Austin Children’s Shelter “The Door to Hope”

The Austin Children’s Shelter is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children bridge the gap from everyday life to foster care when they are removed from their homes. They came to us and asked us to create a video that celebrates the opening of a new shelter facitlity years in the making. This video was to play at their annual gala event and, hopefully, help raise even more money for the shelter’s continued growth and operation. Even in the middle of a down economy, the message came through loud and clear and the shelter raised over $400,000! We support the work they’re doing at Austin Children’s Shelter and encourage you to look into your own communities to see how you can help those children in need.

Southwest Airlines “Live Nation Promotion”

GSD&M came to me with a unique advertising opportunity in this promotion for Southwest Airlines at Live Nation concert venues. What Southwest wanted to do was upgrade your current concert tickets to some of the best seats in the house through a text-in game at several venues across the US. The video was broadcast on the Jumbotrons around the venue. I took the concept from the original board and created this fun visual dance-piece that was highly effective for the airline.

Lyle Lovett “In My Own Mind”

My friends at Curb/Universal Records asked me to produce this video for renowned photographer and first-time director, Martin Schoeller.  Martin and Lyle were great fun to work with and whenever I see him in Austin, I still kid around with Lyle about the tin star he gave me.

State Farm “Harvey Knows Best”

This was a fun project! We worked on this with our friends Matt Manroe (ECD) , charlieuniformtango, and Transistor Studios NY. The concept was Jib-Jab animation on steroids! Comedian Steve Harvey would star in these 2-minute episodes, talking about issues that were important to the typical State Farm customer. We shot Steve on 2 separate occasions at his studio in Atlanta and then his head was married to a body double we had acting out the scenes. What made this job most challenging was that, because of scheduling, we needed to shoot the body double in between our two Steve shoots. Ultimately, we created a library of almost 200 body movements that could be laid in place according to what Steve was saying. The end result was 48 cartoon episodes that broght home 8 ADDY Awards. Well done, everyone!

View entire project: http://djnr.net/projects/steve/

Texas On Tour “Ride the Texas Waterways”

This 360-degree experice takes the viewer on a kayak ride through the waterways of Texas. Now in its fifth year, this wildly popular attraction keeps bringing people back for multiple adventures. To learn more about spherical video production, visit our sister company, BigLook360.

Central Market Interactive Banner Ad

Video on the web is here to stay and we’re going to see it pop up in more and more interesting places. This is just one example. Advertising agency McGarrah Jesse had this idea to have users dirty an apron for a Thanksgiving promotion for one of their clients. And they wanted the food and apron to be real video, not just animation. In a few short hours, we managed to dirty over 30 aprons and created this effective piece for Cental Market.

The Home Depot “Biloxi Volunteers”

One year after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf coastline, The Home Depot teamed up with Kaboom! to rebuild a park in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Richards Group called and asked if we could document the rebuilding effort. What we witnessed was awe-inspiring. Over one hundered people totally transformed this devestated play space and brought hope to a community. What a wonderful day! We were able to cut together both a :30 spot for THD and a 3-minute long-form piece for their website.

Samsung “XL2370 Product Launch”

For this project, I was asked to shoot some live-action plates of the new Samsung XL2370 LED monitor to be used in some commercial animation and some print advertising. To help achive the client’s needs, I utilized a RED ONE Digital Cinema camera with its massive 4K resolution. This extra large frame size helped achieve two goals at once – video and stills – ultimately saving the client money. Animation was done by the talented Stephen Fishman of macandcheez.

H-E-B “Telenovela” + Campaign

This campaign was interesting because, in order to get that homemade feel, we made the decision to shoot this campaign entirely on consure-grade camcorders. We connected with the viewers and our client had hundreds of entires pour in! Working with The Richards Group out of Dallas, we produced more than 30 of these spots throughout the campaign. In the end, our client received 4 ADDY Awards, including a “Best In Show.”

Texas Ten Steps

This was a web video we created for our friends at Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing and their client The Texas Department of State Health Services.  The video targeted hospital administrators and tried to inform them of the Texas Ten Step Program designation. The client was thrilled with the final product and we couldn’t be happier about that.

