New blog

we have a new blog that is better integrated with our web sight this one will no longer be up dated please check out the new sight

www.chuckfryberger.com

thanks

Some Nutrition Tips

Yesterday Nelson gathered us around for some serious advice. It's not very often that he puts on his serious face, but it was clear he had something important to share.

"Huddle up everyone, bring it in. I've got something I need to share."

Nelson said he knew we had all been wondering where he got his moxy... where exactly his game came from. He was now prepared to show us.

As it turns out, it all starts with nutrition.

CORE Updates and More

CORE is still rolling strong, most recently picked up by Discovery Asia and KLM Airlines. Also, we have a few more live shows lined up for this fall, including one at this weekend's 10th annual Rocktoberfest in the Red River Gorge. If you're in the area, make sure to check it out!



Visit the event's website http://rocktoberfest2010.com/ for the full lineup events, and for more info on the festival. This year's proceeds will go to benefit the Pendergrass-Murray Recreational Preserve.

On a completely unrelated note, in our last post we announced that we will soon be sporting an uber-sexy, ultra-streamlined, and highly sophisticated new website. Well, here's the man who's gonna take us there- web designer and follicle-ally blessed, Mr. Keith Driessen.

Last week we cruised up to Aspen to shoot a fragrance commercial for our portfolio, showcasing the newest scent from Nolo Contendre, Source. Here I am scouting locations at the Maroon Bells with Art Director Colette McInerney. As you can see we were brimming with excitement! At least 20% more excited than the lurkers in the background!



That energy carried over to the day of the shoot with an early start. Temps were chilly and we forced our model to trudge gracefully through a swamp at sunrise, dressed almost exclusively in ribbons. She was a real trooper.



It wasn't until about 11am that Nelson began to sober up. Or maybe it was the ribbons that were just so intoxicating....



But, once he did it was definitely business time.



In the afternoon, we went up Independence Pass for some close-ups by the river, and then on to the top of the pass for sunset. Here are some shots to enjoy, including a couple still frames of video:








Keep an eye out for the finished commercial which will be up shortly on our soon-to-be-unveiled NEW WEBSITE!

The Coup

Listen. Stephanie "never did nothing to no one" so she says. That is why I thought I would start the ball of karma rolling. Sorry Steph, no hard feelings, thats just the type of fun and games we have around here.

Keith chimes in with an update

Today I got a very important video announcement from noted photographer Keith Ladzinski. What does that mean anyways... noted? Well Keith seems to think it's really something, since he always talks about how noted he is. I digress. Apparently there is a discrepency between Urban Dictionary's definition of the phrase 'no bones' and the true meaning. Thankfully, Keith is there to clear it up for us.




We like Keith and we're proud that he's our special buddy.

Pop Quiz

Situation:

You have an illuminated closet light. You need to turn off said light. Which action below will give you the desired result?

A. Pull the string that dangles from the light.

B. Flick this switch.

If you're Nelson, you would definitely choose B.

So You want to be a lens super star and live large.

O MY BLOG!

My name is Nelson Carayannis this will be the first of many posts that i will be doing hear at Chuck Fryberger films! So I would like to kick this one off with a little something about how great it is to be contributing as a cinematographer to the company. i have never worked with such great and competent people whom are such a pleasure to be around. that being said i figured that i would post a little video about it.

Thanks for watching

-Nelson-

2010 Pikes Peak Ascent and Pikes Peak Marathon

This past weekend Nelson and I had the pleasure of documenting the 2010 Pikes Peak Ascent and Pikes Peak Marathon. For the three-day shoot, we hired on cinematographers Chris Alstrin and Scott Neel. A three camera team was essential to covering the massive scope of the events, which brought thousands of runners from around the globe to the small town of Manitou Springs, CO.



As I guessed beforehand, runners are insane. I saw one of the top finishers of the Ascent promptly faceplant into talus after crossing the finish line. He was then almost carried to one of the vans waiting to shuttle runners back down to Manitou. But, after turning in times just over two hours (for 13 miles and 8,000 vertical feet of gain) it was hard to find the humor in the situation.

Seriously. These athletes are pretty bad-ass.



Not too unlike these handsome gentlemen, ignoring normal traffic laws.




