San Diego Camera Crew and Film Production
We talk with a few San Diego, CA based camera crews. We’ll talk about local projects, film production life, experience, gear and much more.
Camera Crew Panel
San Diego, California Camera Crew Discussion
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Hey, Hey everybody happy middle of June on this very warm Wednesday and welcome to crew talk brought to you by shooting video. I’m Bonnie. I’m currently listening here in my booth in Los Angeles, but let’s take a trip down to lovely San Diego, California to chat with our San Diego Camera Crews. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the crowd and we’ll get rolling. We’ll get right into it. Is anybody well, anybody like to go first? No pressure, but all the pressure
Mark Schulze:
I’ll start it.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
I’m all right, Mark.
Mark Schulze:
Been checking in with Blair and everybody the whole crew there at shoots.video and, and whatnot, and then having fun with everybody shooting video and been doing this forever during COVID. It was a pretty popular destination for all of us to try and chime in from four to five o’clock on Wednesdays. I’m Mark Schultz with Crystal pyramid productions old school since 1981. And been doing video production and then the mid eighties, we did a lot of shows and distributed ’em worldwide, mostly how to and educational back in the VHS days. So that kind of dates things too. And most of the cameras we had and still have downstairs in the garage are beta cam MSBs. We’ve now got of course newer, like Sony Fs, seven mark twos. And as I was showing the guys before some of the big, you know, cameras, packages, city Altos to do the big events with big lenses and all that kind of fun stuff. And then you know, interviews and shows complete shows. And we’ll talk more about all that later.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love it.
Horacio Jones:
Okay, I’ll go next. Am I on screen? Yes. You can’t tell. Okay. Hi, I’m Rossio Jones. I own Cinema Viva Video Productions. We’re down here in downtown San Diego, and we specialize in corporate videos, whether it’s like interviews with executives or safety or training videos. And we’ve been doing a lot of live streaming in the past couple of years and actually started live streaming more like 10 years ago, but the technology was really low key back then. But yeah, in the past couple years, we’ve heavily invested in our live streaming setup. We like to live solo, like Mark and I were talking about earlier, we just got the Starlink satellite so we can basically stream from anywhere, even in the middle of the desert.
Mark Schulze:
Awesome. Yeah. Harra, just to let you know, harra and I have been working together for the last couple of years especially during COVID cuz everybody wanted more streaming. So that’s a little side note, but a great guy. His company’s fantastic. Hasn’t been around as long as us, but he’s, but he’s definitely a, a key person and, and up and coming in San Diego
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love a good testimonial. Fantastic.
Horacio Jones:
Thank you.
Mark Schulze:
I’m Patricia Mooney
Patricia Mooney:
And I’m Mark Schultz’s partner and wife. So we live together, work together, play together and it’s very interesting. It’s very, very important to strike a good balance because we are together so much of the time. So we do a lot of mountain biking and in fact, in our beginning days, and we’ve been together for 40 years, we decided to do a lot of videos on the passions we had. So we were among the first video pioneers of the 1980s with VHS videos on all kinds of things like massage and mountain biking, for instance. And so it we’ve learned that it’s a good thing to wear a lot of hats in the video industry, because if a gig comes up for a sound check or a gig comes up for an editor or producer, whatever, if you know all those things, then you can you’re, you can toss a wider net out there
Mark Schulze:
Telepro
Patricia Mooney:
And teleprompting operating. In fact, I highly suggest that that seems to be a good niche right now during events and studio shoots.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Very nice and I believe last but not least.
Rico Molden:
Yep. We got Rico here with Molden works, Rico Molden, and have been doing this since 2016. I’m a full-time freelancer and anything from shooting events to weddings and then even some commercial work. And I shoot, I edit and basically a one man band, but I also jump into other people’s production companies as needed to play different roles.
Mark Schulze:
Speaking of which just curiosity since goes pretty. Big’s kinda like LA, where are you from? Rico San
Rico Molden:
I’m here. Yeah. I’m here in San.
Mark Schulze:
Huh? Pretty close. We’re over here in San Carlos, right by Carls mountain, which you climb.
Rico Molden:
Yep. Climbed it a few times.
Mark Schulze:
Where did that come from?
Rico Molden:
The guest star? My sidekick is here on the floor.
Patricia Mooney:
<Laugh> Hey sidekick.
Rico Molden:
You can say a quick and then he’ll watch he climbed Kyles mountain last week with me.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
How did you get started in production? Like what was the thing that got you into it? If it was, you were, you know, wanting to do it from the beginning or was it just a random series of events? Like how did you get started and what made you say, oh, this is what I wanna do.
Mark Schulze:
I’ve, you know, I’ve been doing this since 1981, before that I was in college at UCSD. So I went from U C S D to a communications sociology major. And I took the AV classes and black and white photography and all that fun stuff. But that’s how I kind of got into it, starting in 81, I started crystal pyramid productions here in San Diego. So we’re the last of the old school standing video production companies. So I started then, and there was only a short period of time when I wondered if I didn’t wanna do it. And I actually literally went and some people might remember what it’s called the yellow pages and they were really thick and it was all businesses. I spent like a week going through the yellow page from A to Z to see what I’d wanna do. And by the time I got the V again, you know, a couple days later, I was like, no, I still wanna do video. There’s nothing else I’d rather do. That’s my story.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
I love it.
