Colorado Jul 1, 2021
Sev and I had a blast filming in Colorado for accessibility products this past week with our usual crew. We had Pete Guzzo producing the hell out of it, and John Long as our Director of Photography—and he always kills it. Hopefully we can share a cut at some point. It was the first time I've been able to direct people with visual/auditory impairments and it was such a great experience. Everyone was so helpful and accommodating.
After wrapping, we hung around for a couple of extra days to check out the Rockies. None of our Tampa crew had been above 10,000 ft but we did pretty well considering that we spend most of our time under 100 ft. The highlight was a drive up the highest road in North America—the Mount Evans Scenic Byway. It finishes at 14,130 ft and there's a climb up to 14,265. Thankfully, I had packed a hoodie which ended up keeping John alive because as we got to the end of the road, it began to get stormy. As we began the climb, we were pelted with ice and snow as clouds rushed past just slightly overhead. At the top, the winds howled. A kind couple from Kansas took our photo, and we began the descent. We had a good dinner that evening in nearby Idaho Springs.
On the next day we drove the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway. We finally saw Boulder, which had a beautiful mountainous backdrop in most directions. That was a beautiful drive. We took a quick hike, got rained on quite heavily, and dried off at Switchback Smokehouse with some excellent BBQ. We passed by Red Rocks on the way back, but unfortunately it started raining heavily and it wasn't going to let up anytime soon. It's on my bucket list to see a show there. I guess I'll have to go back!
It's been a while Jun 28, 2021
So much has happened since I last wrote on this blog. I guess the first major thing is that the lease on our old office ran out. We tried to find a new office together, but ultimately we all went our separate ways. Sev and I banded together and turned my detached garage into a studio and we've been working out of there since the middle of 2016.
I started Workbench at the end of 2015 and Sev joined shortly after. From 2016-2019 we made a tutorial a week for a grand total of 200. Through that we've met our good friend, Andrew Embury. And he, Mikey Borup, and I spoke at Keyframes in 2019. I also met one of my heroes, Aharon Rabinowitz, who was the keynote speaker—and his keynote was excellent. We still update Workbench as frequently as we can, and we continue to provide monthly files to our patrons.
Later that year we shot a mini-doc in Mallorca with a professor from my alma mater—Bogdan P. Onac. A few months after we wrapped in Mallorca, we filmed in New Mexico with him to cover the dating of the samples they obtained in Mallorca. On that trip, we shot some preliminary footage for a possible documentary on a lava tube in New Mexico—traveling with the park rangers to get to it in a remote location.
And along the way we've made tons of motion graphics pieces, and have been improving our skills as we've gone along. So now, we update our 2014 reel to feature work up to 2020 so that you can see where we are now. Thanks for following along with us, and we hope to bring you more frequent updates.