I’m excited to announce the launch of Loving Legacy Video, a new endeavor under the Pangeality Productions umbrella. Loving Legacy Video grows out of my experience interviewing subjects over the past 17 years, engaging in meaningful dialogue about their lives, businesses and ideas on camera. The basic premise is that we guide and film autobiographical interviews in the comfort of your home. It’s roughly 75% chronological questions that begin with your awareness about ancestors and from who and where you come, up through early childhood, education, marriage and parenting, career, and retirement. Then roughly 25% introspective questions about when you felt most alive, your approach to parenting and/or grandparenting, life choices you wished you’d made differently, aging and dying. It builds on my experiences over the years with Pangeality Productions and Youtube.com/LenDavis, interviewing all kinds of people about their lives. Except in this case, it’s more about how they want their family and descendants to remember them instead of telling their story to sell goods and services. To learn more, see video samples, pricing and workflow, visit Loving Legacy Video.
For the past few years, Pangeality Productions has been working with NWG Real Estate, one of the region’s leading firms. We’ve been working to tell their stories, primarily about their brand, their personnel, special projects, and vision. Recently we’ve worked together to showcase their Signature and Signature Gold sales platforms, community involvement and new developments.
Punt Pass and Kick is an annual event geared toward celebrating the NWG community where they invite members of their community to enjoy a private function at the University of Washington football stadium. With current and former players and coaches on hand to schmooze and teach, families come catch passes from former Husky quarterbacks, tackle practice dummies, kick field goals and run around, then eat pizza and drink beer. And Pangeality Productions was there to capture the event for Northwest Group Real Estate to share with their community.
Park 12 Bellevue is a new concept in real estate development ‘Where Urban Meets Nature’. Surrounded by mature trees and with Kelsey Creek running right through the property, it’s a beautiful place to live. This project grew out of our work with NWG Real Estate. Park 12 falls under their NWG Signature Developments umbrella and this video was used specifically for the presale part of the process.
Pangeality Productions was recently hired by local bloggers Seattle Anne and My Little Nomads to produce a video showcasing Seattle’s Top 10 hotels. I had the opportunity to enjoy a shoot largely on foot after taking the bus downtown from my office which was awesome. Seattle Anne is a great resource celebrating Seattle Tourism and My Little Nomads is a great resource celebrating the joy of traveling with children. They put together the list and asked me to go out and capture Seattle’s top tourism destinations and shots from each hotel. Original musicians by my friend’s in The Jefferson Rose Band.
Northwest Real Estate Group, had the highest per transaction value of any brokerage in the state of Washington with more than $250 million in sales last year, and when they wanted to showcase their leadership in the industry and tell their brand story, they turned to Pangeality Productions. The series showcases each piece of their impressive operation. The main video introduces NWG’s team of agents (12 of the 17 of whom are in the top 1% of brokers in WA, and #1 in sales volume per broker in WA), celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit behind the brand, giving perspective buyers and sellers a sense of who they’ll be working with and the values that form the foundation of the company. Other videos showcased their commitment to community, outlined their ‘Signature’ platform for taking listings to market, featured previous client testimonials, and highlighted individual property listings and neighborhoods. Each month we roll out a new video in the series focusing on a different facet of their business.
NYC based Star Chefs hired Pangeality Productions to film 2 videos at Spur Gastro Pub in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Star Chefs was holding the Seattle edition of their Rising Star Awards, a giant gala event at McCaw Hall, and Spur chef Jeff Vance and bartender Seth Sempere were 2 of their awardees. The awards celebrate up-and-coming chefs and culinary professionals, who represent the vanguard of the contemporary American dining scene. ‘They have strong, compelling culinary philosophies and are committed to fostering a culinary community by sharing their knowledge with fellow professionals’. On the day before the big event, we filmed Vance preparing a rabbit liver paté dish, and Sempere creating a ‘Searider Falcon’ cocktail with ground satsuma peel and kefir leaf. This particular series was sponsored by Vitamix and both recipes involved extensive use of the machine, which i learned had a long history in American cooking, that included being the subject of the very first ever infomercial, as the first ever product filmed for TV. It’s also considered the industry standard best blender on the market.
