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U2 and Buenos Aires

This is a view from the hotel where my friend Reed Smoot and I stayed while filming the U2 3-D Imax film. Reed was one of the cinematographers and he was able to get me on the crew. I saw U2 for the first time on March 2, 1984. I was 14 years old. 22 years later-March 2, 2006-I'm helping film U2 in my parents native country. I had watched so many soccer games on TV with my Dad at River Plate stadium and now it was cool to walk onto the middle of the field as the Vertigo Tour stage was being built. The film crew wanted to get certain shots of the band without the restrictions of the crowd and a live concert-so, they put on a "phantom" show for us. We set up all of the cameras and the stage was lit. There were about 50 of us set with the gear in front of the stage in an empty stadium that holds about 80,000 people and a few feet away from us walks on Bono and the rest of the guys on stage. We pretty much got a personal show as the band played around 9 songs for us to film. It was the coolest thing ever for a U2 fan. As the band was waiting for us to make some final adjustments on the cameras, they started improvising. The Edge would play something on guitar and the rest would jump in. Bono started rapping and then would just belt out these melodic notes. You really got a sense of how great his voice is. We filmed the real shows the following 2 nights. It was great to meet the Argentines that were there for the show. The whole experience was so great.

My favorite Bono quote: "You don't become a rock star unless you've got something missing somewhere, that is obvious to me. If you were of sound mind or a more complete person, you could feel normal without 70,000 people a night screaming their love for you."

The Truth

I just completed several spots for the Utah Health Department in conjunction with the organization who does "The Truth" campaign. These spots were specifically targeted towards the Latino community here in Utah. We followed four Latinos who were trying to quit smoking for several months. From the footage, we created several documentary style commercials for each person. They have been airing on TV for the last several months. Now the subtitled versions are playing on English speaking channels. A half hour documentary is currently playing on stations such as Univision and Telemundo. I really enjoyed spending time with these four individuals.
Check out one of the spots here: http://www.fiftyfilms.com/The_Truth.html
We did not plan on having the spot have this specific concept. Margarita coughed during almost every take. The Creative Director and I thought about taking all of her coughs and linking them together and this spot is the result of that idea. The following week we came to film her again and found out she had gone to the emergency room a few hours after we left her because of her cough and was not breathing well.