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
Did some work this week with local nonprofit Climate Solutions, filming events associated with WA Gov Jay Inslee’s Climate Tour stops in Seattle’s South Park and Beacon Hill neighborhoods. At first, I was among the broadcast news outlets basically running ahead of the governor, trying to get shots of him being lead on a quick neighborhood tour before meeting with community leaders and local residents first at the South Park community Center then at the Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill. Both meetings dealing with the impact of climate change on low income communities and local environmental concerns.
Gov Inslee in South Park at a children’s playground next to the adjacent freeway.
Somali community leader addressing WA Gov Jay Inslee at South Park Community Center in Seattle on WA Climate Tour.
Gov Inslee at South Park Community Center listening to residents and community leaders talk about air pollution and other environmental concerns.
Seattle Chief Sealth High School students presenting their work to WA Gov Jay Inslee at South park Community Center
WA Gov Jay Inslee meeting with community leaders at Climate Tour stop at Centro de la Raza in Seattle.
Spent a day this week filming at the Port of Port Townsend on a storm water project with Seattle based nonprofit PPRC (Pollution Prevention Resource Center). The project is about sharing best management practice regarding removing heavy metals from surface water before it drains into Puget Sound, our regional body of water, and with this site specifically at maritime facilities. Specifically zinc, is present in tires, roofing and siding, gutters, paint, fencing, pressure treated lumber and so many other materials and products found in a typical setting like this. Ironic that the material used to protect against the elements, in this case rust in the marine environment, is the main polluter. So the pollution sources are both the marine vessel maintenance and the on site buildings themselves. It was quite fascinating to learn about the port of Port Townsend being the only remaining DIY port in the state of Washington and the battle to maintain that character and access, which means allowing boat operators to work on their own boats in the facility 24/7. To my surprise that is apparently unheard of in this day and age and the battle to do so is both an importantly held value there, and a top reason for the presence of a high volume of heavy metals in their stormwater that they’re responsible for before it returns to sea. We spent most of the day with the environmental compliance officer whose role it is to police the work being done in the port, and make sure the rules and regulations are being enforced, specifically around things like whether people who are sanding their boats before painting have the proper vacuum attached to their sander to limit the airborne dust, where the toxic chemicals removed from the hulls of ships are draining to, as well as the installation of proper downspouts on the gutters of the port’s warehouse and maintenance buildings. One sound bite that stuck with me from the interview with our host were the challenges of bridging the two worlds- that he had the credibility of having worked in the maritime trade for many years himself, but enforcing the environmental rules with a lot of salty dogs not too happy to have him around looking over their shoulders and ‘seeing those same guys at community BBQs and events in ‘a county of only 37,000 people’…
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.
One of the ways that I wanted to be reaching out to potential new clients is by sharing the experiences that some of my best clients in the green and sustainable business sectors have had working with Pangeality Productions, and then to use those testimonials on my website, YouTube channel and Facebook Fan Page. I wanted to hear about how the actual production process worked for them, how they felt about the finished product, and the feedback and engagement they’ve had with the videos since they began integrating them into their online presence. I was grateful that they were willing to participate and really quite pleased with what I was hearing about how our work was working for them and their businesses. Thanks again to Susan Thoman, Marketing and Outreach Director for Cedar Grove Composting, Pete Knutson, Owner of Loki Fish, and Mary Rose, Executive Director of The Network for Business Innovation and Sustainability.
My dear friend Catherine Burke is the market manager for the Columbia City Farmers Market, my neighborhood market that I love and regularly patronize (you may remember her from thegoat birth video and others I’ve produced). Well theNeighborhood Farmers Market Alliance is having their big annual fundraiser ‘An Incredible Feast‘ which raises money to support both the market’s educational programs and outreach as well as the Good Farmer Fund, a fund dedicated to supporting farmers in need in case of flood or fire, family emergency or other special situations that require immediate financial assistance. Catherine and I were having dinner recently in my garden when she asked me about producing a short video to help publicize the event. So I did, in this case in exchange for a few tickets to the feast, not quite a 100% donation but definitely a heavily discounted contribution to an organization doing great work, hosting markets all over that contribute to a great sense of community throughout this wonderful city while providing delicious organic produce and other healthy locally grown and produced foods. The feast partners individual farms with chefs from great local restaurants for a special night of community and joy with awesome local food, live music and other prizes and games. Click here for more information about ‘An Incredible Feast’, which is happening soon on Sunday August 22nd. Get your tickets now. Hope to see you there.
