Tag Archives: butcher bird

The Complete Untethered Series

The latter part of last year was spent shooting and finishing two web-series for portable power company TYLT. Untethered: My Passion introduces us to 9 unique people actively living their passions and covers a wide range of interests spanning music to fashion to comic books to photography to BASE jumping. Untethered: On the Road follows Erika and me on a 55 day road trip across 42 U.S. states as we live out of a coupe, document our travels, experience new things, and meet work-related deadlines.

Both series released earlier this year and My Passion garnered a Telly Award.

Watch both series here in their entirety (all 16 episodes) and see how many faces you recognize. Take a look back at how the journey unfolded on instagram via #LiveUntethered or #ChinnyRoad2016.

 

Unexpectedly Eventful Week (On Deadline)

This week began as many do—looming deadline approaching with promises of long workdays/nights to meet the target date. A previous project had me starting the week behind schedule, but toiling into the night Monday and Tuesday allowed me to catch up. Thus far, it was a week like many before. Wednesday morning brought roadblock one—a surprising voicemail:

“This is Christine from Dr. Kamajian’s office. Please call me back. It’s kind of urgent. Thank you. Bye bye.”

I was awaiting x-ray and MRI results for my left wrist. I suspected this message was regarding those findings. Despite my usual morning grogginess and sluggishness, I called back immediately. Soon I would learn that my wrist had been broken for the past three months.

The History of My Wrist & Bicycle:

April 29 – I drive away from a bike shop with a brand new Surly Cross-Check squeezed into my trunk. After months of research and advice, this seems like a good choice for a bike that can do a bit of everything for a price that isn’t ridiculous. I start riding pavement and trails regularly, but mostly trails.

May 24 – One of my bike goals has been to build up the stamina to cycle from our place in Tujunga, over the Verdugos, and into the Butcher Bird office in Glendale as a semi-regular commute (roughly 13 miles each way and up to 2500 feet of gain). I’ve put about 100 miles on the bike at this point, but haven’t been able to reach this goal yet. I drive the bike to the office this day and decide to ride 15 or so miles at lunch around the Glendale Narrows and Griffith Park. As I head back to the office, passing through town, I decide to ride on the sidewalk for a portion to avoid dealing with the vehicle traffic at a specific intersection. A car pulls out of a parking lot just before me. I hit the brakes. I rotate over the handlebars and arrest my fall onto the concrete with my left hand. My bike crashes down behind me. My sandwich launches over my head. I stop a few feet short of the car’s passenger door. The driver never notices and pulls into traffic. I gather my belongings and continue to the office.

There is minimal swelling, mild discomfort, very little pain. I ice the wrist for several days, occasionally wear a fabric brace, and continue my life as normal. I only limit or stop those activities that will most stress the arm such as climbing and eventually gym training. My assumption is that I have a sprain. When I finally see a doctor on August 16th, he suspects the same. The x-ray proves us both wrong.

I had given it 6 or 7 weeks to heal. When I found myself still experiencing problems, I attempted to see a doctor. This eventually turned into a convoluted process of  changing my medical group and primary care physician and finally visiting my new doctor weeks later. By the time I saw him, I was feeling very little discomfort and thought I may be wasting my time. I fortunately agreed to the x-ray and MRI.

Back to the Present:

Much of Wednesday is spent visiting an Orthopedist and ultimately having my arm wrapped in a fiberglass cast. He is surprised that I was able to function for 3 months with a broken wrist and worried that it hasn’t healed. Afterwards I reflect on the things I did during those months that helped impede that healing: 200 miles on my bicycle on bumpy trails sprinkled with a few falls and steep terrain often in intense heat, whitewater rafting, standup paddle-boarding, rollerskating, a few canyon runs (rappelling, hiking, a little swimming, and some down-climbing), gym work-outs for the first month until I decided to pause, A week-long shoot in Roswell lugging camera gear all over the city, a Yosemite visit with my parents, a 2000 mile drive to Wyoming for the eclipse, a dinky 5.4 climb, and the various day-to-day tasks that stress a wrist. Now, I am attempting to use it as little as possible. The cast is a good reminder. Oddly enough, I have had a cast twice in life: at ages 7 and 39. Both times on the left wrist.

