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.
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.
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
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.
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 attended the screening of the world premier of the Nepali film Serdhak – The Golden Hill at SIFF, The Seattle International Film Festival. Following the QnA, I scooped up the young filmmakers, director and star/writer for some Seattle love beyond downtown and their hotel room. Over the years, I’ve visited Nepal 6 times living there for roughly a year and a half and speak almost fluent Nepali. I felt it my responsibility to host these young guys and share my city with them. We went down to Mertle Edwards Park on the Seattle waterfront and enjoyed a gentle breeze and beautiful sunset on a warm night in late May. This is a spontaneous interview we did discussing the making of the film. Follow their progress as the film begins screening internationally at https://www.facebook.com/SerdhakTheFilm Our interview:
Excited to announce that one of our videos recently won an honorable mention in the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable’s MVP2 awards for our film ‘Zinc in Stormwater: Galvanizing Business Solutions’. The awards are designed to recognize outstanding and innovative pollution prevention (P2) projects/programs judged on the 5 criteria: innovation, measurable results, transferability, commitment, and optimization of available project resources. The overall focus is on projects that demonstrate source reduction activities.
“The video provides context to the issue of zinc pollution by showing how the metal leaches into stormwater from many different sources. Because zinc comes from so many places, no one solution is likely to suffice for any business. Businesses need to carefully assess the sources of the metal and then implement a variety of site-specific solutions.”
The film was produced in connection with The Pollution Prevention Resource Center, and funded by a grant from The Russell Family Foundation. Increasingly, a number of commercial properties were not meeting the necessary benchmarks outlined by the WA Dept of Ecology and this video is meant to assist those entity’s efforts in getting into compliance following BMPs set forth by others regionally. See earlier blog posts for photos and more info.
Over the years I’ve done a variety of work with Puget Sound/Seattle area salmon fishermen, helping them to use video as a tool to share their story. Some of that content is now featured in a CCTV report about fish consumption worldwide. CCTV America is the American arm of China Central Television of Beijing. Based in Washington D.C., producing daily English language programming for a global audience. The content shows salmon being caught in Puget Sound, and unloaded at Fishermen’s Terminal for sale in Seattle area markets and farmers markets. For more info visit LokiFish and Puget Sound Salmon Commission.
14 years ago I was a young filmmaker with a dream job. I was getting paid to wander the streets of Chicago collecting stories with a video camera. It was part of the CITY 2000 project that my good friend Jon Lowenstein had pulled me in to. Chicago In The Year 2000 was the vision of billionaire philanthropist Gary Comer, the owner of Land’s End clothing company. Inspired by the depression era WPA photos of Dorothea Lange and others, his vision was to capture what life was like in the City of Chicago in the Year 2000. He hired a group of full time photographers of which my friend Jon was one, and a small number of videographers that set out to document the city over the course of 12 months. The collection was a gift to the city and is now an archive housed at the Health Sciences Special Collections at The University of Illinois at Chicago that includes over 100 hours of video I filmed in neighborhoods throughout Chicago.
At the end of the year, there was a video that was produced to screen at a show at the Chicago Cultural Center on January 1st, 2001. That video will be shown again at the Chicago Cultural Center this week as part of a larger screening of Chicago documentaries.
Below are two of the stories I filmed that were included in the piece.
“I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars in my pocket, and I still can’t get a fucking cab”
PCC (Puget Consumer Co-op) is turning 60 years old in 2014 and Pangeality Productions has been hired to produce the video celebrating this great legacy. What began in a household basement as a food-buying club of 15 families in 1953, is today the largest consumer-owned natural food retail co-operative in the United States, with $200 million+ in sales last year at 9 Puget Sound area stores. The videos will combine a huge collection of archival footage, old newsletters and articles from local print media, membership cards from over the years, interviews with various people who’ve contributed to the success. I’ll also be shooting footage from a variety of their stores and operations, highlighting their farmland conservancy program, cooking classes and other community initiatives. PCC is opening new stores in Greenlake in June this year and in Columbia City in 2015.