Horacio Jones:
Yes. Well, I kind of inadvertently lucked into it. You know, I was a music student at the University of North Texas, and I was looking for a job to pay the bills while I went to school. And I went to an interview as an office assistant at a TV station. And I started talking to them about how well I also do audio editing. I’m a music student. And they were like, oh, you know what? We have a video editing position downstairs. Why don’t you go talk to the editors and see if you would like that. And so I, I talked to them, I looked at the equipment and yeah, they hired me on the spot and I just started doing like VI some basic video editing and inserting commercials into TV shows and stuff. But I found out I was good at it. And that inspired me to go out and buy my own equipment. So I went out and bought a GL one, I think back then I was like 98, maybe 2000, something like that. And yeah, just been doing it ever since.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Great. I love that. I wanna see will, are you good with audio? Do we, do
Will Pupa:
We have, yeah, I could hear you guys. Yeah. So I didn’t, I don’t know about this group. What do you guys do? I was just wondering what it’s all about. I work as a freelance cameraman, and I have worked with Mark in the past. I just saw this email and I thought, let me check it out. So what is this?
Bonnie Marie Williams:
What’s the coolest group ever? No, we’re going over the San Diego video production group. So we’re interviewing, you know, I’m not in San Diego, although right now I wish I was. But we’re, we’re interviewing everybody and we’re learning more about each other and, you know, potentially opening up any sort of avenues to work together, referrals, that sort of networking thing. But it’s nice to connect cuz I know a lot of us like myself were still kind of isolating a lot, so it’s nice to write. Talk to other people. I know some of us like myself, I talk to myself all day long. So this is like the first human interaction I have had all day outside of text messages. So yeah, we’re just kinda going around talking about how we got and introducing yourself and your company and what it is that you do. So we’re still in that introductory phase. So no worries. We wanna make sure you were good before we, we
Will Pupa:
Keep that on. Oh yeah, no. Cool. I joined by phone and then it didn’t stop. So that’s why you can hear me. But anyway, I’ve been doing this. I’ve been in San Diego for 22 years, San Diego, cameraman.com and that’s my website with my real and just, you know, a freelancer. I like it. I enjoy the business. I work a lot for a good morning America. It’s one of my big clients, ABC. They actually asked me to go to the floods in Wyoming today up at the park. And I couldn’t go.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
All right. So we were going over how we got started in production. If it was like a lightning bolt moment or something that just fell into your lap and you said, yeah, this is cool. I wanna do it. We’re just talking about what inspired you, how you got started. Cause everybody has a story as to how they got started. And it’s interesting to hear that from everybody in their perspectives.
Will Pupa:
Yeah. I like this business. Like we all do not everyone do it. There’s a lot of things, different things that take place to, to have the know-how and the energy and the want to for this business. That’s for sure. I see a lot of people fail because it is difficult. It’s tough, but isn’t it rewarding though? Right. And I got into at a young age, I was going to school, got an internship and worked in local TV and then started production from there and then been freelance now or independent cameraman, I guess you could say for a lot of years, more than I wanna remember <laugh> but I have a couple of Sony ethics, nines, and I really got into the drone and I got my drone certification about four years ago and I just did a shoot with this free solo guy, Alex, hon. He climbed a L cap without ropes, badass guy. And last Thursday I did a shoot with him, with my drone. It was pretty cool. So I’ve really been trying to specialize in drones if anybody needs some drone help, but I have a couple nine and I just bought Aja a Ron and 4d GI camera set. So that’s where I’m at right now with my career and my equipment
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Of awesome. That’s awesome. You got a 20, 22 Jeep. So there you go. You’re rolling. You’re
Will Pupa:
Good. Hell yeah. It’s all happening. Yeah. I worked the super bowl this year. My van broke down and I worked the super bowl up in LA and I had to take my Jeep, but I was way cool. I just couldn’t take all my equipment with me, but yeah, I have a van full of equipment, but I use this one. I have to
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Very nice. Who has not talked about how they got started yet. I’m okay. Patricia, go ahead. Tell us you start to have visual aid. Ooh,
Patricia Mooney:
My mother, well, my father was a corporate sales guy for Chrysler and he sold a lot of cars and one of the little high cameras that my mom used a lot when we were growing up in the sixties. So I, it was always in our face <laugh> so I was used to that and I liked photography. This is my first camera.
Mark Schulze:
Wow.
Patricia Mooney:
And then mark and I met brownie, Hawkeye and mark and I met 1982 on Valentine’s day. Oh yeah. The balcony of LA theater in Encinitas. And he was setting up his camera because he was going to videotape this show that I was singing in and I was, I, we gravitate towards each other cuz I saw that camera. I’m like, whoa, it was one of the first prosumer cameras that you could, that a person could make money using a video camera. So that was, it was new. It was in its infancy. The video industry was just beginning. So mark and I hooked up and he taught me everything. He knew about the business and I just kind of took off into the areas. I like including editing. He taught me how to edit on a three quarter inch, two, three quarter inch machines. You needed these big
Mark Schulze:
A and the B roll
Patricia Mooney:
Linear machines, right? The a and the B rolls.
Mark Schulze:
Yeah. That’s what I started on too. That’s for a simple dissolve. Yeah. Now three. You the B oh yeah, that’s right. And then the, the, the recorder. The recorder. Yeah.
Patricia Mooney:
Oh yeah. We could just regale you with all these stories from the beginning, but that’s how I got started.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love it. Oh, there was a little bit of romance in there too. Had something for everybody.
Mark Schulze:
Well, the first sight for me <laugh> oh yeah, for sure.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
All right.