Spending half of my day at a doctor’s office was not good for my deadline. Thankfully, working into the early morning allowed me to catch up. Heeding my doctor’s advice not to drive (despite driving back to the office immediately after receiving the cast), I decide to work from home for the rest of the week. Thursday moves along smoothly and we are still on schedule until nightfall when Luis, my other business partner working on this project, announces his wife may be going into labor. Babies don’t tend to be complete surprises and Luis had prepared for this possibility. Thankfully, Adam and Steven are able to help out from the office. Still on schedule.

Then, Friday afternoon,  the Verdugos ignite. Plumes of smoke grow in the distance as a fire spreads up and down the mountain range less than 2 miles away. Winds had been strong since the night before and were currently helping spread the fire in multiple directions simultaneously. Much of my afternoon shifts to watching live coverage, calculating where the fire is in relation to us, and determining if it is likely to become a concern for our immediate area. The winds eventually worked in our favor, but have made it stronger elsewhere. We went to sleep last night with the horizon painted red.

The fire has now encompassed an estimated 8,000 acres and the LAFD have been struggling to contain it. Helicopters have not stopped flying since the blaze began and water drops continued throughout the night. Three homes have burned and many more are in danger. Mandatory evacuations have displaced several communities. The path through the Verdugos I was hoping to ride in the future as an office commute is now ash. The fire may still be growing.

For what it’s worth, we did still meet our deadline.

Finally Reflecting on 2016

If the number of 2016 posts in this journal were representative of productivity, it would appear to have been a mostly uneventful year. That certainly wasn’t the case. January felt like a continuation of December and only now is it beginning to feel like the new year has begun. And so, the time to grade myself on goal completion for the previous year and to set goals for the current year has finally arrived. I am a proponent of annual goal setting. When I make a solid list, refer to it regularly, and hold myself accountable I tend to meet many of them. Oddly, last year I didn’t make a solid list. Apparently I forgot to or lost it on my perpetually chaotic desk. Despite that oversight, several non-specified goals came to fruition and a number of pleasing events occurred.

  • I have been wanting to travel for work more frequently. I had three opportunities. 1) A producing/shooting gig in Costa Rica (mentioned in my last post to this blog nearly a year ago). 2) A Facebook live-stream overnight trip near Joshua Tree for AirBNB. 3) A 2 month roadtrip around the U.S.with Erika (55 days—42 states—13,510 miles) creating a web-series for TYLT that will be releasing very soon.
  • We at Butcher Bird funded and shot our first feature film. It is now running through the final stages of post.
  • I convinced my mother to try a tandem sky-dive
  • I lead some great climbing routes including the 1500ish foot Solar Slab, the unique Tunnel Vision, and the imposing Matthes Crest (which turned into a bit of an all-night epic because of a foolish attempt to retrieve a fallen camera).
  • I descended a few undocumented canyons (some with the ever beloved Scott Swaney).
  • I finally got to shoot video of a snow covered San Antonio Falls canyoneering descent (something I had been trying to do for quite some time and posted about here on this blog) and put together a 360 VR video of the Seven Teacups.
  • Erika and I finally made it to Alaska and toured a glacier. We also made it to several National Parks we hadn’t visited before and attended Halloween in Salem, MA. We have now been to 45 of the 50 states.
  • I got to do some great social things with friends like multiple game nights, an awesome bachelor party weekend in Zion for the Merrill wedding, visit my family multiple times, and introduce multiple people to their first ever multi-pitch climbs.
  • The podcast continued (currently 46 episodes) and featured guests from all over the country recorded in their respective locales.
  • Erika and I celebrated 10 years together touring the treetops of Wrightwood.

It was a rewarding year, but there are certainly places I fell short:

  • Happy Canyoneering (my puppet talkshow short) did not move forward.
  • Scuba Climbers (my Class C canyoneering documentary) did not move forward.
  • I slacked on a proper physical fitness routine in the last half of the year.
  • I didn’t make the strides towards big wall climbing I’d hoped to and climbing El Cap for my 40th birthday is seeming increasingly less likely.
  • I still haven’t started work on a Death Valley Mars short I want to do.
  • My office is still a disorganized mess.
  • I didn’t try cross country skiing, dogsledding, or solo backpacking.
  • I haven’t gotten back into a regular illustrating routine in years.
  • And various other projects, responsibilities, etc. languished while my pile of books to read increased faster than it depleted.

