Tulsa this Past Weekend

You all hear about Tulsa seemingly being the center of the world this past weekend? The Trump camp held their first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down. The rally was initially planned for Friday June 19, but moved to Saturday following pressure about the 19th being Juneteenth and all. But you probably knew about that already. We should've all known about that considering the wall-to-wall news coverage.

I'm still mentally unpacking from being in Tulsa Friday and Saturday. There's also a decent amount of still images and footage to dig through. Seeing as how it's Monday and all, I figure I could at least share a few and some of the experience.

Honestly I didn't feel like I should miss these events. Growing up super white and conservative I don't remember ever learning about Juneteenth. I'd only heard about it as an adult and honestly just recently come to know the history and appreciate its importance. I figured the Saturday Trump rally was going to be, well...something.

Events like these make up who we are as people and as Americans. I didn't want to look back years later and regret not participating knowing I had the opportunity.

Friday night's Juneteenth event in the Greenwood District was a big and peaceful summer street party. I did head over to near the BOK Center where blocks and blocks of people from all over the country were already in line and had been for days hoping to get inside for the rally.

The main story of Saturday, in my opinion, was that the Trump campaign rally was much smaller than anticipated. I had no intention or desire to be in the BOK building and I was much more interested in what was happening outside. In a continuing effort to personally process what’s happening right now, I was in Tulsa independently just to witness what I could.

Overall the atmosphere outside Tulsa's BOK Center was tense, but civil. There were plenty of spats between Trump supporters and protesters. Some got physical, but fights were quickly broken up primarily by people from both sides. I did see law enforcement step in a couple times and individuals were arrested.

One situation happened right in front of me with what felt at first like incredible efficiency but then overwhelming force. I got into more about it on an Instagram post if you're up to check it out.

I'm planning to cut something from the Saturday footage, but that'll take some time. Surely I'll post it soon enough. I don't think I've ever been more intentional and considerate about what I'm choosing to post from the events. I've covered protests for years in both a press and independent role, but right now feels different and rightfully so. Yea, I feel like we're recording a visual record of history. Granted my potential audience is absolutely meager, but that doesn't give me a pass on trying my hardest to get it right.

The Raconteurs – Live at Electric Lady

Surely we can all do with some lighthearted content now and then (especially now). Maybe some actual work stuff from "the before time" is far due in this dumpster fire we're currently living in.

Back in September I got to work with Contrast Films cam op'ing a shoot with The Raconteurs for Spotify's Live at Electric Lady. Most of my day was waiting around for the live performance start while the main crew were filming interview and b-roll footage for the rest of the edit. But soon enough I was skating back and forth across the back of an absolutely packed and historic live tracking room. Freakin' kudos to dolly grip Glenn Porter for pushing, pulling, and dodging *nearly every effort I made slinging a not so petite Alexa Mini package mounted to a Cobra dolly.

*Sorry for smashing you more than once Glenn. It was a tiny space.

Notice how we were all packed into that tiny space and not a single person wearing a mask or rubber gloves. Actually, there may have been one or two, but they were goth kids and I believe it was a fashion thing. Ooo, and I bet no one was having a panic attack about getting sick or the economy tanking or losing their jobs or being cooped up in a tiny apartment for months with or without tiny kids or major protests in the streets against racism and police brutality or murder hornets. Surely too the vast majority of the people in this room didn't even know what a sourdough starter was let alone have their own. Oh the before time...

This Week in Complexity

Did I tell you the one about moving my family across the country during a global pandemic while also dodging protests in every major city we drove through? Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City. The world was burning with a righteous anger over the death of another black man in police custody and I was driving a moving truck across the country with my dog sleeping in the passenger seat. Nearly everything we own was packed into that truck while Saint Anne the wife followed close behind in a rented SUV with our two house fires strapped into the backseat.

There's a tsunami of news, posts, and information about what's happening right now and trying to stay informed is like drinking from a fire hose. Honestly I'd much rather get into the recent release of a project I got to be on, but that blog post can wait. I'll not get into the weeds about the reality of institutional racism and police violence, but those four Minneapolis police officers killed that man. We left Brooklyn just hours before the protests broke out not far from our home and it's crushing to not be there during this time.

