April ~ May ~ June ~ July ~ August

Who likes photos? Well we have plenty, to help keep your reading to a minimum, showing a bit of what we have been up to and recapping the past four and a half months, pictures and links to finished pieces below.

• we wrote and developed ROGUE's 2013 ESPN commercial campaign with their creative team
• we shot with Scott Pruett at Oakley HQ
• filmed the ROGUE commercials
• filmed Ray Flores, twice, with Tim Irwin (directed by Tim)
• Tim Irwin grew beard
• wrapped ROGUE R You Rogue profiles
• Chris Spealler
• Andy Stumpf
• completed post production on a Southern Virginia University tv spots
• One Word
• Financial Aid
• filmed with Josef Newgarden in Long Beach with Oakley (edited by Oakley)
• last minute commercial development and shoot with Rich Froning for ROGUE
• Who Is Rich Froning
• PR - Wash truck
• PR - Mow lawn
• APEX by Sunglass Hut rebrand shoot
• hung out with Heber & his crew while filmed some CrossFit commercials on our EPIC
• filmed ROGUE media & produced daily edits of new equipment & athletes (playlist)

PF Chang/Studio Party

Tim Irwin/Beard

Rich Froning/...Who is Rich Froning? for Rogue

Chris Spealler/Athlete profile for Rogue

The wall/Studio

Reclaimed wood desk/Studio

Rich splitting logs/Who is Rich Froning? for Rogue

Dana Dolly w/ EPIC/commercial for Rogue

Dawn drive to Salt Flats/Commercial CrossFit

Shoot n Cut/Rogue at 2013 CrossFit Games for Rogue

Keeping gear light/2013 CrossFit Games for Rogue 

Interview setting/Scott Pruett Interview for Oakley

Huh? / Commercial for Rogue

Tim with custom lens hood extention

Office reclaimed / installed

Office reclaimed / installing (not us)

Interview set / Scott Pruett interview for Oakley

Interview set 2 / Scott Pruett interview for Oakley

Interview location / Ray Flores portrait (directed by Tim Irwin)

Marsdon, EPIC, Helo, Car / Commercial for CrossFit

Edit suite / commercial for Rogue

Final review / commercial for Rogue

Filming a new branding video in Boulder / commercial for APEX by Sunglass Hut

Dudes / CrossFit Games for Rogue

ROGUE'S BAJA 1000 PROJECT IS WRAPPED

Back in October and November we were working on a hush-hush project for Rogue Fitness.  It started when Steve Sanders, a SEAL in the US Navy, wanted to go back to his childhood roots of riding dirt bikes.  But it wasn't a short cruise through the desert or hills in California, it was the legendary Baja 1000 he had his sights set on.  Rogue commissioned the documentary and off we went.

There were three main locations for this shoot; California, Nevada and of course Baja, Mexico.  We kept the film crew lean at the beginning as as the story begun to unfold, we increased the crew. Initially, on the first location, it was just Steve and I in California.  We then brought on James Masters as a producer.  James had spent nearly a decade filming and following the Baja 1000.  While James and a few production assistants were doing preproduction work during the race week, Tim, Nate and myself were in a helicopter in Nevada filming final bike prep and testing with Steve, Bill Witt, Ryan Sanders and crew.

Most of this film was shot on the Panasonic AF100 with GoPro footage for POV (point of view) and other pepper footage.  Once the race week arrived we beefed up our camera options with a wide variety of cameras.  The diversity of tech is almost comical.  We had 1 RED EPIC, 2 AF100s, 1 Panasonic GH2, 1 Canon 7D, 1 Canon 5DmkIII, 7 GoPro Hero2s and 2 iPhone 5s.

Here's the breakdown of race week.  Bret was stationed at Ensenada, Mexico--the starting line--with a 5DmkIII.  Down south we had three chase teams with a driver and a shooter.  And those teams played leapfrog down the peninsula.  We embedded Tim with Steve's chase crew and James and I shadowed them to sixty miles outside of La Paz.  Brandt, Lynden, Jon and Nate were our other two units.

After a twenty plus minute delay at the pit, Steve got on the bike at 20:00 and started his first leg of two hundred and thirty miles in the dead of night.  Steve and Bill traded the bike three times and Bill rode it to the finish.  Twenty-eight hours after the race started, and one thousand, one hundred and fifty miles later, Steve and the team finished the Baja 1000 fourth in their class. And as Steve put it, "Not bad for the first time."