And so now I sit compiling my list of goals for 2017. I look at where I succeeded and failed in 2016 and attempt to course correct. Where do I want to be in a year and how do I get there? Life is too damn short to squander.

Work Update – Life Aint All Rocks & Jumps

The video above is probably my favorite of all of the game trailers Luis and I have put together. The great background illustrations were done by Jennifer Whitney. Below are a few things I worked on earlier this year or late last year.

A couple of Nerdist projects where I handled effects and/or graphics:
DUO - Tinder for Superheroes
Dragonball Xenoverse - Going Super Saiyan in the office
Doogie Howser Rebooted – I put a bunch of graphics together

More Gamevil game trailers:
Dragon Blaze
Dungeon Link – We also did a few in-game animations for this in addition to this video.

A concept video for Brainitch – screen composites and other effects.

Also a thing for Ticketmaster:
Access Granted – A web-series. I handled the logo, open, and all graphics.

And finally, a trip back in time to clean up that holocaust mess:

Taking Steps

GO_Trailer001_thumb001

Exploration, adventure, and the outdoors have always been of interest to me. Growing up in Louisiana, I spent a fair amount of time outdoors, but adventure sports never seemed like an option. Climbing was something I saw on TV or in magazines. Besides, Louisiana has no mountains or boulders. I had to settle for trees. Surfing was something I longed to do, yet it was also out of reach. I wanted to try backpacking, but never did, even though I joined a club in High School that could have shown me how. I told myself I couldn’t afford it. Louisiana is known as Sportsman’s Paradise. The sports this encompasses are hunting and fishing. I knew many hunters and fisherman growing up, but not a single person who could have shown me how to tie a figure eight or paddle into a wave. The outdoor activities that interested me seemed complicated, expensive, and out of reach. I would finally learn otherwise at the age of 29 after living in California for four years.

I think this is the norm. I think most of us suspect that outdoor and adventure sports are something reserved for the elite, something beyond our capabilities.  They aren’t. You just need the personal drive and directions to the starting line.

Today, we at Butcher Bird Studios released a four episode web-series called G.O. Get Outside. If you want to get into caving, hiking, surfing, or canyoneering, these episodes can help you get started. Hopefully, there will be more episodes focusing on other activities in the future. It took me nearly three decades to find the trailhead. I hope these episodes can help you get there sooner.

gogetoutside.com

Slack Tactics

It has been over two months since my last update. I feel like all I have been doing during that time is working, but that isn’t necessarily true. Above is a teaser for a web-series I have been working on with my Butcher Bird Studios partners. We completed most of the photography in the last couple of months, but I still have plenty of post-production to keep me busy on top of paying gigs.

Besides shooting all four episodes of G.O. – Get Outside in the last two months, I have managed to do some other stuff after all. One of my favorite climbing events, The Red Rock Rendezvous was a few weeks ago. I’ve run a few canyons and lead a few routes since my last check-in. I also got my Wilderness First Aid certification and took a Mountain Athletics Training course from Conrad Anker and Mark Jellison. There have been a few cool shoots in there as well. So, I guess I haven’t been slacking as much as I thought.

Quadcopter in the Sierras


One of my ongoing goals is to move into producing outdoor videos. I recently convinced my partners at Butcher Bird Studios to spend a weekend backpacking through the Sierras. We carried various lightweight cameras and a quadcopter. Above is some of the test footage we acquired from that copter.

Video Avalanche

It’s been a busy year. With the holidays approaching, things are slowing a bit (although they may ramp up again in a week or so). This gives me a little time to finally update this neglected journal. Unfortunately, this post will primarily be another avalanche of videos I’ve worked on in the last few months. Hopefully, I’ll start adding some meatier content again soon.

I’ve shot a fair bit of GoPro footage this year, but only now have I edited any of it. Above is a video from the Foam Fest back in May. Hopefully I can throw together a couple more GoPro edits and the 2012 collective video in the next few weeks. In related news, I lost my GoPro Hero 2 camera (along with the LCD backpack, tripod mount, a monopod, and the footage) while canyoneering a couple of weeks ago.