The past week or so here in Oklahoma City has had the wife and me focused on family and trying to adjust to life outside New York. Most of our stuff is now neatly packed into a storage unit that's six times larger and nearly a third of the price of what we had in Brooklyn. With all that's going on I feel like we're approaching Inception levels of our lives still being somewhat on hold. We're staying with our parents for a season before deciding what's next and there's plenty of room to sorta sprawl out compared to our small New York apartment; our boys are loving time with their grandparents. We even bought a car which is pretty much a must have in living here. The salesman looked at us like we had horns growing our of our face when we told him we hadn't owned a car in the last 18+ months.

In the midst of trying to get the dust to settle in our own major life event, I still strongly feel like it's important to not let what's happening in the world pass us by. Anne and I had a conversation about racism and police brutality with our seven year old. We stuttered and stumbled in our attempt, but we did the thing. Anne was eloquent as always, but what was helpful for me was to sit down with him and go through some of the photos posted from the protests, especially the ones taken not too far from our Park Slope apartment. One of the major focuses of our move to New York was to make sure our family was around people and ideas that were different than ours. Different races, different faiths, different political beliefs. No question we'd have participated in the Brooklyn protests if we were there. Like the rest of this country, Oklahoma has to address and work through its own problems and history of racism. There have been protests and demonstrations across the state and I jumped at a chance to participate in a peaceful event this past Saturday here in Oklahoma City.

Again, it's wild to be here for now, especially without serious plans. Being back in Oklahoma is like being on another planet considering all we've been through in New York. Anne and our boys will be back in the classroom in a few months and I'll be spending a good deal of time commuting to NY and wherever else for work once it spins back up.

Quickly Now

Oh wow. This is not a time for anything I have to say, though I’ve got a lot on my mind during this time of hot mess, transition, and absolute unrest here in America.

There’ll be an appropriate time for me to try and share how I’m processing what the last week or so has undoubtably meant to me and my family in our time of leaving NYC and moving back across the country. We’re unquestionably crushed by our personal circumstances and all that nonsense, but it absolutely pales in comparison to what our country and specifically the black community is going through at the moment.

Stay safe and pay attention to what’s going on.

Less Wrecked

Yeesh... I went all out last week and puked my soul onto this digital sidewalk. I'm still coming up with all kinds of things I'll miss once we leave the city: Park Slope Halloweens; subway rides to the beach; all the coffee shops. I'll not get into the hot mess of me crying no less than three times today during my last weekly trip to the Park Slope Whole Foods.

This week has me less wrecked as – again – I aired most of that nonsense out last week. We're still packing up our lives and saying awkward "goodbyes" in a time of no hugs and social distancing. In a few days we'll be uprooting again to head back to Oklahoma.

I'm still glad the high school me decided to get into the habit of keeping a journal. Before last week's emotional dump I was able to look back on my first New York experiences and found a couple notebooks that were over 20 years old. I'm glad too that some of that near daily pen and paper habit has spilled into the digital these last couple years in blog form. It started out partly in a vain attempt to "position myself as an expert" but that nonsense fizzled out fast ('cause we all know the truth). Thankfully it's turned more into a public facing digital journal of where I was at that time each post went live.

These last couple days had me going back through some of those posts from our time as New Yorkers and gorging on the associated serotonin and dopamine floods. Here's a few of the faves (in no particular order):

One Year Later
"Happy Xmas" - Vevo & Contrast Films
Other People > You
Midwinter Break - Cape May, NJ
Fixing my train wreck in post
Vevo Lift Live Sessions: YUNGBLUD & Kiana Ledé
Intentional Time Off

Slowly but surely I'm climbing up from the muck and seeking out the silver lining in this nonsense. I've already got flickers of optimism not far from this transition and I'm hopeful for this next season. Obviously leaving New York for the reasons we are was never the plan, but it's doing me no good just sitting in the dark and having decisions made for me.