I had the pleasure of working with award-winning, internationally acclaimed performance group Theater Simple. They hired me to film a few of their performances of what they call their ricochet off of Norman Lear’s poem Owl & Pussycat. They had originally debuted the show at the Seattle Fringe Festival, but the performances I filmed were a roving production in the beautiful gardens of the Ballard Locks, and at Bumbershoot. At the locks, the production was staged in motion, with the audience following along as the performers lead children and families with a mobile set singing and playing. ‘Utilizing Shakespearean couplets, songs, four actors, and a pea green boat, Owl & Pussycat’s escapades illuminate a love of adventure and some adventures of love. Fur, feathers and puns fly. (Pigs will not.)’. It was a sweet change of pace for me workwise and the kind of performance I’d love to bring my own young son to, in a gorgeous Seattle park on a warm summer day, high imagination with live music and funky costumery. Theater Simple has been performing at international festivals around the world for over 20 years. I look forward to their productions in 2014.
Owl & Pussycat performance at Bumbershoot
Owl & Pussycat performance by Theater Simple at Seattle
Crowd following the action during Owl & Pussycat performance by Theater Simple at Seattle
Owl & Pussycat performance by Theater Simple at Seattle
Owl & Pussycat performance by Theater Simple at Seattle
Owl & Pussycat performance by Theater Simple at Seattle
I’m thrilled to announce that a story I did for the Seattle Channel program City Stream has been nominated for an Emmy award in the human interest category. The story is a piece about sustainable fishing in Puget Sound, and profiles friend and client Pete Knutson of Loki Fish. I shot and edited the piece, working together with producer Penny Legate who wrote and voiced the story. Last year I was nominated twice, but unfortunately didn’t bring home the award. Hoping this year will be different. I continue to produce stories for the Seattle Channel, mostly focusing on green and environmental issues. Recent stories include how Safeco and Qwest Fields are composting their food scraps and packaging, teaching organic gardening in public housing at Yesler Terrace, a profile of Sustainable West Seattle, a new housing and commercial development along N. Rainier Ave, and others. Most of these videos can be found on other parts of this site or on our Vimeo channel linked to in the bottom left corner of the front page of this website.
Last week I spent the day filming for an upcoming Seattle Channel story about more scientific approaches to community policing. The idea involves using very specific data analysis to more effectively appropriate limited resources toward reducing crime. City Council member Tim Burgess’ office was hosting a group of academics from the George Mason University who’ve been analyzing Seattle crime data over a period of time and were in town to present to the city council based on their findings. The morning shoot involved a short round table discussion at the Casey Family Foundation offices at the corner of 23rd and Union, a former Central District ‘hot spot’ that has recently successfully brought down the local crime problem. The round table was followed by a neighborhood tour to 4 local businesses, where the owners spoke briefly to the group about their own individual relationship with the community, and the police, and told their story of how things had progressed and changed over the past few years, from recent implementation of the ‘Drug Market Initiative’ to gentrification’s impact on the neighborhood, and a hand full of other themes. The businesses included a coffee shop, a restaurant, a neighborhood cinema, and another multipurpose business. The best part of the day was the ride along with Lieutenant Joel Guay. Together with my producer, we cruised the East Precinct, which includes in his words “everything from billionaires who live in Madison Park to indigent crack smokers who live in the area known as the jungle.” The East precinct stretches from St Mark’s Cathedral in N. Capitol Hill to Dearborn Ave. in the south, Lake Washington to the East, i5 to the west, and everything in between. It was a pretty amazing tour, as I sat contorted in the front passenger seat between the dashboard mounted laptop and the window, attempting to get a good profile angle of him as he drove, with the streetscape passing behind him through the window, the outdoor exposure constantly shifting as we cruised and I tried to maintain a solid shot. That was followed by interviews in the City Council chambers with councilmember Burgess who’s a former police officer, and a former detective and special victim’s unit officer from the Baltimore police who is now a PhD candidate at George Mason involved in doing the research. A great way to spend a day learning about our city from a completely different perspective. Air date is June 2nd on Chanel 21 in Seattle.