Below is a recent video I directed, edited, and posted for Ubisoft and DeStorm Power. This was also our most recent Butcher Bird project.

There are several commercials I’ve worked on in the last few months, but they aren’t online yet. There is this one that I did for this year’s West Hollywood Book Fair. This is the third spot I’ve done for them.

There have been several Nexon videos over the last few months. I am particularly proud of the three part series we did for the Presidential Election. Brian Schmoyer handled the character animation of the three MapleStory characters. I handled the motion graphics, animated infographics, puppet show, backgrounds, and compositing. The third installment is embedded below followed by links to the first two.

MapleStory Election 1
MapleStory Election 2

Oh yeah, I moved into a new place in September.
That’s all for now.

3 Month Delay

Fabio and Me

It’s been a while. This year has turned into a busy one. Much of my time is, unfortunately, spent sitting at a computer, but I do manage to get out a fair amount.

That is indeed Fabio in the photo above. I do meet celebrities every once in awhile, but I try to avoid being that annoying guy who begs for photos and autographs. There are, of course, exceptions. When I discovered that the man who shirtlessly adorned every romance novel in the 80s and 90s, the man who recorded amazing work-out videos and romance cassettes, the man who appeared in hilarious bit parts on many B-rate TV series, the man who hocked butter that wasn’t butter, the man who defeated a goose with his nose on a roller coaster would be at my local Whole Foods Market—I knew fate had smiled upon me. I also knew that my dearest pal, Bryan Nelson, would never forgive me if I passed up this serendipitous opportunity. And so, Erika and I traveled to the Glendale Whole Foods just so I could meet Fabio (and apparently buy his whey protein powder). Who says dreams don’t come true?

Besides being shackled to a computer and admiring Fabio, I’ve also been keeping to a relatively frequent climbing schedule. I attended the Red Rock Rendezvous in Nevada again this year. It’s an annual climbing festival filled with clinics, events, and vendors giving away lots of great stuff (Mammut gave me a free $90 headlamp!). Despite having our tent destroyed by high winds again, we had a great time. My highlight this year was my multi-pitch clinic where I got to go trad climbing for the first time. If you aren’t familiar with the term, trad is traditional climbing, what some consider “real climbing.” It’s the type of climbing where a group starts at the base of a rock and places protection as they climb up bringing the rope up with them. As they make their way up the rock pitch-by-pitch, the follower removes (or cleans) the protection. I took on the role of follower. Leading a trad climb is the dangerous part and requires experience and practice. The guide was our leader. We climbed four pitches on a 5.8 (moderate) route. Besides Erika and I, a few of our friends came to the Rendezvous this year also. Maybe we’ll get even more folks there in 2013.

One of the nice things about attending the Red Rock Rendezvous are the cool people you meet. I met a guy named Mark who has been climbing nearly as long as I’ve been breathing. He offered to start taking me trad climbing. I’ve been trying to move into trad, but it’s difficult since I’m the most experienced climber amongst my friends. The multi-pitch clinic at Red Rock and Mark’s offer were two great opportunities that graced me on the same day. Two weeks ago, Mark made good on his offer and we headed over to Idyllwild and climbed a six pitch route on Tahquitz Rock. It was a low-grade easy route, but snow had fallen earlier that week. The base was covered in snow and four of the six pitches also had a bit of snow on them. That made the ascent a little tricky, but dealing with the snow was a valuable piece of  additional climbing experience. Mark and I are heading back tomorrow.

I’ve also been doing as much canyoneering as I can squeeze in. I’ve run Rubio Canyon multiple times in the last few months and Karl and I ran Little Santa Anita last weekend. If we’re lucky, we’ll get a permit to do Mystery Canyon in Zion this summer.

In closing, a huge thing that happened in the last few months was the completion of “The Many Maladies of Marty Mitchell.” This is a short kids’ show I shot in my living room three years ago. It was finally finished and premiered in March. We held a Butcher Bird Studios Screening at the Goethe Institute on March 16th. We showed several of the projects we’ve worked on together and with others. We closed the night with the premiere of “Marty Mitchell.” It felt really good to finally be able to show it to people, especially those who helped make it happen.

hanging out