I Absolutely Hate This

I don't want to write this. I'm assuming just avoiding it will make it go away. I've never had a bad report from a doctor about a terminal illness, but I'm assuming this is an insanely tiny glimpse of what that could possibly be like. We're leaving New York City and moving back to Oklahoma the end of this month.

We're still healthy and well, but leaving this place and all the time and resources we put into getting here plus the connections and close friendships we've made feels like a part of us is dying. Good Lord that sounds incredibly dramatic and selfish considering that to date nearly 92,000 have died with more 1.5 million cases of coronavirus here in the United States.

Our apartment is already looking weird as we're starting to pack up. There's brand new heavy-duty cardboard boxes collapsed and leaning against the walls just waiting to be useful. Anyone who's been inside a typical NYC apartment knows how tiny they are to begin with, so now it feels even more claustrophobic as we're starting to wrap up our lives here in Brooklyn. Our bookshelf has been emptied and my desk is starting to thin out. We're working our way through our pantry and basing menus on what we've got left vs. buying additional staples we'd have to throw out. We'd purged a good deal of what didn't need in moving from Oklahoma back in November 2018, so we don't have too much to toss before the move back.

I hate this. I absolutely hate this.

We'd planned and prepared for years to move to New York. Now we're here and it's crushing to leave so soon for such a terrible reason.

My first time to New York was during the summer of my Sophomore year of college while on tour with a school music group. I'd specifically written about NYC being impressive and that I'd "...never seen anything like it. I'm not sure if I could live there though. Everything moved a little too fast for me." Keep in mind too that this was 2002 and I was excited enough about eating at the Times Square Olive Garden to put it in my journal. Bonus points too for it being nearly 18 years to the day that I wrote that. Nerd.

That next summer another music tour had me back in New York. I specifically remember being in the city and the moment I committed to living there one day. Just about every major life decision I've made from that point on centered around making the jump to New York happen. When I bought my house in 2008 I was intentional about it being small because I wanted to get used to living in a smaller place. I know Anne and I talked about living in NYC before we even got married. We got her wedding ring not too far from Central Park. Over the years plenty of other major decisions – including selling our home and living off the profits while I worked to get established here – were intentionally made all just to get us to where we are now. Surely that's part of why it's so devastating to leave after only being here 18 months and under these circumstances.

The hardest thing for me is thinking that I failed. In my right state of mind I absolutely know that I didn't, but I fear that a very small but real part of me will spend the rest of my life thinking I did.

The reality is that we're now living in the global epicenter of a pandemic. We're literally living in the middle of something the world hasn't seen in 100 years. This nonsense is out of our hands and absolutely not something we could've planned for. The New York City we moved to isn't here right now and won't be for a good while.

"The factors that made the city the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic — its density, tourism and dependence on mass transit — complicate a return to any semblance of normalcy. The city is still far from meeting the public health metrics necessary to reopen, from available critical-care beds to new hospital admissions for the virus."

“I don’t think the New York that we left will be back for some years,” said Gregg Bishop, the commissioner of the city’s small businesses agency. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get it back.”

"If only I'd set aside more money" says the guy who set aside more than enough to make it through plenty of thin back-to-back months. But a global shut down that started 10+ weeks ago and doesn't look to let up anytime soon was just too much. We can't keep blowing through our savings and the little money we do have coming in just holding our breath while this historic moment tries to drown us.

I'd seen an interview with the CEO of Southwest Airlines this last week and he talked about "radical restructuring." As of last week airline traffic was down 94% and "to stem the bleeding, airlines have made deep cuts to every imaginable expense..."

"Our goal is to thrive... The imperative here is to survive." - Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly

Looking at my business records I know that a large percentage of my revenue comes from shooting live events. I don't expect those to come back anytime soon. I also know I made a decent amount of money in the last couple years on travel jobs. Again, those numbers are certainly going to drop. Who knows what live production work is going to look like moving forward before a vaccine is available. Thank goodness my Filmsupply revenue is still strong and helping make financial ends meet.

