All the waves crash over me
I was lost but I was free
All the while

- The Pines

The visuals above offer an early glimpse into one of our latest motion collaborations.  We're stoked to be partnering with The Pines, producing the official video for All The While, a track from their latest album Dark So Gold.

Discussions began with The Pines while they were touring the east coast this past spring.  When we first made contact they were actually in New York City opening for Mason Jennings.  The Pines are described by RollingStone senior writer David Fricke as,"quietly gripping" stark-country. 

All The While and it's dreamlike narration felt like a logical track to accompany the storyline and visuals we captured along the shores of Lake Superior earlier this spring.  With insightful suggestions from The Pines' frontmen Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt, we are quickly approaching final picture lock with color grading to follow in the very near future.    

Keeping true to all of our projects, this has been a very collaborative piece.  Eric Schleicher FilmerKid has been at the helm as our editor; tailoring the visuals with the pacing of the song.  Eric collaborated closely both at the project inception as well as shooting as our second camera on our day of production.  Tony Franklin and T.C. Worley of Royal Antler were close partners in story development from the early stages as well as offering production support, and camera work the day of our shoot.  John Fontana captured location audio as well as sourced additional clothing and accessories from the men's boutique Martin Patrick 3 MP3.  

There were many layers of partnership with creatives and businesses.  This collaboration always proves to be fruitful and rewarding on many levels, often inspiring additional project ideas and future collaboration.

Check in with us soon for the launch of the music video "All The While," by The Pines.  For now take a moment to enjoy a few still images that offer a little hint of what's to come...

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

While the necessities of international travel such as passports, visas, and carnet forms, seem long behind us the images resulting from our week long shoot in Shanghai, China continue to stir in our minds and circulate some unforgettable memories.  Getting a call to produce a project of this size, scope, and distance away from home couldn't have been more exciting.

The 2 1/2 week tour began in Montreal, Canada and then routed us to Chicago where we boarded a direct flight to Shanghai, China.  Nearly fifteen hours later we arrived in a place just a month before we had no idea we would be venturing to.  Exhaustion from travel turned to elation upon boarding our taxi with all our gear having safely made the voyage.  Inside our taxi, a late model Buick with white gloved driver, we slowly crept into this legendary city with a population of over 23 million. 

Shanghai is a complicated mix of old and new happening simultaneously.  The skyline along the Bund is well known and even more impressive in person than reading or seeing it in printed form.  The modern skyscrapers shooting up to dizzying heights are visible evidence of the progress happening in Shanghai while the older iconic sections of the city seem a little more hidden and understated, although no less important.  This shift from old to new is happening at a very fast rate in China as a whole with the continued progress and success of Shanghai as a shining star at center stage.

Although our time was brief, we did have a chance to familiarize ourselves with a little of the old and the new in the largest city in the world.  The project for McDonald's involved capturing stills and motion, working with real people in fully operational restaurants.  Shooting took us to the hustle and bustle of the inner city as well as to the suburbs nearly two hours outside of central Shanghai.  Working with the support of two local bilingual PA's we were fully immersed and felt graciously welcomed at every location.  Much to their credit our in market PA's are essential to the success of a shoot so far away from home.  In a short time they become part of our temporary traveling circus like family and in the end we are sad to see our time come to an end. With their help we came away with a library of visuals that offer a truly authentic look at McDonald's in China from both the employee and customer point of view.

Upon departing Shanghai our travels took us onward through Singapore and into Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.  Our return flight from Sydney to Minneapolis had us traveling backwards in time.  We left on a Monday at 3 p.m. and returned some 20+ hours later on the same Monday at 7 p.m.  It took nearly a full week to mentally and physically recover, yet the experience felt like a true "once in a lifetime" opportunity.  Big thanks to producer Matthew Slimmer for working on the ground in Minneapolis, helping negotiate the web of visas, carnets, and nuances of connecting flights.

It's our pleasure to present some of our favorite still images from our time in Shanghai.  Keep an eye out for an accompanying motion piece that will be coming out soon.  

The second edition, Spring issue, of the JCP newspaper promotion is making it's way near and far to local, national, and international mailboxes.  Feedback is once again positive; validating the time and resources committed to our four part promotional endeavor.  The call last winter from Holly Stuart Hughes, editor at Photo District News, to inquire and feature our first edition, Fall issue, was a pleasant surprise not to mention a very nice write up in the March 2012 issue.

With the first newspaper under our belt, we approached this latest edition in a similar fashion implementing a few adjustments at the outset before the initial proof came back.  The slight tweaks resolved a few obstacles, mainly around color, resulting in a more refined product right from the start; streamlining the process all around.  Two proofs later, followed by a visit for the press check, we crossed our fingers awaiting initial emails and calls to confirm mailboxes and creatives were receiving this visual summary of our past 4+ months of shooting.

Once again ECM of Princeton, MN was the company that handled the printing.  As the local printer of the New York Times we felt a level of comfort that they were a likely solid route to collaborate with.  While our projects are much heavier on photographs than they typically work with, they worked to the best of their abilities to match the proofs that we had approved.  Chasing color isn't easy on press, especially when working with newsprint.  At the outset, the somewhat challenging issues of color and contrast were something we embraced.  The slight shifts in color seem to work nicely with the overall look and feel of a promotion of this type.

We brought a camera to the press check and shot a short video sequence of the project running at full steam.  It's a pretty amazing process to witness four to five guys running around, grabbing papers off the line, pushing buttons, checking color / density of ink placement, as well as print registration.  The short video below gives a sense of how things came together on the big day for the Spring edition.

Special thanks to Eight Hour Day for their involvement with the design and layout as well as Eric Schleicher for his work on the behind the scenes video edit.  We hope you will take a few moments to share the excitement as it comes alive and hot off the press…