The Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center is assisting businesses, government and nonprofits with practical solutions for economic and environmental vitality. It’s a nonprofit organization that works to research and produce high quality, unbiased pollution prevention (P2) information, in order to promote environmental protection through pollution prevention. PPRC believes that environmental and economic vitality go hand in hand, and that both are necessary to protect the high quality of life enjoyed in our region. It’s this unique position that enables PPRC to be available to sometimes adversarial parties who need to work together but often find it challenging to both share their challenges and problems openly while also working within the confines of the laws and regulations. They do impressive work that has truly meaningful impacts and consequences.
Over the past few years we’ve worked together on a number of video projects and I’ve always enjoyed the work we’ve done together. Specifically I’ve enjoyed making visits to the sites where we film, to port facilities, solar installations, factories and other industrial and manufacturing locations. I especially enjoyed when working on the Zinc in stormwater project, getting the chance to film in the skies above Seattle to highlight the proximity of industry and potential pollution sources all along the Duwamish River corridor. Each year PPRC hosts a regional roundtable to bring together players in the Pollution Prevntion (P2) sector to network and share around the issues and challenges they’re working to address. This year PPRC hired Pangeality Productions to put together a year in review video to open the conference at a downtown hotel. The video highlights PPRC’s ongoing work on the Solarize Bellevue campaign, The Green Sports Directory, their work with WA craft breweries, spray and paint efficiency trainings, and their wildly successful Fats, Oils, and Grease (FOG) program. I was also onhand to film the keynote speech and other related workshops. It’s always special to stand in the back of a packed room and see your work projected live onto a big screen. I look forward to more wiork together in the years to come.
Excited to share the new Pangeality Productions website. With gratitude to my friends who helped to make it happen, including Peter Levin who wrote the demo music and William Washington who helped bring the freshness. And to Michelle Kilmer of KilmerHansen who built the site.
I’ve been working for a while to bring it out and am feeling good about releasing it into the world. Welcome and enjoy, and thanks for your continued support of Pangeality Productions. – Len Davis
One of my favorite recent projects has been working with Scott Meyers of Sweet Grass Farm on Lopez Island here in NW Washington state. SGF is raising Kobe Wagyu beef, that is considered by local chefs and food writers to be some of the best beef in the world. I spent some time on the farm with Scott on 2 separate trips, both times shooting b-roll around the pasture, and speaking on such a wide variety of topics including water conservation, bovine terminology, grasslands management, seasonal care, birth and calving, slaughter, and so much more. SGF mainly direct markets their beef, so the majority of their product goes to families in the region who they sell directly to with no middle man. They also sell to a few select markets and restaurants but the vast majority is straight to the consumer, where they don’t slaughter any animals who haven’t already been accounted for before hand. For me, this type of marketing video is the most clear expression of what Pangeality Productions is best at- giving you the ability to connect with your customers in an authentic voice, telling your story and sharing your values. Segments that came out of the project which SGF now uses in their marketing include The Best Steak Ever? Why I Call Myself a Farmer and Not a Rancher, What’s In a 30lb Box, and Ear Tagging and Selenium Injection. This is a short video that gives the best overview of the work I produced for Sweet Grass Farm, and here is a testimonial that Scott did for Pangeality Productions, discussing how this approach of creating a series of short videos that each stood as it’s own video worked to reach, educate and entertain their customers. We’ve still got another hand full of videos in the pipeline but these were the first set that Scott chose to roll out.
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.
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.
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 spoke about how the stories came about, the stages of production and actually telling these stories, and the trip overall. The dialogue went great, and people seemed moved by the variety and depth of the stories. As I stood in back of the crowd watching along with them, I was impressed and proud at the quality of the stories and the variety of issues they dealt with. Being in a travel bookstore, it was the perfect mix of tourism and sharing of a destination with folks in a socio-cultural investigation that asks one to look at their understanding of both cultures. WWB&M holds similar lectures every Tuesday night.
On Friday, the New York Times ran this article about the city of Seattle and what kind of place it is for raising children. In the article was a link to Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s new Youth & Families Initiative, which I just happened to have finished the video for earlier in the week. Our initial plan was to wait til next week to roll it out, but with the link and increased attention to the initiative, they decided to make the video live that day. It was an exciting synchronicity for me. I was pleased with the way the piece turned out and felt like it really captured the energy in the room, and the broad spectrum of Seattleites who were participating in the conversation. I felt like NYT readers or visitors to the Youth and Families website could get a real sense of what the actually took place at initiative events , and that ideally they’d be moved to get involved in helping to make Seattle a healthier, more equitable community.