Leaving a party at the home of legendary photographer Art Wolfe in West Seattle, I assumed the fancy red sports car across the street from my 1992 Honda Accord with 202,000 miles was a Ferrari and belonged to a guest of the party. But it didn’t, and it wasn’t a Ferrari, it was a Tesla Roadster and it belonged to his neighbor Lance who was standing on the sidewalk with his wife and young son. I began asking him some questions about it, not sure why I even knew the name. But as we got into it, I took out my camera to make a video as it turned out he was a Tesla Roadster salesman with all the details. Apparently the car, all electric with a super beautiful body does 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds and is made out of carbon fiber (what they’re using to make new planes with), which according to him is 4 times stronger than steel and 1/4 the weight, and goes 250 miles on one charge. After explaining all of the technology and design elements, we hopped in the car and took it for a spin in the neighborhood on Fauntleroy Ave in residential West Seattle, where Lance proceeded to punch it into hyperspace a few times with it’s insane acceleration. Check out this video tour I made of this incredible car, which at $110,000 (no sales tax as there are no emissions) remains a ridiculously expensive car but according to Lance, this is the forefront of incredible new electric vehicle technology with a goal of introducing non sports car sedans and subcompact lines in the coming years at much lower prices. There are currently 1,300 of the vehicle on the road and roughly 60 in the Pacific Northwest alone.
Via my work with The Seattle Channel, I’ve just learned that we won a NATOA Award, commonly referred to as the Emmys of government television. The Government Programming Awards (GPAs) are annual awards that recognize excellence in broadcast, cable, multimedia and electronic programming produced by local government agencies, in this case The City of Seattle. The piece was the story about Rob Rose and his organization The Rose International Fund for Children and their work on behalf of young people with disabilities in Nepal, and the movement to battle the stigma of disability in Nepal and South Asia. We won’t know until September whether we won the category or not, but the nomination itself is an award as all nominations are given recognition for their work. There will be an awards banquet in Washington D.C. in early October. Very cool.
I got a call late one afternoon recently from my client Cedar Grove Composting to ask me to come film some footage of a special project they were working on. Together with the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities, Cedar Grove Composting was involved in trying to save a very special tree. The giant Sequoia tree is in the heart of downtown Seattle at the corner of 4th and Stewart, that was originally planted on Aurora Avenue, but was relocated in 1972. The tree is also the official Christmas Tree downtown every year. Over the years, the tree continued to grow but recently, birds had infested it and their droppings were both damaging the soil below as well as the canopy was slowly becoming covering with their acidic poop. Not sure about how to save the tree, SDOT approached international tree specialist James Urban, author of the book Up By Roots who had been in Seattle recently and paid the tree a house call, diagnosing the problem and prescribing the solution that this group eventually implemented.
So using an air spade to blow out vertical holes and a giant sucker truck to take the dirt away, a number of 4 ft deep vertical columns were dug around the base of the tree, and filled with fresh compost donated by Cedar Grove. Better irrigation and gas flow to the roots was the goal to supplement the pruning they’d already done.
Here is the video I produced about the work.
From Aurora Ave N. to Downtown
Sequoia on Aurora before being transplanted, 1972
Placing the tree downtown at 4th and Stewart, Seattle
My work with client Cedar Grove Composting continues to be a great relationship as I’ve enjoyed producing a variety of videos for them that both showcase their products and educate their customers among other things. With this project, the goal was to take what was currently a rather boring page on their website about their soil products, that only had a few photos and descriptions and links to other pages, and replace that with a handful of dynamic short videos that give real information to Seattle area gardeners. The videos are about horticulture, aesthetic, technique, quantity, timing and so much more in integrating Cedar Grove compost, booster blend, top soil, vegetable mix and other soil products into one’s gardens and landscaping. The videos were then uploaded to their YouTube Channel, and from there embedded onto the appropriate pages on their website. So much clearer and more useful than a boring text only page could ever be. To see the videos, visit their YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/CedarGroveCompost
As I’ve frequented the Seattle farmer’s market scene over the past decade, I’d always seen Loki Fish Company and sometimes bought smoked salmon from them. Since I moved to the Rainier Valley, Columbia City has been my market though my wife and I also like to go to West Seattle some times as well. At one point I signed up for Loki’s newsletter and began checking out their online store, then one day last year I approached Loki and asked them about their interest in having me produce some online videos for them in exchange for salmon. As a small family business that was ecologically oriented and hyper local, with the desire to increase the visibility for online shoppers to find their smoked salmon and other awesome products, they immediately recognized the benefits both sharing their story and SEO (search engine optimization-wise) to be had by growing a video presence.