Regarding family life here during the pandemic in New York City, it is unquestionably difficult at the moment. Both physically and emotionally we've never been closer and I know eventually we'll see how this period of time has made us unquestionably stronger and better people. Still, even in the best of times it's hard AF raising a young family here let alone what we're going through now.

There's a tiny sliver of comfort knowing we're not the only ones having to make decisions like this. A shocking number of our friends in similar situations here in the city are also packing up and scattering across the country. Another pin of light in this dark time has been Saint Anne the Wife being able to re-connect with friends back in Oklahoma City and land a couple job interviews at some solid elementary schools.

No doubt there'll be a silver lining to all this nonsense and I'd love to wrap this up with optimism, but right now I'm grieving. Obviously I'm worried about acting too soon seeing how it's only been a week since we even started seriously considering moving back to Oklahoma City, but at some point decisions need to be made with the information we have. In a text exchange with a buddy of mine who's also in production and planning to leave the city he talked about how "it's not the real world out there" right now. We've "gotta act with what we know."

I'm no where near being able to fully process leaving at this point. Gutting a dream shouldn't have to happen for such shitty reasons.

Shut it Down: Week Nine

"Coffee, water, coffee, wine, water, repeat." - my brain

It's Monday, Day 56 of Quarantine. Here's this week's roundup:

Nothing. Nothing new. I go to Whole Foods and Target on Mondays, and then the rest of the week happens. I attempted to read a book I'd had on the shelf to avoid looking at my phone so much, but then I had to look something up that I'd read and then two days happened. This Sunday was Mother's Day and the older kid suggested "we make breakfast in bed for mom," which means "I make breakfast in bed for mom."

I did have a bit of a meltdown (or two or three) this week. Surely that's okay considering it's WEEK NINE of this nonsense. There's the apparent mass exodus of young professionals leaving NYC for the suburbs, so that's as encouraging as the current unemployment rate. We're planning a trip back to Oklahoma City this summer, so that's something to look forward to.

Not sure why, but I've had a weird rash of wanting to spend money all this week. Obviously, production work dropped off a cliff months ago with my last normal job back in early March so it's not like I'm seeing any kind of disposable income at the moment or foreseeable future. Surely it's time to finally buy a car so we can escape the city now and then or get groceries without having to take a two-hour nap afterward. Then there was that loose Astera Titan I saw super cheap on eBay that'd go so well with the one I already have. Dana Dolly rental kits for sale at an additional $100 off? I'll say we did jump on the Disney+ bandwagon this week for $7 (or two lattes)/month.

Still, we're here. Safe, healthy, and dangerously stir-crazy. I've been taking photos of discarded rubber gloves and face masks through most of this hot mess with grand plans to make something out of it.

Shut it Down: Week Eight

At some point this hot mess will be behind us and I'm intentionally trying to be better about thinking ahead. I do expect to have entirely different financials for 2020 compared to years past. March and April are typically busy months where I make a decent amount for the year. Who knows if that work and revenue will be made up anytime soon. Thankfully my stock footage numbers are up these last few months considering how live production work has fallen off a cliff.

Money-wise, we're still going thanks mostly to our savings and some invoices still out. Our 2019 tax refund still hasn't hit our accounts, but we did get our stimulus check. Also, this past week I applied for and got my PPP SBA loan. As a business I'm setup here in New York as a S-corp and I'm my only employee. I'm fairly certain I'll not fire myself anytime soon so that PPP money – by no means a windfall – will be used to keep my payroll going a few more weeks and will magically turn from a loan into a grant.

Looking back at the last few years, most of my work has been shooting interviews and small commercials with crews of less than five to eight people and a good deal of solo run-n-gun work. I also do a solid amount of live event work with big crowds of people, but I'm not expecting those to return any time soon.

Film Florida came out with their Recommendations for Clean & Healthy Production Sets. Filmmaker Jim Cummings wrote a piece called Hollywood vs. The Virus that was making the rounds last week. That dumpster fire of a possible reality kept me up at night, but after another read or two the flames died down and I remembered the kind of work I do and the types of sets I'm on – nothing even close to major studio projects.