Rico Molden:
I’ll pick up on the romance part of it, on my story. At the time my wife and I were dating and we were planning out what we wanted our life to be like. And just before getting married, we combined, we had some savings and we both had full-time career jobs and we said, let’s quit our jobs Rico. You like video so much. Why don’t you go for it? And that’s what we did with one birthday party. It was my only gig that I’ve ever had. And it was like a $500 gig. And I’m like, I think I can make money doing this. And with that I quit. And now we have two kids and I’m the sole provider. She’s a stay-at-home mom. And it started off with a lot of weddings, but then turned into more corporate things cuz I didn’t wanna just be working every single weekend. And that’s kind of been part of the story there.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love it. I love everybody’s individual stories. It’s really interesting to see and to hear, I guess it’s not just seeing it, but seeing how everybody’s lives took different paths and some of them came together and it’s really cool. Thank you all for sharing that. What kind of clients do you work with on an average day to day sort of basis? Or is it kind of like what I was saying earlier? How could any day be different? Whoever wants to go, we don’t have to go in order. It can just be whoever wants to jump in or if you don’t want to that’s okay too. I won’t yell.
Horacio Jones:
Yeah. Well that part of what I love about this industry is that you never know who’s gonna call or what kind of client you’re gonna work with. What kind of project’s gonna jump in your lap. But I would say most of the time I would deal with you know, the marketing people at a corporation or, you know sometimes actors will come in to do self tapes or what’s fun is when artists come in and they need to do some kind of video about their art or you know, a little biography about them. Maybe they even made a documentary about China park over here, which is really fun and interesting. So you get to meet a, a, quite a wide breadth of people in this industry. And I like that a lot.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
I’m gonna have to ask you about your self tape rate. If I gotta go down there for a work trip, I’m just saying
Horacio Jones:
You got it. You got it. Okay. Whatever background you want.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
<Laugh> okay. I’m gonna, I’m gonna email you about that. All right. For sure.
Patricia Mooney:
We do both corporate and broadcast work. So one of our recent gigs was with Drew Bre. He’s turning out to be quite a television spokesperson and because I’ve been doing a lot of teleprompting, the range is just very wide. I do both presidential prompting and in studio prompting, downstream monitor also. And recently did the <laugh> the Lincoln Reagan dinner and prompted the governor of South Dakota. So that was interesting. And also a lot of doctors because San Diego is such a technically and technologically savvy city with a lot of scientists and doctors that a lot of that comes through our hands too. We just worked at the VA hospital a few days ago and we’re doing a welcome video for them, for their inpatients. So that’s a wonderful group of people, VA people.
Mark Schulze:
Yeah. That’s just kind of piggybacking on what Patty’s talking about. Ironically, we did three studio shoots with Drew Brees for the last six months. And one of ’em was a super bowl commercial for avocados for Mexico. And then when, by the time the commercial aired on the super bowl, it I was the DP and pat did sound and teleprompting by the time that got aired on there, they were, we had to, they had to shut down the avocados from Mexico because the, the cartel drug cartels were given the United States officials a hard time about the avocado. So they said no more imports for two, you know, for, until it turned out to be two to three weeks. So, it turns out avocados are quite a big cash crop. So you never know what you get from that till let’s say what the pet said.
Mark Schulze:
We just did last week, which is the VA shoot and she’s editing it and DaVinci will resolve it right now, or, or when ComicCon comes up next month. A lot of times I’ll see people like will we’ll and I’ll see each other on the red carpet doing interviews. I might be shooting for entertainment tonight and he might be shooting for extra or, you know, or vice versa, you know? Well, we haven’t done much with extra in a while, but I don’t, they don’t generally go there anymore, but you never know. One time I went to Canada and I got to use some new transmission equipment back. This was five or six years ago and I never thought about what this thing called a de zero, which is a lot like a live view unit. And it broadcasts, you know wirelessly. So we were out running around and they’d download stuff to the internet after they got their show.
Mark Schulze:
So the editors could put it up on TV and entertainment tonight. So you never know it’s a lot of corporate work. And then, like I said, and this will be a good transition to Hario is we do some big events, whether it’s like we did the graduation and or, you know, live out in the middle of nowhere or we, we, we do I did a streaming one with him where he, I always get, I always hired him and he hires me if we can together to stream at a one of the hotels, a big conference. And he had it beyond me, man. That’s why I love doing it. Cuz all of a sudden they were doing live chat on zoom and doctors from around the world were chiming into the live audience. It was a hybrid event. A lot of that was going on during COVID. And this was back in, I think it was October, November of last year, right? When, when or the end of November or beginning of December, cuz then the Omni crime came in and just, I, I shut down again events, but you know, good times, go ahead there Hario <laugh>
Horacio Jones:
Oh, are we still on the same subject? I already spoke about that. <Laugh> but I think it does. Sorry
Mark Schulze:
About that Rico
Rico Molden:
Rico. Yeah. I did a lot of live events at first and just like highlights and recaps and did ComicCon and stuff like that. But lately I’ve been liking more pieces that I can craft like mini docs and testimonials and stuff like that. The way I got my start on that was at a church I asked who does like them, the videos that make everyone cry and they put me in touch with the right people and then I started making those even for the church. And then it’s gone from there to testimonial videos for products and, and small companies and nonprofits.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
That’s a great, great icebreaker. Who makes videos that make people cry? That’s that I mean, it’s hard to not, that’s great. Honestly, you know, I’m gonna have to put that one in my back pocket and borrow that from my job. So thank you for that one.