Bone Dry

When a stranger named Jimmy (Lance Henriksen) kidnaps him at gunpoint, Eddie (Luke Goss) has no idea why this is happening to him. The clueless victim is sent on a harrowing journey through the Mojave Desert, forced to endure a series of tortuous tests and traps. Jimmy has his reasons for carrying out this twisted plot … but he won’t tell Eddie what they are until he’s suffered enough pain.

Released in 2007, the film is available on iTunes, Netflix and on DVD.  Bone Dry was directed by Brett A. Hart and is the first feature film produced by Greg Hughs.

The Judybats “What We Lose”

A FILM XERO CLASSIC.

This music video was shot on infrared film achieving a unique look.  Now that look is fairly easy to achieve with the right software.  Another fun project for Warner Bros. Records, we had a great time shooting this over 2 days in a Grand Prairie, TX park.

Govinda “Cocoon”

One of my first projects as a director, this music video was shot on 16mm film on a minuscule budget.  This video won a number of awards and was nominated for “Best Experimental Music Video” at SXSW the year it was released.

WCCO “6 Minute Advantage”

One of 15 spots I produced for WCCO Minneapolis while doing a 6-week in-house engagement as a promo producer.  This was shot over a couple of days in and around the station in downtown Minneapolis.  The rooftop scenes were shot on the rooftop in late October and the temperature was in the teens.

Back then, we were using depth of field adaptors to get a more filmic look and the temperature was so cold that our adaptor locked up and we couldn’t focus on any of the action.  We had to reshoot those scenes a couple of days later.

Air Supply “Strong, Strong Wind”

A FILM XERO CLASSIC.

This video was another for Warner Bros. Records.  Graham and Russell were terrific to work with.  At the time, they were on their 24th album and the previous 22 had gone Platinum!  As cliché as it sounds, these guys were HUGE in Asia.

The girl in the video is Misty Louagie.  She was one of our regular models for the 50+ Karakoe videos we did for Pioneer in the early 1990s.

311 “I’ll Be Here for a While”

We shot the video for this song on September 6, 2001.  I’ll never forget this project.

I was the producer on this video which was directed by a brilliant group of  animators calling themselves if/then, comprised of Brent Bonacorso, Shannon McGlothin and Bill Marceau.  The original concept for the video called for the band to be living in a terrorist-ridden metropolis, ultimately coming together on top of a trailer home at sunset as a jet plane crashes into the ground behind them.

Needless to say, that concept got scrapped almost immediately the Tuesday after shooting.  The video was put on hold for more than a week while we tried to figure out what to do.  The label, MTV, the band – We all had discussions about the impact of putting the directors’ original vision on the air.  We knew that we didn’t have the money to re-shoot, so it quickly became a discussion about how to re-purpose the existing footage that we had.

In the end, there were a few scenes that were re-worked to remove the more overt terrorist elements, but the bulk of the concept remained.

KXAN “Faces of Austin”

This piece will always be special to me.  An early Big Look Production, this commercial really captured the feel of Austin for the time.  I wrote and directed this piece, which is one of my most lauded works, even winning a Platinum Award for Best Cinematography at Worldfest Houston International Film Festival.

Wolf Global Air Image Film

This is an edited version of a  corporate image film we did for an aviation startup out of San Diego.  The client used this video to help them raise funding.  My team helped with everything from scripting to completion, with a short turnaround of only 10 days from initial call to public exhibition.

Samsung “Create Wonder” CES promo

This was a whirlwind production I did with my friend Matt Manroe.  He received a cocktail napkin from his client on a Thursday and was asked if we could produce a short animated mood piece that would play before an executive’s talk at CES the following Monday.  Matt and I worked 42 hours straight through the weekend and we delivered the final product at 10pm Sunday night.  Thanks to Lawrence Littleton who helped with the animation.

Lonestar “Everything’s Changed”

A FILM XERO CLASSIC.

This was a piece I produced for the country band, Lonestar.  It featured the blowing paper technique we pioneered with Pat Benatar’s “Strawberry Wine” video.