Over the years Pangeality Productions has worked with The NW Pollution Prevention Resource Center on a variety of projects. Recently we wrapped work in support of their Safer Alternatives for the Automotive Industry online video training curriculum. The training curriculum focuses on helping automotive owners and technicians learn about safer alternatives, best management practices in a repair shop, and how to green your operations.
Incentive for the training comes from the fact that commonly-used cleaners in an automotive shop can be dangerous to your health and to the environment. In addition, many operations within an automotive shop (floor cleanup, antifreeze replacement, etc.) can lead to the mismanagement and misapplication of products and, therefore, may cause serious compliance issues for businesses. Therefore it’s important for owners and technicians in an automotive repair shop to be informed of the chemicals contained in the products they use as well as requiring good working habits to reduce liability and improve the business’s bottom line.
With that in mind and in partnership with the WA Dept of Ecology, The City of Seattle, Seattle City Light, and Swedish Automotive, PPRC produced a multimedia training curriculum offered free online to help any automotive related business to green their opeation. Check out the training on the PPRC website here http://pprc.org/index.php/2015/pprc/auto/
City of Seattle Vehicle Fleet Maintenance Facility Tour
Vehicle Painting Facility on City of Seattle Vehicle Fleet Maintenance Facility Tour
City of Seattle Vehicle Fleet Maintenance Facility Tour
Brand New Harley Davidson Police Motorcycles Ready to Enter Service
City of Seattle Vehicle Fleet Maintenance Facility Tour
City of Seattle Vehicle Fleet Maintenance Facility Tour
For the past 6 years Pangeality Productions has filmed and produced the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild’s annual Green Building Slam. The slam is 10 juried presenters giving 10 minute talks about their project featuring 10 slides each. The event is held at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall and growing each year in size is, now fills the room to almost capacity with close to 500 people in the crowd. Each year it’s an impressive variety of projects that span the green building spectrum of commercial and residential construction, from passive solar homes to cargo container accessory dwelling units (ADU). Regional green builders, architects, designers, planners, policy makers and people generally curious about green building gather to enjoy some tasty food and drinks, networking and great presentations. After recording the event, Pangeality Productions edits each video, integrating the slides in, adding logos and titles and making them available to both the presenter and the Northwest Ecobuilding Guild. Over time, the presentations have become a treasure trove of information highlighting and celebrating the evolution of the region’s green building leadership worldwide.
These were 4 of my favorite presentations from the event
April Lane’s Home Cleaning Seattle Link service is consistently one of the best house cleaning companies in Seattle and Bellevue. Their business is so in demand that they maintain a waiting list of homeowners wanting their services, because they can’t hire qualified cleaners fast enough. So when ALHC sought to hire new cleaners, they knew using video as a tool to find and recruit the right people was an efficient and effective method. What impresses me most about ALHC and we worked to reflect in the video series, is the approach the ownership takes toward supporting it’s employees. Beyond extensive paid training, they believe that happy healthy employees make for the best employees. One piece of that support is a program called ‘Spoil Me’ dollars, in which full time employees without missed days get monthly stipend cash that they can only used toward taking care of or spoiling themselves. That can be a massage, concert tickets, clothing, eating out or any other way in which they spend the money on themselves. There’s also ‘Spoil My Car’ dollars that go well beyond typical $/mile stipends. But more than additional stipends, it’s an overall culture of supporting employees physical and emotional well being, building community among the staff, and seeking to know and support they’re people in all ways.
Livable Greenlake is a community organization representing East Greenlake. Recently they’ve rallied to oppose a proposed 45 unit apartment complex that will provide only 13 subcompact parking spaces. Pangeality Productions was hired to record a public meeting convened with representatives of the City of Seattle Department of Planning and Development. Event planners invited people to ‘learn about the developer-paid traffic and parking study that Seattle DPD is supposed to review, listen to nearby business owners talk about the impact on their businesses and futures, and hear the stories of local residents who already struggle to find parking on their own street.’ It’s my understanding that the city was willing to allow this proposed project based on the proximity to East Greenlake being a transit hub, access to multiple buses and future Roosevelt light rail station therefor allowing new units to be built without designated parking as a way of increasing density. It’s a real Catch 22 as to whether or not allowing this type of development has the intended consequence of reducing reliance on automobiles or whether or not new owners simply park on street, leading to further congestion in areas such as this.