Rico Molden:
It’s true. Whenever I watch the videos that I’ll edit, like I’ll sit in the congregation and kind of look and if, if there’s a oh, tear wipe, I know it was a good one.
Patricia Mooney:
<Laugh>
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love it.
Rico Molden:
No one event average, like my highlight recaps people. Yeah.
Will Pupa:
That’s our job though. That’s our job to be a bulk emotion, right?
Rico Molden:
Yeah, yeah,
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Yeah. So we briefly touched on the pandemic panini, whatever you wanna call it. How have, and we, we’re all very familiar with it, obviously. How have things changed over the last few years for you with your business? How did you pivot when it started? Kind of take us through how you adapted if you had to adapt just how things have changed in the last few years in that regard. Whoever wants to go
Will Pupa:
For me, I don’t think COVID I slowed down and did as much work. I didn’t shoot in the field this much, but you know, I don’t think really any, anything has really changed as far as equipment. I never really got into the remote camera thing where I was in a different room than me and operating. So for me, nothing really changed if anything, I’m just so busy, I can’t keep up with the workload, but yeah, nothing’s really changed for me over the COVID period,
Rico Molden:
Same here pretty much it slowed down just a bit and then got busy again. Right. And nothing, nothing really changed.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Hmm.
Patricia Mooney:
Because our company has done a lot of event work and that’s what we were really concentrating on. And Mark just bought a 55 by canon box lens and we had several gigs lined up where he could use that, where you can set that up and see them all on a nose from a hundred feet away. Right. Mark, that all went poof PO. And what we ended up doing was a video called the cultural resources awareness video for an architectural firm that works with Camp Pendleton. So that’s what we spent a lot of time doing
Mark Schulze:
Archeological, not architect.
Patricia Mooney:
Right, right. So we, we, that took a while to do and that thankfully did help stoke our coffers <laugh> and, and basically it was just marketing, marketing, our wears using that time to market.
Mark Schulze:
Piggybacking on that and Hora showing the big box lens the last, well, the first time I got to use it, I bought it in December. The end of December on 19, HIRA and I had a job where I got to use it in March, the beginning of March. And there was another job later that March. And after the first one that then COVID hit big and strong and that’s when they shut everything down. And that was it. Other than like, you know, like pat said a couple of military jobs, including a teleprompter job at the coast guard. But that one project was from script to screen. And I gotta say, pat did a marvelous job of editing and finding footage of get this Indians, doing the, the, the Matt grinding of the acorns and storing them from the 1940 fives in color. That was a trip. Wow. I RO RO can jump in from there.
Horacio Jones:
Well, yeah. So when COVID hit, not long after COVID hit, we got a call from an ad agency in New York who was looking for somebody to stream like this local chef. So I was like, yeah, we’re ready to do it. We do like streaming and stuff. And that turned out well. And we ended up doing like a hundred shows with chef Richard blais. We won all these big chef competitions. And we did some more chefs like that. And it was basically just you know, two cameras filming a chef for a private zoom audience of these different corporations. And they would cook along with the chef. So that got really popular during COVID. And that basically, you know, pulled us through all that. But we gained a lot of experience in live streaming through that. And, you know, a couple times I even had to go to like New York or Nashville to do some live streaming had to go to Arizona and film. What’s his name of the football player, Howie, Howie long. That was cool. Got to go to Howie’s house and film him for a zoom meeting. And so, yeah, that’s how we, we pivoted during COVID and it’s just been going ever since then.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Cool. Yeah. I know being a freelancer and working for yourself when all of that started, that was pretty scary. At one point I was the only person working in my house at the time, and that was figuring out where you could pivot? And some people had to totally do something different, but sounds like most everybody here just kind of did what they did and kept doing it and kind of had to intensify in some other areas, maybe like you said, in marketing or just making sure you could still keep doing it. I think that’s really important because learning from each other and how did you get through it, but enough about that stuff, cuz that can be pretty depressing enough about that. Do you have any fun projects you’ve worked on that have stood out from the rest? Or if you say, you know, I already talked about my fun ones. I wanna talk about a horror story.
Horacio Jones:
<Laugh>
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Would love to hear some of those cuz I think most of us have those. I know I do. So either one, if it’s a funny horror story, it’s even better.
Rico Molden:
I have a quick, funny horror story.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Love it.
Camera Crew Stories of their Film Production Experiences
Rico Molden:
It was for a real estate shoot and the client, the agent, it was, he was gonna find the house that we could shoot at. And so we found this amazing multi million dollar house and we got there and the owner was there and the owner said, yeah, you can shoot anywhere on the property. Just don’t show the house. And we were like, ha ha, okay. That’s funny. And he’s like, no, I mean, it, you can’t show the house. And so I did a real estate shoot without showing the house and we then got some pickup shots, but that was pretty weird to get to a place thinking we could shoot it. And then we couldn’t.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
How, how, how does, okay. Yeah. Like <laugh>, I’m over here, like trying to figure out how that wow. Okay. That, wow. That is a funny horror story. Yeah. But you did it. That’s cool.
Rico Molden:
Yeah.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
<Laugh> okay. Well, my mind’s a little blown from that one. Does anybody else have anything? It doesn’t have to be a horror story. It can be like the best client you’ve ever had, whatever. That’s cool too, but I like,
Patricia Mooney:
I have one.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Okay.
