Life IS Wonderful

Life Is Wonderful and especially during the holidays. Photo: exploring the abandon resort near our house with the Ziebarth family.

Park City Mountain Resort and Frederick Wiseman (in SLC)

Spend the day at Park City Mountain Resort, our new home mountain, it was good fun. Having fun this holiday. Also just found out that Fredrick Wiseman is coming Salt Lake City this January. I think if production doesn't get in the way I will have to listen to him and enjoy his master class.

Midway Ice Rink

Happy Holidays!
We are enjoying the holidays. Noelle is teaching skiing at Park City Mountain Resort, and we are enjoying the Midway Ice Rink. With limited snow right now we are loving the ice skating in our town center. January is looking good for film projects: I have a Hawaii trip with artist, the Sundance FIlm Festival, a super cool project that is days away from a green light and a heavy post-production schedule on my art series. Life is good, peace and Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas

It's family time. Have a great Christmas and if you are in Midway during the holidays please stop by for ice skating or a taco at Tarahumara. (this photo is from 2 years ago when we were camping in Australia for Christmas. This guy was driving around the campground with his daughter throwing our candy on Christmas Eve- great memories)

Cinque Terre, Italy

From the archives, my daughter jumping off the cliff. So tying it back to filmmaking, we spent 2 months in Europe in 2007.
So my TIP OF THE DAY if you are a documentary filmmaker:
Try to use one airline for all film travel
and
Use a credit card that gives you frequent flyer miles on that airline.
We use Delta Airlines and American Express and got 6 tickets to Europe with my frequent flyer miles.
Good fun, have a good Wednesday!

Paintings of Claire Silverman

While filmming Burt we got to know Claire his wife and she is in the film (see post below). Burt has been painting Claire for years. The painting with the hair is from his private collection. I told Burt I liked that painting of Claire and her hair, he pause and smiled, “Isn’t she awesome!”

Burton Silverman

A few year back I did a film about New York artist Burt Silverman. We had 3 directors- me, Tim Irwin and Rose Card-Faux. We shot at his home in New York City and vacation home in upstate New York. Burt is a solid guy with a peaceful personality. I was fun to watch Burt work and alway fun to be in New York.

Andi Pitcher Davis, a.k.a. crazy bread lady, a.k.a. artist

This bread is good for the mind, body and spirit.

Scanning Today

Scanning old photos. I have hundreds and hundreds of old negatives, slides and digital photos too. I started out as a still photographer in school, I loved it, then when I started filmmaking it just got more fun. Now I only do stills for fun or an occasionally press still or 2, but these days as a filmmaker you have to know a little bit of everything to survive.

Albert Maysles

Documentary quote of the day from legendary filmmaker Albert Maysles.

“As a documentarian I happily place my fate and faith in reality. It is my caretaker, the provider of subjects, themes, experiences – all endowed with the power of truth and the romance of discovery. And the closer I adhere to reality the more honest and authentic my tales. After all, the knowledge of the real world is exactly what we need to better understand and therefore possibly to love one another. It’s my way of making the world a better place.”

BAADS, Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors

I just saw the rough cut of the the TV documentary I directed about BAADS, I am very happy with it, more details later. It is for the show Turning Point. (I was director/ director of photography on the story about young adults dealing with cancer--when you click on Turning Point)

Pharrell Williams

As a documentary filmmaker you get to stumble into some cool characters. In September 2003 in Cleveland, Ohio I was shooting a TV show about BMXer TJ Lavin. To make a long story short be bumped into Pharrell and got to spent the night with him. We got to ride on the bus with him and be in his entourage. We went to his show then from club to club. My favorite part was listening to Pharrell’s personal philosophies about life, style, money, music and living a happy life. I became a huge fan of Pharrell that night and snapped this photo when we all got on stage for his last number. I could go on, but man this guy has charm and style and he still makes me smile.

Ryan Nyquist, vintage TV

From the archives, an old TV segment of Ryan Nyquist riding his ramp in Greenville, NC, circa 2001.

Street Art, Toronto

Saw this clever piece while shooting a TV commercial in Toronto, Canada, great city, by the way.

