Traveling Filmmakers

We planned out our route to take us down the Baja Peninsula and then up the west coast to Alaska, but based on the nature of our video production business, our route in reality is going to be a criss cross of the U.S. as we travel to our filming projects in between our other planned destinations. We knew this would be the case, and planned to just make the decision to fly or drive to our gigs based on where we are at the time, where we plan to go next, and how quick we have to get there. This might mean just parking at the nearest airport and flying, or being open to altering our route a little based on where our clients want us to be. We’re excited to be spontaneous, and let this part of our journey take us to new places.

We actually started our nomadic journey in Steamboat, Colorado, based on filming a friend’s wedding. Now let me be clear- we don’t film weddings. When you say you’re a cinematographer, one of the first things people generally ask is if you film weddings. And the answer has always been that we’ve never filmed one, for various reasons, including that we’ve believed it would be a high stress environment, with risky consequences if we miss something or screw something up- we wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s big day! But recently we were asked by our lovely and low key friends, Clay and Beckyn, to film their amazing ceremony and reception in Steamboat, Colorado. With the ceremony at the top of the ski mountain, a “Just Married” gondola ride down, and the perfect photo scenes at a waterfall and historic barn, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to test our skills at wedding videography, and just the amazing location and beautiful couple did half the work for us. These type of gigs though, mean that we’ll be sitting in the camper for the next four days editing and working, and we might have to choose some of our locations in the end based off of data signal to upload the video.  Since Blake’s editing station in the camper isn’t as luxurious as when he had a whole office in the house, it’s better for us just to settle down and get the work done rather than drag it out. Luckily as Colorado natives, we love Steamboat, and couldn’t think of a better spot to start our journey and hunker down for a few days anyway. 

We just took advantage of already being in Steamboat to explore several new areas to camp.Rachel’s parents actually happened to have a trip planned to Steamboat that week, so we just stuck around an extra couple days to hike the Zirkel Circle with them. We’re already appreciating making our own schedule.

Our next destinations actually happened to be guided around filming as well. We headed to an area in Northern Colorado and a spot off of Kenosha Pass to film dirt bike content for a moto product placement. The trees have peaked with fall colors everywhere we go and our drives have just been insanely beautiful. To film this content, the first day we hopped on our own dirt bikes and loaded up our camera gear into backpacks to go film on remote singletracks. The second day Blake’s brother actually joined with their Polaris Rzr, and we filmed our content using a camera crane attached to the Rzr. If we weren’t filming, we’d probably be on our dirt bikes anyway, so what is better than getting to combine our business with our passion?

We actually have another filming obligation in Denver this week, so just like we already predicted, we are zigzagging across Colorado. At this rate, we think we’ll leave Colorado by October, and start heading down south and to the Grand Canyon.