Patricia Mooney:
It is a horror story. And it’s the, it’s the thing that most video crews would probably it’s the nightmare of any video crew because we were up in Novato, California and the night before a big shoot, we had all our gear stolen. Well, not all of it, but $25,000 worth of gear was stolen out of our car. And we had been in the process of removing it from the car to the house where we were staying, but then we were interrupted in that process. Oh, we’ve gotta go. And so we were gone for an hour and then we came, when we came back, we saw one of those little light panels. The light panel disc was on the ground next to the car and we, and our hearts just went and the rear door of our station wagon was sort of open. We pulled it up and everything was gone except sea stands and a light kit. This
Mark Schulze:
Is during Christmas time. And they followed us, we think from the San Francisco bridge, then we did some pickup shots over at that park. So be careful, we think they put a tracker underneath the car cuz I drive so fast in and out of traffic. There’s no way they could have followed me. But that’s what I’ve heard has happened a lot up in Oakland, in particular it is really bad.
Rico Molden:
Yeah. I was in Oakland farm guards a few weeks ago. Yeah. And rented some stuff off the shared grid. And they said, are you shooting at the hotel? Cuz if you have to take it like to a car there’s like a shooting last week or held at gunpoint and we’re like, no, we’re shooting at the hotel. So
Mark Schulze:
Yeah. Well it’s kind of got a happy ending. It did. We only had the insurance for like about 10 grand for off premise, which I didn’t know at the time. And since then I raised it to 25,000, but I kept on eBay and Craigslist watching every single day cuz I was pissed and I saw it come up after about four months. But by the time the police could get in on it, they were, these guys were already gone and they used a fake name and fake website and they used it a bunch of stuff so that it went away then almost a year to the day December of the next year, you know, it’s like a couple years ago it popped back up again and I saw it, I got the cops on it quicker. They got the guy, he wasn’t, he was, he was some innocent dude.
Mark Schulze:
He just had bought it from these criminals or the criminals and then got it, and so he had no idea that it was stolen, but I did get my camera package back. Most of it. Not the, you know, so that, that, that kind of, so if you keep persistence and look is that, you know, there’s a picture of my serial number and including the Hiscock thieves, beware stickers, and the thing was identifiable with micro dots, with my address and information and it’s still, so we got it back. So that’s an interesting one. Yep. Because I know you travel a lot up all over the place with your equipment and that’s yeah.
Will Pupa:
I’m afraid. I ended up getting $150,000 worth of insurance. Cause I don’t trust anything and read
Mark Schulze:
And read the fine print. Yeah. So insurance.
Will Pupa:
Yeah. No Ken. Yeah. Jeff Freeman just had his two FX nine stolen a couple months ago. Yeah. He’s just trying to replace him. Now if you guys see that anywhere in the F
Mark Schulze:
The FX nine. So I’ve got the Fs seven. That was what was stolen from me. So I went and bought Fs seven too. Then when I was treating my cousin, who lives there, got my camera back from me, it was shipped to me. That’s how come I have two Fs? Seven S now.
Will Pupa:
Ah, okay. Yeah.
Mark Schulze:
How do you, how do you like the nine over the seven or less one? Oh
Will Pupa:
Yeah. It’s a full frame camera. It’s just beautiful. You know, it’s more movie-esque. I think that full frame you’ll love it. If you shoot with full frame. Yeah.
Mark Schulze:
Can you match the two? I mean, did they match okay. Seven?
Will Pupa:
Well, the FX nines matched perfectly. They have AONE mode where if you don’t shoot in log they’re digitally matched. So that’s nice. Cuz I was trying to match my Fs seven two with the nine and it wasn’t really working, but that’s why I decided to sell. I sold to Brian Kelly. Remember him? Yeah. Yeah. I sold him my Fs seven two, and then I’m getting another FX nine. So it’s been nice to have both of them. I love it. Yeah.
Mark Schulze:
Yeah. Cause I’ve got the three matching Sony Sy Alta cameras, but the two FSS,
Will Pupa:
Which one? The 900.
Mark Schulze:
No, no, no that, those nine hundreds and stuff. That’s that’s that’s old
Will Pupa:
School. Oh, it’s old school. What do you,
Mark Schulze:
It’s still Newark at old. It’s still old school, but it’s F three 50 fives. And, and that’s what connects with the big box lens. And when I do
Will Pupa:
Oh nice. Oh for events. That’s nice. It
Mark Schulze:
Do things. It doesn’t do 4k. My horse story is real quick. 99% of the time, everything goes pretty much as planned. We have all had Murphy jump in and something happens, but you good right to, you know, like pat runs two laptops when she does live events special for presidential prompting because if one goes down, not that it ever has, but if one goes down, she pushes a switch goes right to the other laptop that she’s scrolling pretty much the same time. But I had a, you know, I played grip. I brought all my lights for this one. It was, you reminded me Rico because it was a house and it was for an outdoor generator. And, after we, they wanted to shoot these beautiful shots with the Gib that we got and everything for that one scene, that’s just about dusk so that the outdoors still looks kind of lit, but dusky golden hour after golden hour.
Mark Schulze:
And they wanted me to use every light. I had just lit the place up and then I did. And then they said, ah, it’s still a little dark in that, in that living room. I mean, in the bedroom, I said, well, I guess I could take the protective screen off of one of my open faced lights. This is back in Ines, bald times. And wouldn’t, you know, it never happened before the bulb, without the screen blew and hot fragments of molten glass and filament flew onto this bed. And I, I, I hear the smoke alarm going off and I come running into the house. I, I, I pull the plug. I see. I, I, I, for some reason it didn’t blow up on top of their beautiful custom made bedspread. This isn’t a multimillion dollar home, but it was smoking their carpet and I’m like, oh crap.