If you haven't watched the series I strongly recommend it and not just because we made it.  It is really fascinating how much work goes into this race and how fast it is over.  For Steve, the question of what lights to use was a big deal since he would be spending most of his bike time in the dark.  A dark so dark people say it eats light.  They went with Rigid Industries LED lights and half way through the race Steve was completely stoked on how great they worked.

GoPro just released a new video that was shot entirely on the Hero3.  Their film complimented ours well because it focused on trophy truck driver Bryce Menzies ride during his first six hundred miles of the race and then flashes forward to the finish line. Ours focused on Steve in San Ignacio, which picked at mile six hundred and fifty.

If you watch in Steve vs Baja 1000 Episode 4 you'll see their truck narrowly miss Steve from non other than a GoPro we had mounted on Steve's helmet.  Watch for it at 7:29.  You can hear their siren screaming as they go tearing by.

We want to thank everyone who worked on this project.  A huge thanks to Rogue Fitness and their passion to not only building the best, American Made fitness equipment, but to documenting the lifestyles of the athletes they support. A big thanks to Ryan Arciero and Larry Roeseler from Team Herbst, the film units comprised of Todd, Nate, Lynden, Tim, James, Bret, Joh, Brandt, Chris and the two random guys that rode along. And thanks to Score International for putting on such a grueling race.

We've embedded the four Steve vs Baja 1000 episodes here and included GoPro's video that shows the first half of the race.  Let me just say we love how they just let the video live and breath during the race without any music over it.

Salt Lake City - Puerto Rico - Uruguay - Salt Lake City

Things have been extremely busy at Sansom Media as this year comes to an end. Nate is keeping the editing going, with sidekicks Lynden and Mike (our newest emoyees...welcome!). We've finished up some Rogue Fitness pieces (demos, sizzles and more), prepping a few other projects. I sent off the second cut of the Canadian mormon.org.

Right now I'm in Puerto Rico filming a few more portraits and then to Uruguay to pick up some broll for one of the Canadian portraits.

I've brought Tim with me with on a second AF100 kit. He's one of my favorite shooters of all time. The guy nails it every time. One of the few people I can feel comfortable bring with me or sending anywhere alone to film when I can't get there. Super stoked to have him along on this trip. Eric Morgan, the creative director, has been great to have along. He's helped a lot with the scheduling and his Spanish skills fill the large void mine leave behind, aside from doing a smashing job ensuring the proper direction and feel for the piece. A stellar team all around.

One great thing about this Mormon.org campaign that I absolutely love is how many amazing, talented people I've been able to work with. It's been rad 'cause of all the rad people. I look forward to more with them all.

In the meantime, we're writing new commercials with Rogue Fitness and I think it's safe to say viewers will be in for a treat. Not to mention the project we're just starting with Southern Virginia University. We just love, love, love working with them.

My good friends Dodge Billingsley and Scott Thornton with Combat Films and Research just went to Iraq for the rest of the year to film the withdraw of US troops. Should be a great film. We wish then the best with luck and safety. I wish I were with 'em.

And, thanks to all you kooks that actually read this blog. It's fun to write and rewarding to know it might help or entertain someone.

I'm going to get back to my dinner so until next time...

Hasta.

Back From Ohio But Not To Reality

We were in Ohio last week filming with Rogue Fitness (subscribe to their YouTube) and it was a great shoot.  Among things we shot were a how-to of sort on building a garage gym, some demos of new equipment and some random, goofy things with Mikko.  Mikko is funny and just a great guy.  Everyone else is terrific too.  Rogue had Tony Blauer come in and give his seminar on how to Be Your Own Bodyguard.  Some great stuff and helpful for real world applications.  He teaches you how to harness your natural tendency to flinch as a fast and powerful defense tool.  Cool stuff.  Nice work Tony.

The footage is back in the office and we're processing it now and as we transcode it we're putting it on a new Promise Technology 12TB Pegasus Thunderbolt RAID.  We picked it up to test out a basic network sharing solution.  Several of our clients have several TBs (terabytes) of footage that we are always accessing from several drives.  The RAID solution is a way to have all the footage online, with enterprise speeds and data protection.  If this works well, we'll probably move to a larger 32TB RAID, depending on a few things, one being future Sonnet Thunderbolt peripherals, among other brands.

