2010?  Holy crap that looks funny.  I don't know about you but it's going to take me a while to be able to say it's "2010" without feeling like I'm in a Stanley Kubrick picture.  The more familiar sounding 2009 wrapped out on a fine note however.

On the right coast, we reunited with very dear old friends and known fun puppets Mr. Phil Walker of JumpCut Productions and Mr. Craig Lovin of Coca-Cola to shoot a new visitor video for The World of Coca-Cola Pavilion at Centennial Park.  I'm not certain there was an actor or acquaintance in Atlanta that didn't appear in the piece at some point over several evenings of photography and it was truly a wonderful homecoming.

Other known Atlanta suspects (and darn fine producers as well) Blue Marble had us along for the ride on a wild green screen shoot for Georgia Pacific in which Creative Director Ben Barineau actually paid us good money to hurl toilet paper at circus strongmen and innocent children alike in a production of epic graphic mayhem.  We spent two days at Magik Lantern's stage laughing our tails off.  (excuse the pun)

The mighty Blue Marble team also had us in tow back on our west coast home turf for a production with Laguna, California based agency Voyager.  As usual, Voyager's Creative Director Russ Noe put together a world-class group of models and talent for a series of fashion ads for the Seattle area Bellevue Collection.  I'm fairly certain I'll never get tired of working with supermodels.  I mean that's just not something you often hear in our business... "Boy!  Do I wish they'd stop forcing supermodels on us!"  Nope.  Not me.  Thanks Russ!

The year ended on a truly surreal note however.  We wrapped the first season of A&E's "The Jack5ons.  A Family Dynasty" just before Christmas and whether there is more of this story to tell in the coming months or not, it's certainly been one of the more memory laden chapters of my life in the production trenches.  Though it didn't make the finale our last setup on the final day of photography was Michael's tomb.  For security reasons, the day's call sheet noted the setup only as "Secret Location" and the crew knew nothing of the plan as the family had always been completely opposed to anything other than strictly private, individual visits.  Before entering the sanctuary the brothers decided that only I would go inside with them.  No sound other than on-camera.  No light other than available, stained glass illumination.  What played out I suspect would have moved the most cynical of Jackson detractors and though the family ultimately decided the material was simply too private to release, a very interesting observation was made by my camera assistant as we wrapped out on that last day.  For a few moments, in a way that's still a little hard to believe, the Jackson 5 were together again... likely for the last time ever and I alone was the final audience.

More as the days grow longer.

M.

Los Angeles, January 2010 (Still looks funny)