Poetic Dream Space: a film about sculptor Brower Hatcher

A quick clip from another art film I did over 10 years ago. After hours and hours in the edit room I stumbled into this style of editing. I love the way the film turned out and I think the style helps explain what is going on in Brower's mind. The master Brian Wilcox was the director of photography on this one. I directed it and Kathy Spangler produced it. We shot in Utah and New York.

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

It is sweater weather, I love this photo of friend and master drummer Pat Campbell. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or whatever you do to party this holiday season.
PEACE

Noelle's Noel: Noelle O Designs

A quick little video of what Noelle has been making lately. Noelle is my wife but that sounds so odd to me like she belongs to me, oh well, we are partners and I guess I am her husband, we have been married for awhile. OK! she is very clever and can make anything, this is what the last few weeks have looked like around here. So, want to give a handmade gift for Christmas this year? you can get her stuff today through Saturday at the Beehive Bazaar in Provo, UT, she also has an Etsy site.

Sketchbook Sunshine

It's 3 degrees this morning in Midway, Utah. We are getting cold sunshine but not enough snow. (this sunshine is a repost from a old sketchbook/journal from a few years ago) I wish I had more time to draw, but come to think of it, I wish I had more time to learn music, make art, party with the kids, learn a language, ride my bike, ...but I am stoked to be a filmmaker, that is a lovely gift.

Lantern Rouge, Tour de France 2004

I dreamed of going to France to watch the Tour de France so I pitched an idea to OLN to do mini documentaries about the stuff that goes on at the side of the road during the race and they bought it! Crazy! It was one of the most amazing shoots ever. My crew was host Hans Rey, Editor Tim Irwin, Norge boy French translator Maggie Hendriksen and me as director boy. It was a month on the road living in our euro camper van. Most of our stories were about the fans, this one was about the last place racer. I love it when he said, "...after the last climb, I saw the tip of the Eiffel Tower." We were almost a week from Paris, haha!

Spike Lee Book: "Spike Lee's Gotta Have It"

I have always been a fan of Spike Lee, his book “Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It” changed my life and altered the way I look at filmmaking. Most of the book is from his journals as he was making his film, “She’s Gotta Have It.” I don’t know if the book is still in print, but it is worth reading.

From the introduction by Spike Lee:
“Everybody and his mother has a script or is a filmmaker, but the ones who gets their films done are the ones who don’t listen when everybody says, “Forget it, you’re wasting time and money.” The ones who believe, have an unwavering faith in their films and ability and are almost, but not quite, willing to kill to get that “bad boy” made, will prevail---’cuz dat’s what it takes.”

It has been fun to watch his career evolve from “She’s Gotta Have It” to bigger Hollywood stuff, to stuff shot on DV to documentaries. “Four Little Girls” is one of my favorite documentaries he has done, and shot by one of my favorite cinematographers Ellen Kuras.

The Circus Project

I returned to Portland, Oregon to shoot the kids of The Circus Project and their performance of CircOddyssey. It was so great to see the show and hang out with the kids and the artistic director, Jenn Cohen. We filmed the performance and did a few wrap-up interviews. It was brilliant and I am very thankful to do this for a living. I get to meet amazing people and help tell their stories. Meeting people like this is good for the soul, thank you all. There is a song that we sometimes sing around here that that goes like this, “Have you done any good in the world today?” that makes me think of the big hearted Jenn Cohen- that spends her life helping others, Good luck sister. It will play on the TV show "Turning Point" check out the story I did about
young adult dealing with cancer here. (photo: 3 or the 4 kids that were in the show, #4 needed to go to bed for work in the morning)


This photo from the Oregonian article about the Circus Project.


a snip from "The Circus Project" website...Our cutting-edge aerial performances and expert training enrich the Portland arts community, while funding outreach to homeless and at-risk youth in the Portland...

Vintage Reel ... Filmmaker Steve Olpin

I ran to this online the other day (googling myself? maybe I was just taking a break! haha!!) forgot about this one but this is mostly 16mm stuff and a video treat at the end. Filmmaking is going great right now, I 'm very happy. I am finding peace being a nonfiction director/director of photography, digging for passion with a camera in my hands. I am a recovered film snob and shoot mostly vidoe now, my camera of choice right now is the Canon 5d. Enjoy the reel, there is a lovely intro by Gary Fisher and few great shots of my BMX hero TJ Lavin. (photo below TJ in his yard)