With a gigabit switch, we can hardwire each editing bay to each other and we can pull one or two streams of footage to each.  This is perfect for assistant editors to pull clips, prep sequences, and process footy while the editor works on that, or a different project off of the same RAID.  Not as robust as a Fiber or 10Gigabit Ethernet solution but certainly a stepping stone and great for trials.  Once we move on from this  to a larger, more robust system we can repurpose the Pegasus as a back up for RAW footage with its lightning fast (sorry for the lame pun) transfer speeds and larger capacity.

We're shooting with Southern Virginia University this week while we work through some edits for a few other clients.  I'm bring Tim along to film with me while Nate manages the editors here at base camp.

As we part I wanted to leave you with something to make your day a little brighter, a remixed song from Coldplay's new album, Mylo Xyloto -- UFO.

The Hustle & Bustle At Sansom Media

Where has the time gone?!! (two exclamation points still doesn't suffice).  Two weeks ago I was leaving Toronto, Canada heading back to Salt Lake City and my internal clock is so out of whack right now I can't tell if it feels like a day ago or 3 months ago.

The shoot in Toronto went really well.  I was directing three portraits for Bonneville Communication on the I'm A Mormon campaign.  I've just about got a good first cut done of one.  It's turning out really nice.  The other two will be great too.

All the while, Sansom Media has begun to grow quickly.  It's fun, but a little scary too.  My biggest focus on the growth is making sure that we grow responsibly.  This means that we don't take on more work than we can handle (which feels like it's getting close), we spend time working on current projects and preparing for those upcoming.  Using free-lancers when needed and growing into more employees.  Upgrading equipment and office space appropriately (both of which are happening right now).

Nate is editing close to full-time as he finishes up his last semester.  He's really killing it and keeps getting better and better.  We recently brought on an intern, of sorts (not to be derogatory Lynden).  He's be great. He has a lot of passion, creativity and talent.  He's also a pretty good DJ. (And thanks to his mom for reading the blog regularly).

We still need one more solid editor.  Easier said than done.  It's really difficult to find someone that blends with the company's style.  That has the same vision for work and is, as I have dubbed, sleuthy: a creative problem solver.  Encounters unknowns and develops solutions.  Overcomes obstacles.  This is a really lame example but it works...  I want to hire people that, when pressing the gas pedal and nothing happens, discover the car isn't running and take the necessary steps rather than coming to ask for help because the car won't go.

This week has been full bore.  We're cutting a 25 minute show for Barrick with the media from our shoot last month, delivering tomorrow.  We're also editing Day 2 and Day 3 of the Rogue Fitness at the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games (here's Day 1), some Dew Tour footage, an I'm A Mormon ad and equipment sizzles for Rogue Fitness.  Coming up in the ensuing weeks we have two more I'm A Mormon ads, a heaps of sizzles, demos, series episodes to edit.  A few shoots in Denver, Ohio, Luisiana.  Some super top secret stuff with Rogue.  All while moving our offices, upgrading server equipment, editing bays and finding some time to sleep.  All good problems to have.  We're blessed and grateful.

PS. While in Toronto I got to grab some lunch with my pal Marty Cej from BNN.  He took Tim and I to a great hole-in-the-wall Indian place.  Tasty!  Thanks Marty.

NASCAR Doc At Miller Motorsports Park

I filmed with Tim and Ethan last Saturday at the Miller Motorsports Park for a NASCAR Documentary.  To be honest I don't know too much about it.  It was a last minute call and they needed three cinematographer with three AF100s so we went and shot.  It was cold and windy.  Certainly didn't feel like spring.

I favored a Nikon 70-300 f/ 3.5-5.6 lens and an old Nikon 28-200 f/3.5-5.6 lens.  Pulled out a Lumix 7-14 f/4 for some wide time-lapse shots of the clouds and mountains and track.  All around good day and 12 hours later we were done and getting dinner at the Blue Lemon.  Great food by the way.

I should mention the SmallHD monitor attached.  Its a newer addition to the kit and is absolutely fabulous.  Marshall monitors are neat and all, but this little DP6 is just stellar.  Great quality and the accessories they make for it are superb.  Sure they can be a little pricey but they're perfect for the monitor.  Why would you buy the cheap peanut butter for you sandwich when you could put Adams on it?!

This isn't the first time I've filmed at the motorsports park.  Back in May of 2009 I was there filming SBK World Superbike which was a lot of fun

• Day 1
• Day 2