AMAZON ALL DAY

Bought everyone books for Christmas this year.


Amazon shipment 1 of 6. No kidding.




Bought one of these for each of my brothers.


Journey to the Ring; coffee table book about the Lakers' last championship with commentary from Phil Jackson. Bought this for Matty.


Most of the books that I bought as gifts I also asked Santa for, for myself.






Everybody I know is into the same things. Bought multiple copies of most of these books; bought like 6 of that dog book in the first photo above.


The original 37signals manifesto. Bought this for Spellman. Really simple, no frills book that got a cult following online a few years ago. A lot less hyped than their follow-up REWORK but I think this book had a lot more original ideas.

RECARO SHOOT PART I

Couple months ago we helped produce a little online kid's car seat video.



Our boys over at The ID Agency had us do some of the pre-production work as well as put together a behind-the-scenes video about the project.



This was for the child seat division of Recaro. Recaro is a big multinational seat manufacturer - they make seats for basically everything; racecars, sportscars, Cadillacs, airplanes, etc. Anyway, they use all their collective seat making wisdom to make some super safe baby seats and for the past couple years The ID Agency has had us help with their print and online ad campaigns.





We shot this over at a soundstage at South Bay Studios in Long Beach.



Halfway through the day we found out that the actor who was cast to be the Racecar driver wasn't going to be able to make it. They asked Matt to fill in. That pretty much made my day. There are few things more enjoyable for me than getting to watch others force Matt into awkward situations.



Anyway, here's the Behind-the-Scenes video that we shot and put together. Enjoy.

Full disclosure: This edit features a Corinne Bailey Rae song which we weren't licensed to use. The actual final version that got distributed and played online had some original music in it instead, but I felt partial to this version personally and since no one reads our blog I figured it won't really matter.

XMAS CARDS

Holiday card time.


Red foil-lined envelopes


Hand stamped logos across the seals. Yeah, we take this greeting card game real seriously.



Matt and I aren't on Facebook so we've had to resort to this archaic process of communicating with friends and acquaintances. The front design is an outtake from a photoshoot we did in Las Vegas in August. Below are the top 3 questions about this year's card - courtesy of my grandparents, who I regrettably gave one to, over the weekend.

1. Who is this girl sitting next to you on the couch?
Nikki, a model from Vegas.

2. Why isn't she wearing any pants?
She's wearing shorts. I promise.

3. Why do you and Matt look so mad?
We weren't mad. That's just how we always look.

Anyway, twentysome cards down. About 60 more, or so, to go...

THAT OTHER TEAM

Drove through a few flooded freeways to catch the Blake Griffin vs. Houston Rockets game tonight.



Can't beat these seats. 3rd row. Same tickets at a Lakers game would cost a fortune.



Of course Yao's injured. Not even traveling with the team unfortunately. The media's trying to bury him right now but he'll be back. (After all, he's Chinese)



Refs were more awful than usual. Lost my voice before halftime.



Clippers played horrible most of the game. I worked for the Clippers as a Photography Intern one year while I was in college. My first day on the job, I had a conversation with one of the staff photographers about the club's record of failed draft picks. Someone in the front office overheard us and confronted me. I was kind of surprised like 'Wait, you're upset with me for simply talking about this? Why don't you fire the guy who chose Michael Olowokandi over Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce? Right? Why don't you get mad at the person who took Lorenzen Wright over Kobe and Nash?'

'I just take pictures of the cheerleaders and sponsor signage. It's not my fault you guys selected Chris Wilcox over Amare Stoudemire.' (P.S. So they ended up finally firing their VP of Operations, Elgin Baylor, a couple years ago. Dude was 74 years old. He then sued the Clippers claiming he'd been underpaid and terminated solely because of his age and race. I'm reading about this in the paper thinking 'How about the fact that you ran the losingest franchise in all of sports for 22 years? Maybe that had something to do with them letting you go buddy.')



Anyway, Blake had 24 and 18 including a few ridiculous dunks. Not too bad. Maybe the Clippers will turn things around. I really doubt it but at least now they have a kid who makes Sportscenter every night.

BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO

Quick video we threw together from the Hit Music Central pilot taping we went to a few weeks back.

On Thursday I went to what was sort of like a board meeting and a couple of the HMC people were there, amongst others. Everyone liked the video, so that was good. Seems like it was worth skipping that Bulls/Lakers game after all.

LAST WEEK

Quick recap of the photos I pulled off my camera today.



Last Tuesday Matt and I headed to Downtown. Stopped by The ID Agency, handled a few things.



Then we shot over to Staples to see the kid John Wall and the Wizards.



Good game. Wall had a huge block on Derek Fisher and a couple other highlights. Nick Young played like he was back at USC. Good to see Arenas back. He's out of his contract with Adidas and has been rocking different Jordans all season but came out wearing some Dolce and Gabanna high tops for just this game.



Anyway, after the game we headed straight to Vegas (yes, again).



Wednesday, we stopped by Iron Horse's National Finals Rodeo booth where they had a bunch of freshly sponsored Bull Riders signing autographs.



Then we headed over to the South Point, our home away from home, and did a location scout for the photoshoot that was scheduled for Thursday.


At these location scouts we all just roam around with cameras and try to find decent spots to shoot. We all stand-in for the real subjects to help frame the shots up, hence all these great expression-less photos I have of Matt and Ryan.



P.F. Chang's. Of course. Also, as you can sort of see here, we brought our boy Josh from back home to help with some of the photo and video stuff we did out there.



Thursday morning over at Tayler and Andrew's room at the MGM. We shot some stuff here to help wrap up the video we're working on that we started out in Charlotte and Miami.



Then back to South Point for the shoot with the all the Professional Bull Riders.


We designed this truck wrap too, by the way, and had it installed while we were out in Vegas. No big deal.

And, a sample unretouched shot from the shoot.

NOBIZPLANMOBILE

Last month, Iron Horse Jeans, a client of ours, sponsored Mark Green's #70 car in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race out in Phoenix.



A couple days before the race, the back rear quarter panels of the car were still empty. So at the last minute, Iron Horse graciously gave us the space to do whatever we wanted and we decided to throw the blog URL on there.



Our art was actually supposed to be way smaller - it was meant to fit in that blank white space on the back edge of the bumper without overlapping the patterned stripe at all - but apparently the decal people just did their own thing. Maybe they're fans of our blog, who knows?



Anyway, this is what it looked like on National TV.



Just a little airtime on ESPN2. No big deal :)

Thanks to Iron Horse for the ad space and Bloggo for the pictures from PHX.

AWAY MESSAGE

Working in Vegas for a couple days.



More photos and details to come.



Stay tuned.



And have a good weekend.

M.I.A. PART II

We had one day off down in Miami.


So we decided to take our talents to South Beach.


And by 'day off' I mean that we worked and shot b-roll footage all morning.


Then we grabbed lunch with the crew.


Preston - Tayler's buddy, Andrew - Tayler's manager and Stebs - our new best friend. A few months ago, you may remember, we found some of Stebs' videos online and I exchanged a couple emails with him. We needed an extra shooter for the day of the race so I hit Stebs up on Skype the week before our trip and asked if he'd be interested in working with us. We flew him from Boston to Miami and met him for the first time at the airport.

Worked out well. The kid has a ton of experience shooting documentary-style videos and really knows what he's doing. We learned a lot from him in a very short time frame.


Anyway, we all chilled out and walked around South Beach for a couple hours after lunch.


Air Traffic Control - the spot in Miami for sneakers. Almost picked up a pair of Jordan XI's but they didn't have my exact size.


And then, our half day vacation was over and sadly it was time to fly home.