Tales from the Freelance Crypt

After this past Day For Night- I jumped straight into shooting my first feature from Courtney Glaude titled Blink. It was a grueling month and some change of shooting with long hours and no budget- But we finished it and I heard recently from the editor that it's almost at picture lock (Finished but needs effects, color, sound, etc) It was shot with a small crew (myself, Gracie, Ellie, and AT) And I used a Red Epic Dragon. Rumor has it that it's going to get a distribution deal- which is exciting for our first big project. I learned a ton of stuff on lighting with minimal equipment and had to improvise a lot of shots- which is always challenging. 

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After that- I got back into the freelance hustle. I shot a few corporate videos, random interviews, and edited a cool piece for my buddy's new Movie Blog, Viddy Well, which I hope to contribute more to once I catch the writing bug again. Super proud of this cut- 

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When SXSW season came around, We decided to get as far away from Austin as possible so we went to Vietnam and Cambodia, which was a great place to clear up some of the mind mush and fly my new DJI Mavic Pro. They were super strict about the no-fly zones (for good reason imo) and so I could only take it up in a handful of places. Really thankful for that trip because I was able to connect with some ancient sites like Angkor Wat.

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Immediately after returning from the trip, I started working with Houston Public Media, the PBS and NPR affiliate. There, I worked with the Digital and Web team to report news stories, create and add visual elements (photo and video) to local, national, and international news, capture video and photo for marketing purposes, edit a ton of in house digital content, and produce a few series from the ground up, Leftovers and Show Us Your DiverseCity.

Sadly, due to budget concerns and the current political climate, they weren't able to resign my contract.

It was an awesome opportunity and I got to work with lots of level headed, pleasant, and fun people. Looking back, I'm amazed at how much we were able to do in such a short time. My supervising producers, Don Geraci and Aurora Losada, were the coolest to work with and are doing everything to convince the finance dept. to get me back on the team. Right now- they're working on the next fiscal budget to make room for me and trying to get me on a few one off productions here and there. 
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Since, I've been back hustling harder than ever trying to get some more freelance gigs. Lately, I've almost exclusively been working in the camera department (cinematographer) on these random one offs, but I still love doing audio, lights, and editing when people need me to but I'm always down to produce from the ground up.

In the short time since being back into the dark and seedy underbelly of the freelance world- I've shot oodles of interviews, a few corporate videos, a TV pilot with Green Eyed Theater, and a music video that I'm really excited about with the very righteous Houston Artist Doug Kosmo. We have a great team editing it (progressive pixels) and it's set to be released to promote his debut release.

A post shared by Dave (@davistheghost) on May 31, 2017 at 10:21am PDT

So now, I'm just trying to get as much work under my belt as possible so I can test out all the possibilities of my GH5 (which rules, btw) and my DJI Mavic Pro. I've got a few editing gigs and a couple music videos lined up- but my schedule is fairly open in the next month.

Also: check out the podcast Rabbits