Europe July 2010 - part one

DAY ONE
From Heathrow, I flew down to Nice to pick up the hire car - more on that ridiculousness later.
The drive from Nice, along the south coast of France and down through northern Italy is, of course, quite beautiful. I was very tempted to stop off at one of the many golden sandy beaches I could see from the mountain road but knew I had to get to Peralta before sunset or I'd be very lost.

To get to Peralta (which is on no GPS system I've used yet), you have to get to a tiny village and then just know the way as the "sign posts" are little bits of wood shaped like an arrow and nailed to a wall or tree, randomly.

After a long day of travelling, I was very happy to arrive at Peralta and see Dinah and the dogs.

catching up

Europe July 2010 - arrival

In July, I travelled around Europe to film a lot (!) of interviews for the Fiore documentary.
Landing at Heathrow at 6am, I checked in to the hotel and travelled up to Paddington to meet with John Tully at Brunswick Films. They have got one of the most impressive film archives of Formula 1 racing and interview footage from the 70s and 80s. However, John also has lovely video of Fiore at work and at rest. He has been kind enough to let me use this in our documentary - very exciting news!

live stream for KCI and Sonic Foundry

API Productions partners with Sonic Foundry to engineer the live streaming of KCI's town hall meetings. The stream is streamed from their headquarters in San Antonio and sent live to their divisions around the U.S and Europe.

Austin Regional Clinic 30th Anniversary videos

Austin Regional Clinic are celebrating their 30th Anniversary and have asked API Productions to produce videos of some of their clients' stories. Having produced their Physician's Academy DVD, we are now enjoying working on this project - these are some amazing stories.

Psych Fest III

Austin's Black Angels held their third Psych Fest at the Mohawk in downtown Austin. Producer James Oswald asked us to film the outside stage using a variety of lenses and cameras. We got him in touch with Michael Koshkin who works with the PixelCam and Aaron Brown, who runs a Skycrane jib arm. We used a weird fisheye lens that vignettes the picture and ditorts light. We're looking forward to seeing the DVDs later in the year. The line-up included the Black Angels, the Raveonettes and Warpaint.

promo video for Zach Scott Theatre

One of our non-profit clients is the Zach Scott Theatre in Austin. Having created the Flash invitations for the event and the auction, we filmed their Red, Hot & Soul fundraiser event in HD with steadicam. We edited a highlights video as well as testimonials from guests.

Ted Dekker videos

Ted Dekker is a multi-million selling author. For the past few years, we have been asked to film and edit his promotional videos for each new release. Most recently, we worked on videos for his latest,"Bride Collector".

Adult Swim

Back in Austin, and straight to filming a block party for Adult Swim. They took over 6th and Red River along Emo's and set up a fairground atmosphere with games to win Adult Swim prizes and t-shirts. Lots of college kids were very happy to be getting free stuff, with the Fiery Furnaces playing on the main stage.

Baltimore training videos

After a very pleasant Greek Easter weekend in Virginia, we all met up in Baltimore to work on more employee training videos for Alchemy Systems. This time, we were working for Wyndham Hotels and staying in one of the hotels that was right next to the Orioles ballpark. On the final day, which was opening season for the Orioles and the sound guy's birthday, our client gave us all tickets to the game. Very nice, too. We also found time to visit the American Visionary Art Museum - highly recommended...

Fiore documentary update

Since we were in Canada, I took the opportunity to visit relatives of Joy Quested Nowell - the Queen Mother's milliner - who live in Ottawa. We spent a good part of the day talking about Joy's friendship with Fiore and how she was a great organising influence (!). It seems that she was also the conduit for getting Fiore one of her most prestigious commissions. A very pleasant day all round, and a big Thank You to the Nowells for opening their house.

Training videos

South By South West finishes on Saturday night. Sunday morning at 5am, we were up and at Austin airport on our way to Canada for two weeks of filming training videos. The was for Alchemy Systems who   have a pretty nice training system set-up.

SxSW 2010

API Productions again looked after the video production of the Auditorium Shores shows for South By South West 2010. In addition, we were asked to provide and coordinate crew and equipment for Baeble Music's shoot at Scoot Inn. During SXSWi, we filmed Chicken Ranch Records' showcase at Elysium while streaming it live from the venue. SXSWi also saw comedian Brian Posehn do a private show for Powered. API Productions filmed it, cut it, and uploaded it to YouTube.