The Charleston carrotmob was this past Saturday, and it was quite a success. We were there from about 8am - 8pm, shooting Hi-Def video of all the great people that came, hung out, made friends, and ate lots of crepes.

Dont know what the carrotmob is? - click HERE.

It was truly a beautiful day, inside and out. We had managed to pull together 300+ people throughout the day - that was Jason Cronen's numbers - but I think I saw more. Everyone was in a loving and giving mood. I loved hearing that the video teasers we made had an effect on getting people out there - video is the perfect way to do something like that! It works.
Queen Street Grocery looked great - everyone in green carrotmob shirts. They were super appreciative of the carrotmob, worked like dogs to make it great, and thrilled with the $4500 they pulled in that day. Apparently, on a typical great day they might do $1500. Not bad. I have tons of personal thoughts on the entire event, including some surprising after thoughts - but I am saving it for the film.

Right before noon, Jason, Saige Irlacher and I took a trip down to Marion Square, for the first day of the seasonal Charleston Farmers Market - a tradition for Charleston natives and visitors alike.  We caught up with some cool people on film, handed out some flyers and invited them down to the carrotmob.

Upon returning, we followed the Eco-Unit team on camera, who is doing the green retrofitting, though what they need to do to make the store more sustainable. Wow. It is a challenge - they have lot of "out" points. We are looking forward to filming the next step - recording the green installation.

We shot the entire short documentary on a Panasonic HVX200, shooting 720p/60p, 180d film shutter. We shot into a 100gig Firestore drive, with one mid-shoot dump into a Mac Book Pro. The only bad part of the Firestore Drive, (FS100), is that you cannot charge the unit exclusive of the device. So you have to have extra charged batteries on set, or else AC power.

Sometimes I have reservations about investing in the Firestore, as opposed to P2 cards, but after shoot like this, those reservations fade- it is truly a dream. I have put about five hundred shooting hours on it now, without a hitch. They are now selling 64GB P2 cards at B & H for $2500 - I guess about what I paid for the 100 gig Firestore at the time. When I can find a 128 P2 card at under $3,000 - I guess I will get one. Or five. But I like the fact that at a native frame rate, like 24PN, I can shoot pure, beautiful Hi-Def for 4+ hours. Loves it. We might go to Iraq in 8 weeks to produce a Hi-Def broadcast tv show special with the USO. If that happens, we will need to buy (or rent?) around 20 of them. Hello discount? Jobs like that are a great way to buy equipment to recoup costs later, on rentals. The fragile part will be dumping and archiving the footage as we go, but there are better and better solutions for longer form on-location P2 filming being created all the time.

Saige Irlacher took stunning still photographs all day long - including the photos in this blog post - and we are looking forward to sharing them publicly and introducing them into the film and stuff.

The short carrotmob doc will be done in about 2-3 weeks. For more info contact us.