Digital Media & Branding

Needed to do something interesting tonight. These are all non-manipulated photos taken with a simple zoom lens and a trusty Canon Rebel. I think the first one is my favorite.

This next one was a new trick I figured out tonight to emulate a double exposure. In case you didn’t know, Jupiter house only has one vertical sign.

I’m kind of proud of this one for some reason.

I counted down for a minute to get this one.

I hope you like. Follow us on the twitters: http://twitter.com/#!/storiedpro

-Paul Echols

Storied Productions is a company very much tied to the city of Denton. We love the city, love the people of the city, and care for the city’s well being. One of the things that has been greatly successful and beneficial for our city is Communities in Schools of North Texas which is a program that places volunteer mentors with at-risk students to help them graduate school.

If you haven’t already heard about the massive education budget cuts here in Texas you probably don’t watch the news, listen to the radio, or talk to anyone with kids. The number of valuable teachers losing their jobs is nauseating. On top of that, Communities in Schools is losing ALL of it’s state funding. ALL. For the students who need the most help, this is one of the few places they could turn to for aid.

The proof is in the pudding as evidenced by the Communities in Schools website which states “after five years of detailed evaluation underwritten by The Atlantic Philanthropies, [evaluations] concluded that Communities In Schools’ model resulted in the strongest reduction in dropout rates of any existing fully scaled dropout prevention program.”

Denton has not taken this reduced funding lightly and the Denton S.O.S. group formed specifically to Save Our Schools and privately fund the Communities in Schools project for North Texas.

The fund-raising efforts will continue through-out the summer but the first came with a concert by two-time Grammy award-winning, Denton-native Brave Combo (@bravecombo) and Brass-Jazz-Funk group Inner City All-Stars (@innercity) at Dan’s Silver Leaf (@danssilverleaf) where we enjoyed delicious Chicken n’ Waffles. Yum!

To see more photos from that night see our Flickr set here.

To see more photos from that night see our Flickr set here.

Batteries. The bain of every green-minded person’s existence. It seems like batteries are never ready when you need them or they just die after a few hours.

Enter HealthyBattery.com

These guys are genius. They found a product that literally makes your batteries last 5 times longer, on average! Can you imagine how much money we can save and lead acid we could keep out of land fills if we used one battery for every 5 we use normally?! What an insanely awesome thought!

Anywho, we are lucky ducks because we had the glorious opportunity to shoot a commercial for HealthyBattery.com last week. Last Friday to be exact. Yeah, you know, that day when the wind was blowing like 60 miles per hour.

Needless to say it was a fun shoot.

Despite the wind trying to take us down, we reigned victorious and captured some great footage for these guys and I just happen to have a little preview for you today!

Check it out!

You may expect a family like the Carter’s, who’s most well known legacy is in regards to starting the Dallas Maverick’s Basketball Franchise, to be unapproachable. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were honored to be chosen among the Dallas/Ft. Worth Videographers to capture the wedding of the franchise founder’s grandson. Each person in this family as well as the Bride’s family were all great to work with and incredibly nice! I don’t think I ever saw Natasha, the bride, without a smile on her face and Lee, her Groom, was full of nervous energy as he tried to contain his excitement.

We shot this wedding at Dallas Baptist University where their family have been alma-maters for several generations. This location was beautiful! Their chapel is less than a year old and all the natural light flooded into the rooms to make for some breathtaking shots.

We decided to showcase the exit sequence to show a little different side of our wedding videos. It’s not a traditional warm fuzzy feeling as the music of Cat Power serenades the romantic night sky with beautifully contrasting bokeh in the background. As the editor, I was hoping to bring a little more weight to the romance that many videos lose with using overtly “happy” music. I wanted to bring attention to the deep intimacy that marriage represents and I thought that this dramatic sequence would help do that. I would love to know what you think about it!