Mark Schulze:
So I’m trying to grab the pieces, burning my fingers, stomping on it. It’s not causing flames, but it is burning the carpet just to say, I, I, I didn’t have to, but I used my insurance to pay for the fixing of all that carpet. That, that was the, the last scene of the day, the last light, the last everything. And that is what would happen. But other than that, we’ve never had anything. No one’s ever gotten hurt. And nothing expensive has been broken. So they say, Hey look at it, our baby’s dying. No it shoots. Okay. Everything’s good. Nothing, nobody’s hurt. Nobody, nobody lost, you know, anything, nobody got injured. It’s a good shot. And we’ve been all over the world, pat and I have been all over the world making a video. We went around the world on mountain bikes, like an endless something called the full cycle of the world. Odyssey, if you wanna check it out online. But we had all kinds of weird shit happening there. But, but you expect that when you’re traveling with 700 pounds of equipment, beta cam steadicam, this is back in the late nineties, right? Pat, all kinds of fun. Mountain bikes eliminated. Well,
Will Pupa:
We’re, we’re troubleshoots, man. We, you know that there’s a problem. We fix it. That’s our job. That’s really essentially it. Right.
Mark Schulze:
Yep. What was your horror story? Will
Will Pupa:
I dunno, there’s so many of them <laugh> when you guys are
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Talking about funniest tour
Will Pupa:
Talking about Oakland we went out with good morning, miracle last year to do a piece on the defunding of the police and were in Oakland. And we got there before the ambulance arrived in the sky. He was bleeding out right under my feet. And it was pretty intense in the whole neighborhood. It was, you know, it was a lower income neighborhood and they were pointing, I don’t know if guns and knives were at us, but we were with the police. So I felt somewhat safe, but that was pretty horrifying, you know, but you’re, you know, you look in the lens and you kind of just forget about everything, but it was intense. The guy’s bleeding out, the ambulance came and all that. So whew. Yeah. Something
Bonnie Marie Williams:
That’s pretty bad. Do
Mark Schulze:
You have a funny horror story or
Will Pupa:
Hario? Yeah, I don’t know. That’s not very funny. Huh? I don’t. Yeah. Was just thinking you think back there’s just so many shoots and so many things. I couldn’t think of anything that really stood out, but yeah. I just don’t like having problems on a shoot and if there is, we have to just fix it. Right.
Mark Schulze:
Absolutely. Yeah. Raio, did you tell us a horror story or did anybody else tell Rico? Did he tell us anything else? I guess go back to bonding then for the next question.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Okay. I don’t wanna talk about mine.
Will Pupa:
<Laugh> yes, you have to
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Which is the most, the, the, the one that happened most recently was I had moved my, it was before I got this booth, I just moved into an apartment out here. And I was working in the closet until I got this booth and my recording software. My dog decided to reboot itself and I said, that’s fine. And I was starting in my session and it was a directed session where we record the files and we send it off. You can see where this is going. I had nightmares about it all the time and it finally happened. We get done with the session, right. And I looked, and it was recording out of my laptop microphone and not my actual one. And my laptop was a good five feet away. Oh. And I’m listening to it to do the editing. I’m like, why does this? Oh, no. And I checked my inputs. Sure enough. My laptop decided to switch the default input. I actually had a small panic attack and I thought, okay, well, what can I do? And I listened back to it and I directed myself. I had it playing in one ear and I just repeated it and sent it off. But it was a good half an hour that I had to redo. And it was,
Will Pupa:
Oh, good job.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Ooh. That was scary. And
Will Pupa:
See you’re at trouble. You, you were troubleshooting, you made it work,
Bonnie Marie Williams:
You troubleshoot it and you go, okay. Let’s, let’s just, let’s do it. Let’s redo it. And it, I had to include all the takes. We did not use it, like I had to redo the whole thing Uhhuh. So I think it turned out. Okay. <Laugh> but yeah, that was a few months ago. That
Mark Schulze:
Nobody was the wiser either. Exactly.
Will Pupa:
Nobody
Bonnie Marie Williams:
I was wiser and I got paid. So there we go.
Will Pupa:
That’s it. That’s right.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Woo. You were the only people that know aside from one of my audio friends, I texted one of my audio friends. I was like, how do I fix this? He said, you can’t woo. That was a boy.
Will Pupa:
I feel that was a, you learned right.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Confessional or something conversation. I know. I know. So this is a question that they want me to ask, but I also like to ask, what is the biggest lesson you have learned over the years since you’ve been doing what you do? And that could be a general life lesson. It could be a life lesson applied to your career. Like, what’s the biggest thing? If you could pass that on to somebody else, what would be the biggest lesson you’ve learned?
Mark Schulze:
Well, I’m gonna start re just the first thing that comes to my mind. I was a communications sociology major at U C S D. And I’d say communication with your client. That’s number one. Okay. Because if they have unrealistic expectations or, or, or you don’t communicate, whether it be editing or right before the shoot you know, you can get yourself in trouble. You gotta be on the same page. So that would be my quick. And then maybe I’ll pump it again after you guys all think about what you wanna say, but that’s number one in my book
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Communication,
Horacio Jones:
I would say my biggest, sorry. I would say my biggest lesson has been to always have a, a backup, backup video backup audio, or that means bringing a, a small little camera or even using your iPhone in case your video camera fails. But yeah, it’s always saved my butt to, to have a backup for audio and video and having a plan in place, you know, before the shoot to know exactly what to do, something fails.
