Fire-Wired Blog

Rarely do I frame myself this way, but I am a "creator." I make content. Professionally my creations mostly are for the traditional medium of television, but I also make a LOT of content that goes directly to the internet. If you see a TV camera man around town with a heavy camera on their shoulder, following a reporter and a subject you immediately recognize that the hard work that person is enduring. Shoulder mounted cameras look impressive and heavy. If you turn and look at the reporter that's where opinions vary. Are they actually "working?" Prepare yourselves for a long one. Of course they are, but over time I've learned if people don't understand a role or a job they get frustrated, possibly angry, and denigrate a person they think has it easy. The above video was produced by Tom Buck , probably one of my personal top three favorite YouTubers. Every week Tom releases a video about audio and video production equipment, how they work, and how they c...

I have always been terrible at sitting still. My parents used to make me sit on my hands as even when I was in "time out," I would pester my siblings and drum on the wall or counter. So decades ago after my umpteenth hand sit, I realized this time was a gift to develop new adventures in my hyperactive mind. At the moment, my creative motor is standing idle . For years I've juggled several interests and outputs including:  Working a video production job,  Writing a weekly tech column,  Semi-regularly writing-directing-producing short films,  Composing music for video bed music and video projects,  Producing family videos and Podcasting.  As I type this, all of that has been culled to just my day job. This is of course temporary as our household becomes proficient in parenting two young children, but still... I'm restless. So since my 2nd daughter's birth in November I've returned to my handsitting brainstorming to figure out how I can fill the void left by m...

Believe it or not, 2020 has been a really fun year for me when it comes to filmmaking. Tiny Explosions released six short films, I wrote four short film screenplays, one of those screenplays was accepted into the Snake Alley Festival of Film (of course, Covid-19 put a real damper on that, but it was the only place I submitted it too so ya know... Woohoo!), we won a few awards along the way, I started writing a bunch of promising feature length scripts, and then finally, I guested on a podcast that I really enjoy. The Cinematic Heartland podcast is produced and hosted by  Kevin Isaacson of I Like Ike Films , a North-Central Iowa filmmaker who within the last five years has produced a nice run of short films and feature film. He is a really down to Earth guy and an easy person to hold a conversation with. It was a real treat to talk about my year in film, how I got interested in storytelling, and an opportunity to promote The Film Lounge. If you have an hour, I suggest to give ...

Excited to share my latest multimedia endeavor, Audiography. A few feet beyond what I would define as a hobby, Audiography is a new nature sound recording effort mixed with personal storytelling. If that's enough for you, here's the soundcloud. As you may know I am a podcasting fanatic . I first started listening to podcasts in 2007 when I discovered Filmspotting , and in 2012 my good friend Jacob Rosdail and I set behind the mics ourselves to create our own podcast " Filmcast Without a Cause ." Well Audiography is something new. Part podcast, part storytelling, and a large dose of natural sounds. Roughly two weeks ago I drove up to Okoboji's Iowa Lakeside Lab to spend a day filming Alex Braidwood 's Acoustic Ecology course. For two weeks, Alex takes college students, artists, and creatively inclined individuals out into the world to record nature sounds and examine the world of acoustic ecology. At the end of the experience the crew produces a set o...