And you may be wondering what Chuck has been up to these days? Well, from what I can tell he's gone native.



Cheers!

Steph

iCLIMB

Check out the new Chuck Fryberger short Altitude Sickness at iCLIMB.

Featuring Daniel Woods on an exploration of high altitude alpine bouldering in Colorado, Altitude Sickness includes two of Daniel's recent FA's, The Great War For Civilization and Evil Backwards, and a flash of Unshackled. Guest appearances by Dave Graham, Jon Cardwell, Jon Gass, and Jimmy Webb.

Stream it for free or purchase a higher resolution version for just $.99. You can also download feature-length climbing films at iCLIMB, including CFF's own CORE and PURE. Download now at www.iclimb.com

Yes, We Are Still Alive

Chuck is busy. So busy that his last blog post was on June 10th. And now I can reluctantly add professional blogger to my job description. But, this has been in the plans for a while now. Our company is expanding, and as such the blog will be run a little differently from now on. First of all, this is no longer the Chuck Show. You can now expect posts from myself, Chuck (mostly about geeky things like camera equipment), and our newest member, second camera and loyal pack-mule, Nelson Carayannis.

Welcome to the team Nelson!



Have a beer.


For those of you concerned with the real business. Here is the quick and dirty update: First, Planet Snowkite. This Friday, Chuck is leaving for Argentina, to the southern-most point in South America, and the city of Ushuaia. There he and a team from Planet Snowkite will film a television series revolving around this emerging sport that uses an assistive kite to help the athletes perform massive aerials. Far-removed from the relatively slow sport of climbing, this job will test Chuck's capabilities to move fast and capture a much broader scope of movement.




While he's away, Nelson and I will be documenting this year's annual Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon. Personally, I'm very excited to be behind the camera for this suffer-fest. Both the Ascent and the Marathon begin in Manitou Springs, and cover the 13.2 miles and almost 8,000 ft of vertical gain to the summit. Then the marathoners have the daunting task of a return trip. Recently I have been begrudgingly suffering through the Lincoln Lake hike, which is only about 700 vertical feet, of walking, so I can only assume a shared mental illness amongst the participants.



Once Chuck returns, we will begin full pre-production on Song of the Untouchable. Travel to India is notoriously difficult, and I envision that we won't exactly look like your typical vacationers when our motley crew arrives with full camera equipment in tow. The fall will be packed with visa applications, travel carnets, and jumping through government hoops. Psyched!

And finally, after a very positive trip to the SLC trade show, it looks like we have the support of our sponsors to begin production on another climbing documentary. I suspect filming to start shortly after Chuck returns from the southern hemisphere, possibly only to return......

Sincerely,
Stephanie

Reviews and Updates

We've got some reviews in on CORE, and we went ahead and made a little secondary marketing push now that the film is out and apparrently it's a hit.

We also updated our web site with some examples of recent commercial work. Check out the KFC and Bona Kemi ads for a glimpse of what we've been up to since CORE's release.


Our biggest advertising job to date: National cable DRTV ad for Swedish Hardwood Floor manufacturer Bona Kemi.


A :30 ad for KFC celebrating the greatest sandwich of all time. The Double-Down.

Click Here to Check out the Commercials!

Stephanie is hard at work on our next newsletter, which will *hopefully* contain some exciting news. These are fun times at Chuck Fryberger Films. Life is good!

Epic - the good kind

Generally I think Epics are to be avoided, but having just threw down the deposit on the new generation of cameras from Red, I have to say that I cant wait to experience this kind of EPIC.

5K raw recording with 13.5 stops of dynamic range, and up to 225 frames per second makes this a perfect art machine.

On a climbing note, I'm headed to Rifle this weekend to see what's dry and get on some limestone. Cant wait to get on Zulu and Living in Fear, two routes that I've been on before but have never even come close to trying to redpoint.

Have a great weekend,
Chuck

CORE mini-tour... Slovenia

CORE is going on a mini-tour of Slovenia, with DJ konTROLL at the helm, with the support of Samsara climbing holds, LA Sportiva, and Blurr.

CORE SLOVENIA!!!

CORE in Brazil

I just got word that the CORE show in Brazil was a great success. Our host there prepared Portuguese subtitles for the film, and he said that many more people showed up to see the film than what they expected.