So Pete and Dylan came over to my studio one day to discuss the arrangement and the next week I was out with them on Puget Sound filming them fishing for salmon one fall night. Floating in Elliot Bay on a gorgeously clear late September afternoon into the evening, over a few beers and some salmon bellies, it came out that Dylan and I were both Pitzer College graduates which was another positive layer in the relationship. It was the first time I’d been on a boat in Puget Sound and also my first time on a small commercial fishing boat and it was wild. We left Fishermen’s Terminal which Pete’s been fighting to preserve (discussed in the piece) around 4pm and returned some time around 3 AM, picking up Dylan along the way at Shilshole Bay Marina. It was a great night.
Months later, I connected with Pete and Dylan who were on vacation together in Kathmandu at the same time I was there filming stories for the Seattle Channel connecting Seattle and Nepal. We had some great dinner with a Nepali father and son with deep connections to Pitzer, Nepali archeologist and scholar Mukunda Aryal and his son Trailokya who went to Pitzer as well. With The Seattle Channel’s focus on telling local green stories, profiling Loki in this piece was an easy choice, with a long history of local involvement, keen insight into regional environmental issues related to the ocean and beyond, and much more as Pete is also an anthropology professor at Seattle Central Community College(great link to how Pete’s students feel about his classes). So the piece uses some of the material I shot back working on the profiles for the Loki website combined with some new interview footage with Pete and archival footage from BJ Bullert’s 2001 documentary about the struggle for Fishermen’s Terminal. It’s a solid piece, nice mix of profile, insight, and inspiration. It was also great to work again with Penny Legate who wrote and reported the piece. You can find Loki selling at the University District, Columbia City, and West Seattle farmer’s markets or online at LokiFish.com or watch 11 more videos about their business on their Vimeo channel.
Dining in Kathmandu w/ the Knutsons of Loki Fish, the Aryals of Nepali Intelligencia, and Steve Brothers of Himalayan Mercantile/BMX Society
I spent the bulk of the day filming the GoGreen 2010 conference at the Hyatt downtown yesterday, then in the evening had 4th row seats on the first base line courtesy of Cedar Grove to watch our new composting video on the jumbotron during the Earth Day game. It was an awesome day. From world leaders in sustainability of both global corporations and small local businesses, to mad networking with all kinds of great folks, Go Green was a success. Pangeality Productions had cameras in the main ballroom where the plenary and larger sessions were and in the other conference room where additional sessions were held throughout the day. We also had a booth with a monitor screening pangeatice visuals and pieces I’d produced on the green business front scrolling through all day. Made lots of connections with local green businesses and topped the night off with awesome seats at Safeco with my wife, brother and his baseball crazy 7 year old son.
This weekend Seattle will play host to Honkfest West, the 3rd annual festival of acoustic, mobile street bands from across North America. Over 20 bands are coming to Seattle from across the U.S. and Canada to rock the house. Friday night there’ll be a block party in Fremont where I’ll be projecting global pangeatic images onto the Fremont Outdoor Cinema screen. Saturday afternoon the party moves to the Central District, Saturday night Honkfest will close down Airport Way and rock Georgetown, and Sunday there’ll be multiple stages in West Seattle. It’s going to be a serious party. All free and all outdoors. Drum corps from the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders will be sharing the scene with radical brass bands with names like Bolting Brassicas and Orkestra Slivovica. It should be an incredibly good time and the weather report is looking good. Hope to see you out there.
This week I’ll be a guest together with the Rizal family on KBCS’s program Voices of Diversity. The Rizal’s are the Bhutanese Refugee family featured in the story I did last year for the Seattle Channel that told the story of their journey from a refugee camp in SE Nepal to Seattle’s Rainier Valley. Living in the camp for 18 years after being forced out of Bhutan, the UN and various countries recently moved to resettle the community of 110,000 to new countries, the vast majority coming to areas scattered across the United States. Khem is one of 4 brothers that I originally met when driving down Rainier Avenue one afternoon in the late summer of 2008, recognizing them by their Nepali hats (I speak somewhat fluent Nepali after having lived there for a year and a half spread out over 15 years). A year and half later we have become friends and I’ve remained connected to their community, helping to connect them with resources and jobs, and taking groups on occasional walks to Seward Park. Khem and his brother Krishna celebrated election night 2008 at our house with friends, and I was fortunate enough to witness he and his brother Mani’s wedding celebration to 2 sisters recently. Right now the thing their steadily growing community needs are jobs. They are lovely people who need opportunities. If you have any work or leads, please get in touch with me. Listen to the archived radio program here.
