Digital / Promo

Mattel had established workflow and team in place, I came in to join the team as an additional director and writer. They had seen the pilot for Playtime and knew that I “got” the format. This video was filmed in the afternoon of my very first day (we filmed 2 vids each day) and with so many characters, the continuity was very tricky. To my delight, the seasoned Mattel producer told me months later this was his favorite video that year!

Hub’s Emmy-nominated series Spooksville inspired this spin-off web series. Filmed the day after wrapping the first season in Canada, actors Keean Johnson & Nick Purcha whipped through five webisodes in a single day. Back in LA, I worked closely with Hub’s graphics team in creating the old time-y animations. Editor Tracey Rowland and I howled with laughter as we storyboarded and created rudimentary animatics which Design Director Stan Lim and his team later made sexy.

This day went so smoothly that even with a photoshoot, an Entertainment Tonight interview, and all the hosted wraps needed for the marathon, we wrapped before lunch! The hard part was finessing the cast’s calendars and contracts. Getting everyone to that sound stage, that’s the part of this assignment for which I’m most proud.
FUN FACT:
The cast tweeted photos of themselves together which began trending in a big way that day.

Shot on a small stage in a sleepy Connecticut town, Alf knocked out 26 hosted wraps for a week-long “Alf Week” stunt on the Hub Network. Originating Alf performer Paul Fusco arrived with a large black box… and minutes later there was the iconic character from my childhood! And he hadn’t aged a day! Alf was every bit as wry and sardonic (borderline rude) with our crew as he was to Willie, Kate, and the rest of his TV family.
FUN FACT: Alf performed a number of bits that didn’t make it to air… they were deemed “too far” by the network’s standards and practices department.  

In honor of Fraggle Rock’s 30th anniversary, the Hub Network hosted a marathon event complete with these original interstitials.
FUN FACT:
This was the first day actor John Tartaglia performed Gobo Fraggle after Jerry Nelson’s death. Karen Prell was there to reprise the role of Red.

Director Mickey Corcoran and I spent a couple weeks brainstorming this concept together, knowing it needed to tell the tale of her coming to LA and meeting her co-stars. Filmed on the cast’s first day back after the Christmas holiday, the show’s regular crew built a giant green screen in the middle of the show’s main set. We’d been round and round about how to introduce Allisyn Ashley Arm, and as of that morning, we hadn’t yet found the right thing. So in an intense brainstorm with director Mickey Corcoran and executive producers Sharla Bridgett and Eric Robbins, the dinosaur reveal was born! I then worked closely with the incredible props team who had about two hours to build the practical levers console. It involved several mad dashes around town to find just the right switches and gears.
FUN FACT: A year later, Disney decided they wanted us to re-film Demi’s final “Yow!” when she’s with the logo in her new “Season 2” look. Mickey Corcoran was out of town, so I went to set on a rainy Friday night. Minutes before they were supposed to film a full episode before a studio audience, I directed Demi perform this walk, elbowing the invisible logo.  

Adam’s Answers was a four-year foray into the YouTube space. We filmed 130 episodes in 24 months. We set out “to answer the hard questions that both kids and grown-ups should be thinking about.” As evidenced in this episode that focuses on “HYPOCRISY,” we never shied away from controversial topics, but instead leaned in to figure out how to best address each topic in a way that was accessible and actually even… FUN.

FUN FACT:
To film this ten-second piece, we shut down a street in downtown LA and laid 90 feet of dolly track.
No single studio in LA owned this much, so we had to rent track from three separate facilities!

Clorox tapped agency Conscious Minds (who in turn tapped me) to create fake “bacon-scented” product commercials for an “April Fool’s Day” campaign. I painstakingly created the most hyper-believable Greenworks All-Purpose Spray commercial, featuring sunny-drenched shots, and even a pig in slow motion on a trampoline. We hired a PETA-approved pig wrangler to safely throw a piglet in the air at 120 frames-per-second.
FUN FACT: Clorox’s actual label designers crafted the bacon-scented Greenworks labels.

FUN FACT:
Finding a house that felt haunted in LA turned out to be a challenge. This house in Pasadena was actually owned by CalTrans (California Transportation) and had been vacant for decades, so our art department saved big on cobwebs and dust!

Toon Disney knew they wanted to do a “Hamsterviel Marathon”… I just had to figure out the right way to promote it. Since Hamsterviel is such a crazy character, I pitched them a campaign where Hamsterviel breaks the fourth wall and threatens the panicky announcer, Jason Marsden. To my delight, they greenlit this wacky creative!  

We filmed two spots across two 20-hour days. This was the only time I can recall having a first script draft get approved and shot. I wrote both scripts in about 20 minutes.
FUN FACT:
Dennis Rodman showed up to gamble that first night. One of our extras had been on a date with him the week before, so preventing them from being too friendly became a thing.

Filmed with the Detroit Lions stars in the optimistic spring of 2012, this show was an outreach tool to educate kids about the great fun of being physically active. Veteran Chicago Bulls photographer Barry Elz served as Executive Producer, also creating iconic posters of each Lions star featured.
FUN FACT:
As producer, it was my job to convince legendary wide receiver Calvin Johnson (aka Megatron) to play leap frog with a group of grown men.