After 3 years working 65 hours a week at a corporate AV job doing everything from shooting, editing, directing, lighting and sound design, IMAG, blahblahblah, I have decided to open up my own production facility once again. Higher Ground Media will officially open for business in February/March of 2008. The concept of Higher Ground Media is unique to most production companies in that we will be leveraging our "for profit" business to underwrite production services for non profits. Our rates will be the same regardless of status, but a portion of fees collected from profit driven entities will go into either a general fund managed by our local community foundation or can go directly to a non profit of their choice for a specific project. If the non profit chooses to use my company for their production, we will match the amount of the donation up to ten percent of the overall project cost. The goal is to give affordable access to high quality media production to non profits and faith based initiatives.

We will also be producing short and long form documentaries on a variety of topics. Our first production, "Walking Towards Holy Ground" was shot in Guatemala in February of '07. We followed a group of 14 missionaries on a short term trip to a mission sight. The film, shot in HDV, explores the spiritual, emotional, physical, and social implications of ordinary people exposed to extreme third world poverty. We are about to start shooting the one year later interviews to see how the trip has impacted the lives of these extraordinary individuals. We want to use the film to encourage anyone with a heart for the poor to not just send a check to a charity, but go out and touch it. I believe we can "bridge the gap" so to speak by trips such as this.

As far as equipment, I've been shooting on Z1's for the last 3 years both SD and HDV, and editing on Newtek VT and Speededit. We bought the VT for live gigs and IMAG. I love the RT aspect of VT and Speededit, but I've outgrown it in a lot of respects. No masking tools, limited color correction, flaky performance when capturing a live multicamera shoot. We've done some pretty high profile gigs with it though, including a live DVD for the Beach Boys, IMAG in the round for Jeff Foxworthy, and a live DVD for The Lt. Dan Band. I will be moving away from IMAG and live event production and will not have the need for all that VT does. For the new company, we will be switching platforms completely. The studio will be built around a dual quad core MacPro running FCS2 and I'm about to send my check to Promax for our new Sony XDCAM EX!!!! We were #2 on the list. We already have a 16 track project recording studio which will be retrofitted after the first of the year to be a full service multimedia studio. I am fortunate in having a pool of very talented and energetic guys to subcontract things like web design, print graphics and script writing. Higher Ground Mediawill be operated out my large historic home. It will have it's own entrance, off street parking, administrative space, as well as easy access to the kitchen for fresh coffee, client snacks, etc. One thing I have learned from both being in business for myself as well as working for others is....KEEP YOUR OVERHEAD AS LOW AS POSSIBLE!! We are fortunate in that I have a large equity line in my home so I won't have to borrow or use credit cards for financing. The recording studio has also afforded me to amass a good selection of quality mics and outboard gear. Knowing I was going to make this move I have slowly been beefing up my equipment list of non technology driven pieces such as a Arri lighting kit, some good sticks, a decent library of production music, motion and still garphics collections, equipment cases, etc. I have waited as long as I can to buy a camera and edit system and boy am I glad I did. The Sony EX and the new FCS2 will put us in a league all our own for my area. Most of the other production people around here have legacy equipment that they're still trying to pay off, or are shooting on SD prosumer stuff. We will definitely fill the gap between the two.

mickhaensler@comcast.net

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first tagged as a 5 COW post by dave morgan