Rico Molden:
Yeah. For me, I wouldn’t say exactly a lesson, but it’s been something that’s helped me advance in my career, which is to under promise, over deliver. But then every project I make is better than what they paid for, if that makes sense. And sometimes it’s me bringing in an extra person just to help the shoot go easier. So I’ll make a $4,000 shoot look like a $6,000 shooter or something like that. So that then I have that piece to show a client and just every project that’s better
Mark Schulze:
Will.
Camera Operator Perspective
Will Pupa:
Yeah. I don’t know. I guess so many things. Right. But I think as far as a cameraman perspective is to just shoot and shoot and shoot, especially when you’re in a documentary situation, don’t like, feel like you’re ever shooting too much, just get as much footage and give the editor as much to work with. And I had to learn that over time. Especially when we’re shooting tape, we had to shoot a little tighter. Now we have a little more record space to record more, but to always be aware of your surroundings and shoot as much as you can, don’t undershoot, but that’s a cameraman perspective. So in general yeah, I guess Cameron’s perspective, but what I did wanna say is I’ve learned from this business. I think we’ve been very fortunate to be where everything is happening for me.
Will Pupa:
And it’s been, it’s just been a, a, a great life experience. I think I’m more worldly because I’ve seen it all work with everyone, been all over the world, like Mark, you have. So I think to me, it’s just, it’s changed my life because I’ve been where everything is happening at all times. And I feel very privileged to have experienced that in my life. So I know that’s not answering the question we really had initially, but it’s just been, it’s shaped who I am as a person, just all the experiences, all the people we’ve met and we can drop a lot of names, you know? But when it’s funny, when we talk to people outside of the business, it sounds weird, cuz we’ve done so much. But between us, it’s amazing what we’ve been able to experience. Right?
Mark Schulze:
Yep. Do what you love, love what you do. That’s a general one.
Will Pupa:
Yeah.
Mark Schulze:
And like you said, traveling, meeting, interesting people. It’s never the same every day as my friend used to say, we have to move our factory every day. Different locations.
Will Pupa:
It’s a lot, not everybody can do it.
Mark Schulze:
Nope. But if you can make a living out of it, it’s a great living. Very
Will Pupa:
Fortunate.
Mark Schulze:
We highly recommend it. Pat and I are also trying, we’re getting a little older now. So we’re trying to clone ourselves, which is very difficult. This show has been trying to help us find a few people. He’s we’ve both found a couple guys pat, trying to find. So if you know, if any of you guys out there watching this want to get involved, this could be a golden opportunity for you because we, we, we need to take some people under her wing. I wanna try and train someone that’s already mostly trained. So I’m looking at someone like a Rico type that can, can, can learn how to take over with our bigger cameras, everything from the event side, which isn’t maybe as much fun, but it’s it’s cuz it’s corporate talking heads up on a stage or something, but you learn a lot. Sometimes you learn more than you want. Otherwise it’s, you know, a teleprompter sound person. So we’re trying to clone ourselves so that we can get some people that we can start sending some work on. And then maybe just who knows eventually gets the equipment away. And then maybe eventually the phone number and the website that’s been around for over 40 years. So there’s a, you’ll see what happens with that. But you know, definitely
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Put that in the chat so people can get in contact with you. Absolutely. just put in there again for anybody that may have joined late, we
Mark Schulze:
Don’t have it, our website stuff, crystal pyramid.com. But Patty, what would you say? You got some you
Patricia Mooney:
Got, I would say that you must be willing to go outside your comfort zone. And I learned from the school of getting thrown to the wolves. So my first boom pole gig was at the ComicCon with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Lucy Lou. And I bumped Lucy Lou’s head with my boom pole. I know. And I was trying to adjust the mixer, you know, I don’t and I thought, oh no, that’s the end of my career before it even started. But I’m so sorry, miss Lou I’m so sorry. Oh, don’t worry about it. <Laugh> So being willing to go outside your comfort zone has a big payoff.
Mark Schulze:
There’s even a, we even have a, we change our pictures on our business cards. They always have you maybe pack a final one with Lucy, Lou, but you know, like you’ll take on one side, you have your information, you know, and then on the other side you have a cool picture, you know, of you operating. But, but, but, but, but Pat’s Pat’s one was, that was a classic. You know, as opposed to when we used to sell our own shows, James, Who’s been in the news a lot lately and this is, this is pat and I, we, we hired, we put him in our movie about traveling around the world on mountain bikes. So that was our movie. And we had him come in, sign in autographs. So that was on the other side of the card. So he, you know, you, that’s kind of a neat marketing tip if you wanna call it that Patty’s been brilliant with that, with all these like, like will was saying you meet so many celebrities and, and whatnot.
Mark Schulze:
So why, if you, if you, if you normally, you don’t take pictures with him, you’re not even supposed to, but sometimes it’s Hey, cool. Yeah. Come on over here, get a picture, use that for your business cards. You know, it shows that you’ve done some professional high end stuff working like, like we just said, we’ve been working with Drew Bre for three, three times now in the last six months. But, but you know, doing commercials generally, but, but also just like you said, shooting everything, you gotta be able to shoot all like pat Rico will Cario, you know Will’s get a little more like my cousin does nothing but national geo and, and some people just do nothing but cinema, some people do another but TV spots, but we do it all. And, and
Will Pupa:
Jack of all trade shooters. Yep. What’s that Jack of all trade like a Jack of all trade shooter. I feel the same way I could shoot everything. Maybe not specialize in one thing, but if you could vary your style and learn a lot of different styles, you have more opportunity to make money and work. Right.