I'm seeing more and more come out about what production life could possibly be like once the world gets up and spinning again. Director Ryan Booth had this McDonald's spot come out a couple weeks ago with Pulse Films. According to their Instagram post they worked remotely with 16 DPs across the country shooting the arches in their local areas.

There was also a spot to come out this past week that was shot by Simon Reinert with his family as cast. I'd reached out after he'd posted about it and he mentioned that the gear was dropped off at his door by the production company and he did all the gear prep and shooting himself. His wife is a nurse and the hero of the piece so it's not like they were going against social distancing guidelines.

Closer to home I finally saw the edit from the Empire State Building shoot a few weeks back. I didn't know at the time, but it ended up being for CVS Health and the entire spot seemed like a potluck of stock footage and internal CVS footage. I'd sent over nearly a dozen different Manhattan skyline and hero shots of the Empire State Building while it was lit up red for the health workers. The shot of mine they ended up using is in the piece around :56.

By all means I'd love to comment and pretend to expert my way though all this nonsense. There's absolutely no shortage of people making their predictions about what you should be doing and how to land on your feet after all this. No queston there are smart people in and around my industry making serious efforts to get all this back up and running. I make most of my revenue on commercial projects followed closely by live event work and stock footage sales. I absolutely miss working and can't wait to get back to live production projects. In the meantime I'm still shooting what I can here around the apartment and neighborhood.

Honestly though most of our quarantined time has been absorbed by making sure our two house fires don't burn the place down and take us with them. It's not like I have big projects to prep for or even anything close to a 9-5 job. Good Lord I can't imagine what it'd be like for both Anne and I to try and attempt all this while both working full-time.

Our days normally – even before all this mess – start around 6am with blood curdling screams coming from somewhere in the apartment. Saint Anne the Wife is the frontline worker in chaos of our home, but we both finally get out of bed just before that tipping point where one of our nearly-domesticated tornadoes stabs the other to death. Long ago we gave up on the boys ever sleeping in; God-awful children's programs on Netflix aren't going to watch themselves apparently.

There's the seemingly apparent calm after breakfast and coffee where Anne has The Kid v1 locked into one laptop with his remote learning for the day while The Kid v2 is mainlining a $10/month subscription of ABCmouse.com via iPad. There's also the morning trips to the park which are nothing more than a desperate attempt at dissipating some of their perpetual motion.

The rest of the day is mostly cooking, dirty dishes, and laundry interrupted by that sweet, sweet relief of House Fire no. 2's afternoon nap and our day drinking. Sometimes I'm able to write and be somewhat "productive" during that blessed couple hours, but then it's back to cooking and dirty dishes before the day's main showdown: "getting ready for bed." After that both Anne and I – normally bloodied and bruised – collapse onto the couch praying for mercy and that the boys sleep at least most of the night.

On a serious note, turns out you can get a discount when you buy wine by the case. Oh, and we just started re-watching Band of Brothers on Amazon Prime. Anne wouldn't even attempt to watch The Midnight Gospel with me. I know she loves me, but that weird show falls into Rick & Morty territory for her.

Shut it Down: Week Seven

In the world of small victories we finally landed a set of hair clippers. My mom shipped us the ones dad didn't want her using on him no matter how many YouTube tutorials she watched. Saint Anne the Wife and her varying levels of confidence gave the Herriott boys our quarantine cuts and honestly I can't tell you how good it felt to get a trim. That simple sense of normal is incredibly refreshing.

Here in our 700sq foot world we're mostly trying to keep our children from causing their parents an early death. As per usual Anne's running the show while I'm still trying to dodge parental responsibilities by filling up my journal and making pictures. Yesterday morning I sat down to write and within five minutes immediately had to deal with a seven-year-old's world-ending-meltdown and a two-year-old's potty break he didn't think I was qualified to assist. Thank goodness for afternoons when both Saint Anne the Wife and our second house fire tend to take naps while the first one is absorbed in God knows what in the other room.

How and what are we going to remember after all this nonsense? What are we doing with all the time we have while hiding from the outside? What's it like to live in New York City during a pandemic?