When we visit my wife’s family in Guadalajara Mexico around New Years, I love to visit this market almost daily. We stay with my sister in law who lives close by and I love to go for some fresh green juice aka ‘Agua Versace’ that you see in the end of the piece, eat corn cake and Mexican popsicles called palletas. This tradition has been on for close to the last 15 years and by now I have a friendship with the 3 generations of women in the juice shop. They’ve had their business there for 62 years now and the matriarch, daughters and granddaughter work together side by side. I am also friends with a few of the vendor’s who surround them including the one who tastes the soup, is making the chile rellenos and the 2 sisters together smiling in the clip toward the end. I love the vibrancy of the scene, the informality, the fresh food, the variety and overall positive vibes and what feels like an old school market of which there are fewer and fewer as time passes. The soundtrack is by two musicians who happened to be entertaining diners at the moment I was there that day. I shot this latest video one afternoon on my iphone and look forward to sharing it with them.
I recently returned from Puerto Vallarta where I was working on a series of tourism and travel promotion videos for a beachfront hotel there in connection with a Sammamish, WA based travel company that works primarily in Mexico. They were interested in promoting their property, and specifically their wedding services and hired Pangeality Productions to shoot some aerial footage of their grounds, building, beach area, wedding ceremony and reception. It was a blast coordinating with the wedding party who was pleasantly surprised that they’d be getting the complimentary service. Pangeality Productions has worked extensively in the tourism and travel industry around the world. Visit our page here for more info http://www.pangealityproductions.com/services/travel/
You can see some of the clips featured here in our Drone Video demo reel.
It was great to be recently contacted by a Houston based arts and advocacy nonprofit organization Vox Culture Link whose mission is ‘to connect the Houston community to social causes in creative ways’. They’d reached out to me to ask permission to include a short video I’d done as a part of an event that they were using to open up a yearlong focus on refugees in the Houston community.
My piece was about Seattle’s Bhutanese Refugee Community. I’d told the story of one newly arrived family that included a visit to the refugee camp in Nepal where they’d lived for the past 17 years, showing the cultural training they go through prior to departure, medical screenings, and the actual journey. Then to their new lives here in Seattle, their housing, jobs and assimilation experiences. With lots of misconceptions and lack of information about refugee resettlement overall in the US, and the Syrian refugee crisis dominating the news, they saw my piece as a good tool for educating Americans about what this process actually looks and feels like.
Back in 2009, I’d done a series of stories for my local TV station the Seattle Channel, connecting Seattle and Nepal. This was one of 3 stories, the other 2 being about a local nonprofit who works to battle the stigma of disability in Nepal, and another was about a young Tibetan monk who’d left his family in Seattle at a young age to follow in the family’s long lineage as a revered Buddhist teacher. The disability story was eventually nominated for a regional Emmy award.
From their inquiry: The goal of our 2016 series, Connecting our Local and Global Neighbors, is to engage in a deeper conversation on the subject of refugees. Vox Culture will launch the series with an event featuring short films and an open dialogue session on topics related to Houston, refugees, and how we can work together towards the improvement and continued development of our own community. Please note that we are expecting around the range of 50-100 people (combination of our volunteers, community partners, and interested members of the public) in attendance, and that WE WILL NOT be charging our audience members NOR asking for any donations pertaining to the specific event. We would like to use this specific film as part of a point of general discussion that is to follow.
Vox Culture, Houston based arts and advocacy nonprofit opening yearlong refugee focus with Pangeality Productions video about Seattle refugee population
I’ve been working on a short documentary promotional piece with Seattle based visual artist Jonathan Clarren. He approached me with an interest in showcasing his work, specifically his sculpture pieces. The idea was a documentary short for architects, designers and developers in the planning stages of designing buildings and both interior and exterior spaces to have an opportunity to learn about his work, his process, and the materials he creates with. His goal is to connect with the right people, to get commissioned to build large scale art installations.
