April 2009

Just finished a hairy but gratifying episode of Intervention. Often the addicts are only too willing to accept treatment, but as soon as the family "intervened" this heroin addict took the family on a cross-Pittsburgh footrace that involved fistfights, stakeouts, and the family attempting to intervene on a crowded subway car.

Will be doing another Intervention soon. Also should be shooting some of the last interviews for the Participant/Lawrence Bender/Lucy Walker documentary at the end of the month.

Feb 2009

I'll be traveling to Tuscany to shoot a followup to last season's premiere episode of Intervention about Chad, who has now kicked crack and is racing for an elite Italian bike team.

January 2009

Principal photography on the Untitled Documentary for Participant & Lawrence Bender Productions is going on hiatus for editing to catch up. Over the last few months the film has taken me to Kazakhstan, The Republic of Georgia, Hungary, Belgium, and Slovenia.

December 2008

I've been shooting Intervention for a year and a half, but for whatever reason there have been no needles until now -- all alcoholics and anorexics, etc. So it's been a (sick) joke that I'm hungry for needles, just because it's a visual and visceral thing to film. Well, so I am now completely caught up -- spent a week shooting an apartment of five guys who each shoot up 6 times a day, and who generally take an hour of exploratory self-puncturing to find a vein. I roughly calculate I now have about 300 injections on tape, from every conceivable angle......

September 2008

Almudena Carrecedo and Robert Bahar's film Made in LA received an Emmy! Hoo ha. Well deserved. Almu both directed and did the beautiful cinematography for this shoot, but I was lucky enough to be called in to do many hours of interview and B-roll for the film. Most of it didn't make the cut, but at least you can hear the VO from the interviews....

August 2008

OK, here's the rebuilt version of the site, going to be much easier to edit and update. (The last site was Flash, looked great, but between updates I kept forgetting how Flash worked.)

So let me give a new overview.

I am currently DP of a documentary produced by Participant Films and Lawrence Bender, the production team of An Inconvenient Truth, and directed by Sundance favorite Lucy Walker (The Devil's Playground, Blindsight). I'm not clear yet whether I can say what the film's about, and I won't be able to get footage til the film's in theaters, but so far the film has taken us to Kazakhstan, Georgia (the country), Belgium, Hungary, and Slovenia among other places. I've had to be sussed out by the Secret Service and have been shooting classified stuff -- very exciting. Interviews with world leaders and such, yes, I feel lucky to be involved, and I think the film's going to be very interesting based on our footage.

The other such project I was lucky to have been involved with recently was the start of a documentary about the Elders , a group of prominent figures such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, and a number of others. We spent a few weeks in South Africa in the Supreme Court campus in Johannesburg shooting 1) the closed-door meetings of the Elders, coming together for the first time, 2) verité behind the scenes, 3) the announcement to the world of the Elder's formation at the 89th birthday event for Nelson Mandela, 4) interviews and press photos of the lot. The director was Stephen Hopkins, feature and television director known recently for the first seasons of 24 and Californication among many other projects.

Otherwise right now I'm one of two regular DP's on A&E's #1 original show Intervention. Happy to be on it because it's actually documentary, not "reality", and gets into some serious emotional territory as well as doing a lot of good. Also spent a fun four months last year as DP of Ghost Hunters International that took me to New Zealand, South Africa, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Ireland, etc etc. Earned my fly miles last year, I did. Spent the night in Dracula's castle and learned to be less afraid of the dark, though I did experience an unexplained ghostly handclasp on my shoulder.

Other recent work includes:
--a National Geographic feature on human trafficking
--Morgan Spurlock's F/X series 30 Days
--History Channel's Ganglands
--Discovery's Destroyed in Seconds
--A&E's Driving Force and Biography

I also recently shot a pilot for a sitcom featuring members of the Groundlings and Mad TV.

On the side, I've been doing recurring DVD shoots for films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, LA Confidential (10th Anniversary), Nightmare on Elm Street (25th Anniversary), and the recent remake of Hairspray.

Though I work primarily in documentary, one of my early fiction shoots was honored with the Palme d'Or for short films at the Cannes Film Festival. Another took Best Cinematography and Best Feature at the Melbourne Underground Festival in Australia.

I received my MFA in film production from USC's Cinema School after studying fine art and creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.