Liberty Union benefit concert, Broadway Stands Up For Freedom.

The NYCLU project was especially cool because we created a video PSA in collaboration with their Teen Activist Project – an awesome program that engages teens as community organizers and peer educators on civil liberty issues.  The teens were pretty much incredible to work with, and brought tons of energy and ideas to the shoot and pre-production.  They also know how to work snail mail, and this oversized thank you card arrived at our office a few days after the shoot:

Here's my view from the vertigo-inducing balcony at NYU's 900-seat Skirball Center

The playwright, Tony Kushner, opened the event! The overexposed white blob is him, I swear!

When I wasn’t worrying about the possibility of technical glitches, or that I would accidentally drop my camera from the balcony onto an unsuspecting civil-liberty-supporter, I had a great time.

Oh, and here’s the finished video:

exnoise / 0 Comment

At the Museum of Fine Arts last night to film a performance by Ghost Train Orchestra as part of the MFA’s courtyard concert series. Unfortunately, it rained so the event was held indoors, but it was an amazing concert nonetheless. Special thanks to Jasmine, Nick, PJ, and the rest of the MFA crew for making it an easy shoot for us.

Had a few minutes to wander the museum before soundcheck and stumbled onto this piece by Josiah McElheny.  It looks like a digital animation, but it’s actually glass sculptures.  Mirrors on all sides of the glass case and a one-way mirror facing the audience create the illusion that the sculptures extend infinitely.  Thinking of building a much larger one to shoot a music video in…

The piece is titled Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism. Here’s the MFA’s blurb about the piece, “McElheny hand-blew the dozens of glass vessels in this perfectly machined, mirrored box, basing them on 20th-century designs. Their glinting reflections recede in an infinitely repeating pattern. The work is inspired by an enclosed and completely reflective world of pure form imagined by architect Buckminster Fuller and scultpor Isamu Noguchi in 1929. By crafting a version of their idea, McElheny reveals what a world purged of human presence and individuality looks like. Though brimming with beautiful objects, it is a place apart, devoid of life.”

exnoise / 0 Comment

Here’s a photo of Meghan filming the artist Hannah Taxman in our studio.  This was the second of two shoots we did for her debut music video, and the final edit will tie these shots together with some great footage of her performing with her 14-piece band at Keep the Edge Studios, a very cool new recording studio in Quincy.  (We’d actually filmed a couple of the string players last year during a session with Nikolas Metaxas, and we were excited to shoot them again.)

It’s been a lot of fun working with Hannah and the Steelehaus Creative production team of Sam Steele and Chris Danforth. Check out some behind the scenes photos on their blog.

exnoise / 0 Comment

A while back we had the band Fists over to our studio after their TT the Bear’s show.  Hailing from Nottingham, England, the band was on their first tour of the US, and we were were psyched to have a chance to help document it. You can read more about their tour experience here, although as a point of correction, we filmed the video for the Foundwaves music blog. Special thanks to our crew Ryan Johnson, John Selig, and Lauren McGuinness.

Here’s one of the videos from their set at the studio:

You can watch the rest of the videos on our Vimeo account:

Fists – Stag (Live at Extraneous Noise)

Fists – Ascending (Live at Extraneous Noise)

 Fists – Squirl Squeek

Here’s some swag we got fromt he band…

And band and crew outside our building post shoot…

baya / 0 Comment

Flew down to Florida for the weekend to film a video for a corporate client. Timed it just right so that it rained during the day yesterday while we were working, but was beautiful today on our day off.  Walked around St. Augustine and spent some time on the beach. Grabbed a view images on the iPhone while we were at it.  Here I am enjoying some conch fritters at a beachside cafe.

We loved being on the beach, but couldn’t believe they let cars drive right onto it and park. Are people that lazy!?!

 One last shot from the iPhone… Two surfers at the end of the day.  End of the day for us as well.  About to get on a plane for a late flight back to Boston.  Hope it isn’t snowing when we get back…

exnoise / 0 Comment

Just got back from a great three-week trip to New Mexico where we produced a bunch of videos.  We’ll be posting them here as we finish them…. highlights include videos for La Puerta Originals, custom woodworkers with the largest collection of antique materials in the US, Hotel Santa Fe, the only Native American owned hotel in Santa Fe, Betty’s Bath and Day Spa, Albuquerque’s premier day spa, a neat piano studio in Albuquerque, and a nonprofit transportation advocacy group with the awesome name, Chainbreaker Collective.

We spent the bulk of our trip in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but had some free time in between projects to drive down to the southern part of New Mexico to visit the Carlsbad Caverns and then enjoy the hot springs in Truth or Consequences on our way back.  Fun fact about Truth or Consequences:  It was known as Hot Springs until 1950 when the host of the popular radio quiz show Truth or Consequences offered to host it in the first town that renamed themselves after the show.  If you ever visit the town, we highly recommend staying at the Pelican Spa.

As part of our work on the Hotel Santa Fe video, we had the opportunity to visit the Picuris Indian reservation to interview their governor, Gerald Nailor, one of the key people behind the hotel. We got horribly lost on the way there (with no GPS or cell phone reception), but managed to stumble onto an amazing southwestern vista in the process.  Meghan captured the above photo on her iPhone.  As further proof that it’s the photographer, not the camera, that really matters, the shots I was taking on the Canon 5d weren’t nearly as interesting!

Gerald Nailor was a gracious host and shared some of the history of the Picuris and their involvement with the hotel.  Later we spent some more time with him in the hotel gift shop where he sells some of his paintings.  Like his father, Gerald has been an active painter throughout his life.  He actually came up with the concept and logo for the Hotel Santa Fe, a sleeping dear.  Here is one of my favorite paintings of Gerald’s, titled “Barbancito”.

Santa Fe has quite the art scene.  It seems like there are more galleries here than on Newbury Street, focusing on everything from native art to contemporary abstract paintings.  On the downside, like Newbury Street, most of the other shops are upscale, name-brand stores, focused on tourists, and have little personality. We did, however, manage to find one shop that oozed personality.  Just around the corner from Hotel Santa Fe, Kowboyz has the largest selection of used boots and cowboy hats I’ve ever seen.  You’d think a place like this would have been born and bred in Santa Fe, but the store actually relocated recently from Hollywood after 25+ years there outfitting celebrities and providing costumes for Westerns.  It’s a really fun place to browse and the staff is super friendly.  Here’s Meghan trying on one of their hats…

Less than twenty minutes out of Santa Fe there were mountains and snow.  We managed to sneak up there between shoots on day and spend the afternoon snowshoeing.

We’ve only been back a few days, but the one thing we’re already missing more than anything is the food.  There are several great Mexican restaurants near our office here in Somerville, but some things you just can’t find here, namely the authentic green chili of New Mexico.  I lost track of all the different Mexican restaurants we enjoyed during our trip, but won’t forget our favorite stop in Santa Fe, The Pantry.  It’s just down the block from Chainbreaker Collective, so we ate there several times.  Here’s a shot of two of our favorite dishes…sopapillas for me and the Buenos Dias plate for Meghan.  We have tentative plans to return to New Mexico in the late summer for some more filming projects and a trip to The Pantry will be at the top of the agenda!