Carl Brown and Corduroy Media to Shoot Promotional Video for Oakland non-profit

I am very excited about our up-coming production with Wardrobe for Opportunity. This Oakland based non-profit provides professional clothing for men and women that are starting a new career and may not have the resources to purchase a new wardrobe. Since 1995, Wardrobe for Opportunity has prepared more than 15,000 clients for success in the professional workplace. This week I was contacted by Sally Trautwein, Executive Director of Wardrobe for Opportunity. She explained that they are looking for a short documentary film highlighting their male and female client of the year award recipients to be screened at their yearly fundraising luncheon “Spring to Success.”

Using a documentary style we will use the personal narrative of the two clients as a window into the Wardrobe for Opportunity program. We hope to create a moving account of the “dress for success” concept and invest the audience into plight of the program.

Carl Brown Reviewing Films for Documentary Jury Award at the Santa Cruz Film Festival

One of the greatest benefits that I received screening “2nd Verse” last year at film festivals was all of the fantastic people that I met. One of the most vibrant, energetic and supportive film festival directors that I got to know was Jane Sullivan. Jane was a pleasure to hang with at the festival last year, and personally called me to relate how much she enjoyed my film upon submission. The Santa Cruz Film Festival, which is swinging back around this year, is a high quality professional festival with the small town vibe of Santa Cruz. The venues were great and staff awesome.

I was fortunate enough to win the Audience Award for Best Documentary last year and have been asked to sit on the Documentary Jury for this year’s festival. Here is a quick list with links to the films that I am judging.

Katrina’s Children
Lioness
Saint Misbehavin: The Wavy Gravy Movie
Salute
An Unlikely Weapon

Although I haven’t gotten through all of the films yet, so far everything looks fantastic and should be very successful year at the festival for feature length docs.

If you have the opportunity to travel to Santa Cruz for the festival this year, May 7th-15th, I highly recommend it. Fresh atmosphere, awesome people, and fantastic venues.

Carl Brown Shoots New Documentary at Oakland School of the Arts

2009 has turned out to be a year of interesting projects with Berkeley based non-profit, Connect Ed California. One of our latest documentary projects, working with producer Dave Yanofsky, centers around an Oakland School of the Arts high school student that is majoring in lighting design. Shooting in this brand new high school, that is housed in the same building as the newly renovated Fox Theater, is a real treat. This week we had our first shoot at the school and arrived just as Francis Ford Coppola was leaving the building after giving a talk on creativity to over 100 OSA HS students.

For the next month or so we will be following a student as she works with her class mates to prepare the lighting and set design for three student produced plays scheduled at the high school. Our short documentary will conclude on the night of production.

This documentary is part of a series of educational documentaries that we are helping Connect Ed produce in order to show case different career pathways for California high school students.

Corduroy Media Produces new Show for Guitar Tricks

I am very stoked to announce the new show that I am producing for GuitarTricks.com. Guitar Tricks is an on-line resource for Guitar Players, offering video based guitar lessons to players all over the world from the super advanced to the very basic beginner. Last week we shot the first set of shows at the Guitar Tricks Oakland studio. Each week a new show will be broadcast on-line on a variety of outlets such as, YouTube and Mypace.

Shooting in the Guitar Tricks small studio with a large bank of windows provided a lighting challenge. I wanted highlight Neal, the host, while providing some atmosphere and nuance to his immediate environment. I also had to make sure that his implements would show up well with out being blown out. Many of these, such as his guitar, affects pedal and amplifier have shiny surfaces. At the same time the studio background was very dark and needed quite a bit of light to make it show up. To take a look at how I solved these problems check out my production photos from flicker on the right hand navigation of the blog.