At first, we did a series of shoots at his home studio, where he works with wood, glass, paints on large canvases and smaller metal projects. We also shot at a metal studio at the soon to be demolished Fenpro Building in Ballard where he’s piecing together a huge metal sphere that will hang on the side of a building. The building is part of a construction trend in Ballard, and will be replaced by a $50 million+ Nordic Heritage Museum. It was amazing being in a hive of studios that will soon cease to exist, erasing a piece of Ballard art history and an enclave of industrial creativity. Jon has been working with Denny in this metal studio over the years to produce a variety of large scale metal sculptures he’s created.
The studio was an incredibly visually rich environment, with metal pieces strewn about, sparks flying, gritty tools everywhere, and the freedom to climb around and get unique angles as they worked their craft. Denny was rocking the metal lathe, and Jon was standing on top of a table, assembling the half sphere comprised of strips of elaborately carved metal in his signature keyhole pattern (see video below).
Seattle Artist Jonathan Clarren Assembling a Metal Sculpture
Metal Studio Panorama in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Sculpture Pieces Scattered Around a Metal Studio at Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Seattle Artist Jon Clarren at Work in Fenpro Metal Art Studio
Seattle Artist Jonathan Clarren Assembling a Metal Sculpture
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Pieces of a Jon Clarren Metal Sculpture Await Assembly
Random items decorate a metal arts studio in the Fenpro building in Ballard, Seattle
Random items decorate a metal arts studio in the Fenpro building in Ballard, Seattle
Random items decorate a metal arts studio in the Fenpro building in Ballard, Seattle
Seattle Artist Jonathan Clarren Assembling a Metal Sculpture
Metal Worker Denny Sports Old School Lathe Manual at His Studio in Fenpro Building, Ballard, Seattle
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Seattle Artist Jonathan Clarren Assembling a Metal Sculpture
Seattle Artist Jonathan Clarren Assembling a Metal Sculpture
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Artist Denny Working a Lathe in His Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Pieces of a Jon Clarren Metal Sculpture Await Assembly
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Assorted Tools and Machinery in a Metal Studio in Fenpro Building in Ballard, Seattle
Old School Metal Lathe Manual in Fenpro Building Studio, Ballard, Seattle
This is a short video I made of Jon doddling in this signature style. Eventually these patterns get translated into materials that get sculpted into original pieces. Continue reading
I recently had the opportunity to film a lecture given by a dear friend. Tori Karpenko’s exhibit ‘The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ at the Traver Gallery in Seattle is a uniquely beautiful collection of paintings, spread around a to scale model of an actual forest fire lookout. Tori built the lookout in Twisp WA where he lives, and reconstructed inside the downtown Seattle art gallery. In the wake of his divorce and his young son moving 4 hours away, he sought solace from the emotional crisis in the North Cascades mountains. In his words, “The vast silence of raw wilderness gave me a place to bring calm to a troubled mind. Empowering solitude led me to the stories of three poets; Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac, who spent summers in the 1950’s as fire lookouts experiencing their own profound personal transformations. The simple Lookout cabin, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic hermitages, became a crystalized form that could encapsulate the sanctuary that I too found in the high peaks.” On this special night in mid December, Tori discussed his collection of paintings which were anchored in the gallery by the lookout itself, landscapes of the local mt wilderness, familiar to hikers of this region, heavy on reflective lakes and streams, the foliage and geology of our local mountains where I too love to spend time hiking and backpacking. This particular night had a focus on poetry, with Tori reading some of the beat poetry he was inspired by and special guest Saul Weisberg, the co-founder and executive director of the North Cascades Institute Link reading some of his own poetry and reflecting on his own journey in the North Cascades over time and the poetry and prose it inspired in him. It was a lovely night, a full house with a lively QnA that I was happy to have recorded on video, to help Tori tell his story and promote his work, and the lecture simply as a beautiful portrait of an artist.
‘The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ exhibit of artist Tori Karpenko at The Traver Gallery in Seattle
Saul Weisberg, co-founder and Executive Director of North Cascades Institute reading poetry at ‘The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ exhibit of artist Tori Karpenko at The Traver Gallery in Seattle
The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ exhibit of artist Tori Karpenko at The Traver Gallery in Seattle
Saul Weisberg, co-founder and Executive Director of North Cascades Institute reading poetry at ‘The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ exhibit of artist Tori Karpenko at The Traver Gallery in Seattle
The Lookout – Solace in Mountain Solitude’ exhibit of artist Tori Karpenko at The Traver Gallery in Seattle