CORE in Brazil, blog post (in Portuguese).

Awesome to have a representation in Brazil. I would love to visit Brazil some time to do some climbing and some filming there, and meet all the cool people.

Cheers,

Chuck

The Jamie Emerson Interview

Today I went up to Boulder for a day. I had lunch with Chris Clark from Scarpa, dropped into The Spot Bouldering Gym, bought a new microphone cable, and met up with Jamie Emerson for an interview.

Red Bull Austria is currently close to finishing a project called Elements, which follows Kilian Fischhuber through several travels and competitions. I've worked several days on this film over the last few years, and I think about 5 or 6 minutes of the film will be from footage I shot. Today I sat down with Jamie to find out what it's like to set routes when you know that Kilian is going to show up and try to break down your hard work.

As usual, Jamie was outspoken and very knowledgeable about the topics. I would speculate that few people spend as much time thinking about climbing as Jamie.

For this video clip, I told him to pretend like I just down-graded his project. Look at that mean face. Love you JE. I am shooting the Red One on build 30 at the moment, and really liking the results I'm getting. Red has changed around the FLUT which is a component of the color science in the compressed RAW data. I'm finding that I'm getting better skin tones overall with the new color science. Geek of the day award goes to yours truly.




The film will be released mostly in Europe I believe. Not sure exactly when but I'll post up some more info when I have it.

Cheers,
Chuck

Before and After

I'm currently testing some footage from the new generation of Red cameras. One of the best things about shooting on Red is the amount of processing you can apply to the footage. Here, we see a test clip that represents the raw data from the shoot. In other words, this is what it looked like as raw capture data, straight from the sensor.



After applying some correction, processing, and some effects (more than I would typically use... but hey... we're testing here) I was able to get a more dramatic image from the original data.



There are huge advantages to shooting with a raw camera that has over 13 stops of dynamic range. If you're an art director or marketing person for a company, be on the lookout for the wave of photographers who are currently dabbling with 'movie mode' on their SLR cameras and hocking the results as professional. You can get away with murder if your end result is Vimeo, but if you are aiming for a higher-quality playback format... beware!

Looking forwards

The Red One's big brother - Epic.

With the release of CORE I'm now free to look forwards once again. As I'm now inbetween films, I can do some commercial work, recharge my creative batteries, and wait for the inspiration to arrive so I can dive into another project.

I currently have no less than three feature films that are in various stages of production or pre-production (one of them is about climbing), but everything now is at a standstill as far as production is concerned. I get to take a breath and make some careful considerations about what comes next in my own artistic and technical development as a director and cinematographer.

Red, the revolutionary camera company that is bringing cinema-quality gear to market at prices that even hacks like me can afford, has announced the upgrade path to their next generation of camera - the Epic. I'm one of the first in line for the new generation of cameras but I need to consider carefully if now is a good time to upgrade from a camera that is already pretty gosh darn amazing.

On another note, Panasonic has announced plans to release a full 4K Display. This is the first display I've heard of that has the capability to display 4K resolution, which is of course the native resolution of the Red One.


The Panasonic 4K Plasma. If you have to ask how much it costs, you cant afford one.


As I've always said, there's no need for sharp gear when you have fuzzy ideas. And right now I'm creatively depleted from CORE, so time will tell if I step up to the plate and once again pounce on the highest quality cinema gear for my upcoming projects.

Cheers,
Chuck

Viewings

So at this point, Blu-ray copies of CORE are circulating, and the global tour now has over 50 live shows. The DVD hits shelves worldwide on May 1st, and the HD download starts on the same day.

I was reviewing the full-length copy of CORE today once again as I prepare the 52-minute version for TV broadcast, and I wanted to offer some hints about what to look for if you've already seen the film. There's a few layers going on in the film aside from just people climbing on rocks.

Layer #1 - People climbing on rocks
Layer #2 - Money
Layer #3 - Work / What is a professional climber?
Layer #4 - Todd Skinner

To be continued...

Blowing like the Wyoming breeze

The World premiere is concluded. We had a packed house last night at the Boulder Theater for CORE and overall the film was very well received. Always great to hear the audience cheering for the climbers on the screen.

At this point, I still have a lot to do to wrap up the project, but my mind is now free to wander off and get inspired for the next thing.