I'm pretty sure my personal journal entries and various still images using whatever distortion / distraction I could come up with that day will be my contribution to all this, but there are plenty of others here in the city making some killer art conveying what it's like to live through a pandemic here.

The “2 Lizards” videos have been “the most on-the-nose, accurate, what it feels like to be in New York City during this quarantine period” cultural product, said Rujeko Hockley, an assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art... “They make me cry.” - The ‘2 Lizards’ of Instagram Are Coronavirus Art Stars

By all means go to Meriem Bennani's Instagram and watch the other episodes.

Another solid find this past week has been "Shelter in Place," a short film by Matthew Beck (@plasticlunch). I randomly got to meet the filmmaker on a subway platform a few weeks back. He was using his camera flash through a random piece of transparent plastic he'd found in the trash and asked my usual "getting anything good?" We quickly got to talking about shooting through different types of transparent goodies and the results we were getting, but both of us were bouncing between trains and didn't have much time to talk. It's these chance encounters you only get by living here in the city that I absolutely miss during this quarantine.

UPDATE: Beck's "Shelter in Place" got picked up by The New Yorker and they did a nice write up about it.

There was also several New York Times articles that just felt right. First up was the Gabrielle Hamilton feature "My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?" Also, an opinion article "The Nude Selfie is Now High Art." Obviously there's a bit of NSFW involved so it's a "choose your own adventure" situation with that link.

Though the debate about art versus pornography has never been settled, a case can be made that quarantine nude selfies are art. Some of us finally have time to make art, and this is the art we are making...

Beyond our Wi-Fi, we don’t have much in the way of connection. Many of us are alone and live in small spaces. We lack the distractions we’re accustomed to and the routines we rely on. But some of the most famous self-portraiture resulted from a dearth of resources.

We are taking a risk at a time when we are not allowed to take risks, baring our bodies with no guaranteed reaction.

Can't speak to any nude selfies happening here at home during this time, but I'll shamelessly point to some of the nonsense I shot while home alone for a period a couple years back; Anne and the boys were visiting family in Louisiana for a few days. Good grief I miss having the space to setup gear and lights.

Can't say the images I'm shooting now are relevant and speaking to the current time, but I do appreciate the time and opportunities I have at the moment. This past week I had a stellar stoop find with a couple lens elements left on the sidewalk. I've been shooting through those two pieces of glass and for sure lean towards the plano convex one that's acting like a diopter. Both are just about the same diameter as my 24-70 lens so it doesn't always cover the image.

Shut it Down: Week Six

It's straight up nuts considering how life continues on while the world seems to be paused. Some good friends of our had their second kid the middle of last week; my cousin's dad died a couple days later from cancer. We're hiding out in and around our homes and trying to dodge an "invisible enemy." Meanwhile Saint Anne the Wife and I are on the tail-end of getting Kid v2 potty trained. There was a bit of a break last week with Kid v1's remote learning, but they're back at it starting today and seemingly with a vengeance. Curious as to how a student teacher will do during all this nonsense? Looks like E-town's classroom is about to find out. By all means, lets add more classroom Zoom calls to our 7-year-old's day considering how well the other ones are going.

I'll say for sure shooting has helped keep me sane through this nonsense. I got antsy about mid-week and got out to shoot outside my neighborhood. I'd been out the week before for a client project, but went out this time with my RED looking for whatever I could find. I started out taking a car from our place to Dumbo, then walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and finally ended up at Washington Square Park. There's more people getting out and doing the things they need to do. There's lines outside grocery stores (just like in my part of Brooklyn). Plenty of people wearing masks (again, like where I live). Oh, and the parks are pretty full (again, like my hood). More than anything I realized I didn't need to be out to "capture the look of an empty city." I ended up with a few shots I'm proud of, but then a whole load I'll not remember. Some of the footage is up on Filmsupply if you're up to check it out.

All in all I've got nothing really new to share. Looks like we in it for the long haul and I hope at some point we'll hit our stride. In the meantime, here's a few other favorites from the last few days: