Monday, December 29, 2008

This Christmas I had an opportunity to create a video for my niece and nephew. I wasn't sure what to give them for Christmas, and so I asked them what they wanted to do. They really wanted to make a music video, so we listened to a bunch of their favorite songs and decided that we should use this one by Miley Cyrus. I had never heard her music before, but i really enjoyed the upbeat sound. It gave us a great rythm to be creative to. Here is the final result:


Kid Dub: "See You Again" from Rick Lopez on Vimeo.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Budwiser

I just wanted to say thanks to those who prayed for me on this last project I was working on. The experience has been very blessed. THANK YOU LORD!

I thought I would let you know how everything went. It all started with Jeremy Koester and I deciding we would try to enter a commercial into and open assignment for Budweiser's designated driver campagin. The odds have been against us for several reasons; for starters, Jeremy and i have never worked together on a project like this and we only had a little over a week to pull it off. There where challenges along the way but there where also some great blessings too.

We needed to get a good concept, Jeremy and i sat down and wrote out a few directions. Then we needed talent, a friend of Jeremy's is a talent agent and agreed to let us use her list of talent FREE of charge. Then we selected the talent and they all agreed to work for FREE! The next thing was location, we needed a good size bathroom and some outdoor area for cars to park. Jeremy and his wife opened up their home for the production for FREE! Next we needed a really big truck. Well a phone call with a local four wheel parts store got us hooked up with a "stupid" huge truck, FREE! Then came production gear. I have some equipment, but I needed lights and a good microphone. I called a friend and he recommended another friend. I email the company/friend of a friend (5.6 Studios, Gary Groth) and I ask for a free light kit and mic (YIKES, expensive gear), well they hook me up, for FREE! WOW!

It doesn't stop there. We get production going and we end up having to trim one of the talent from the production. It was unexpected, but lets just say she misrepresented herself and wasn't the same person in the head shots and casting info we had been given. But the good news is I think that it ended up being easier to shoot and light two key principle actors instead.

We had two shoot days. The first went slower than expected, so we needed to cram more into our second shoot day. Before the second shoot day we discover that Kesha (one of the two main actors) is sick. We reschedule the second shoot day. This is crazy, EVERYONE, all 4 actors and 3 crew people for the day, are all available on the rescheduled shoot day. Awesome!

The shoot day arrives. I forgot that I need to return the gear that i borrowed for only two days. I call the studio and speak with Gary Groth, he say it's no problem to use the lights, but he needs the mic back. He quickly sets up another local production expert (Bruce and Joe Maniscalo sp?) to loan me his expensive mic equipment. FOR FREE!

I ended up getting to know so many great people from this experience. I realize that we may not win, but I am so happy and already feel like a winner. It's funny to think that God can work through anything, even a Buweiser commercial. Thank you for your prayers and if you didn't know about all this, now you know the power of prayer.

feel free to check out the two videos we submitted here:

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2.



Peace to you.

Rick Lopez