Mark Schulze:
Absolutely.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Very nice. Did anybody not get to share something that they learned over the years?
Rico Molden:
I wanted to piggyback real quick on the, I really like those business cards and I, I almost did something like that, but I’m on a shoot, met a celebrity that was kind of like my hero. And so I asked for a photo, but I’m wearing a mask and a hat and no one knows who I am. So I, I don’t, I can do that.
Mark Schulze:
I wear those business cards. I can’t even find them. Yeah. That’s yeah. That’s that, that’s kind of a bummed the whole mask thing. Yeah.
Will Pupa:
Yeah.
Mark Schulze:
Here, here’s one of the first ComicCon that’s a fun one. This is with Carmen Electra and Kim Kardashian and we just got done doing a shoe with them. Wow. You know, there’s the one with Lucy, Lou. That’s cool. Who’s nice enough to take a picture with this. So that was good. That was like 30 years ago almost or 25 or something like that. But yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s it’s you never know, but you just get hundreds of these things, you know, different pictures, you just,
Patricia Mooney:
You know, you conversation
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Starter.
Patricia Mooney:
What’s interesting is that on some shoots you have to sign an NDA. Don’t take any follow out. But then on other shoots, like with click up, I worked with them a lot and I said, is it okay if I take behind the scenes photos? I go, oh yeah. Have at it. We love that. So you’ll get both and love it. You know? So you, it’s a good idea to just ask, can I take some photos and all I can say is no,
Horacio Jones:
I think that’s a big thing that you just have to ask, don’t just assume.
Patricia Mooney:
Yeah. You gotta ask
Bonnie Marie Williams:
The good lesson you have to ask. Otherwise what’s worse. They can say is no better or get out, but you know, one of the
Will Pupa:
Better
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Kick you off the set, but you know, <laugh>, that’s the worst we’ll
Patricia Mooney:
Ever working those down again. Yeah.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
All right. Well, we are wrapping up here. But I would love to, I don’t wanna go over too long. So I know some people have dinner plans or I don’t know wherever you’re watching this, you could be going to save Gotham. How can everybody get in touch with you? Can we follow you on socials? Can we add you on socials? Send you an email. What’s your preferred method of contact, bat signal, whatever that may be, go ahead and let us know. And if you haven’t already put your information in the chat.
Will Pupa:
All right. Thank you.
Mark Schulze:
Patty, will she, she takes care of all that Instagram and Twitter and perfect, but, but I did put our basic information. Pat looks like she’s typing furiously. So she might be getting something from her. Will, what were you about to say?
Will Pupa:
Oh, no, just thank you. This’s a nice get together. Appreciate it.
Mark Schulze:
Yeah. Gimme a call later.
Will Pupa:
Yeah, let’s talk for sure. I’ll let you know what’s going on. Yeah,
Mark Schulze:
Absolutely. En Rico. You too. Seems like you wanna get more involved. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> this is your opportunity, baby. Anybody else out there in TV land at Bonnie? I don’t know who’s on there that Corman or Taylor got, let us let us know, chime in contact us. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, you know, we’re we, we’re one of the few people that still puts our phone numbers out there. You know, even though we get a lot of, you know, spam calls, likely calls, but who cares? You know, just hang up
Bonnie Marie Williams:
All day. I answer my phone when it’s a spam call and my eight year old boy voices and I tell them my mom’s boyfriend’s gonna kick your butt and they usually hang up. It’s great. It’s also great at the drive through to get kids meals. So yeah, I totally understand that one. <Laugh> wow,
Mark Schulze:
That’s great. Let me, let’s all hear, we gotta hear your eight year old voice now. Yeah.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Yeah, so we’re gonna be over here and you, my mom is here and she’s gonna say hi in a minute.
Will Pupa:
Whoa, Bravo.
Horacio Jones:
Hey, thanks. That’s mixing.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Cool. Yeah, it’s fun. I get paid to do it, which is the best thing ever, but I, and I think we all feel that way about our work, right? Like there’s some days where you’re like, man, this is my life. I get paid to do this. Like you’re doing what you love and how, how fortunate are we to
Will Pupa:
Do that? Right, exactly. Right.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
It helps you get through the bad times. It’s
Mark Schulze:
Like money. It offers you a chance to travel the world. Yeah, it can be challenging. Like we said, you know, trying to get 700 pounds of equipment over from one train track to the next one in Switzerland or, or underwater, scuba biking in Costa Rica and, and figuring out how to make that work just for fun or, or, you know, this just the, the amazing amounts of things you get to do, the people you get to meet. So I highly encourage you out there to have a good time. And like Bill said, just travel, do what you love, love what you do. And you’ll never have a really tough, hard work week. That’s not something that you were proud of afterwards that you did. You’re glad you did it
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Brilliant. Right?
Will Pupa:
Right.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Well, I think that’s, I can’t think of anything better to say than that, but thank you all so much for being here. It was so great meeting you. Enjoy the nice, cool weather in San Diego. For me, I’m melting here in Los Angeles. So go outside and just take a breath in and go. This one’s for Bonnie. So I appreciate that. Cause I have to record a little bit after this, but thank you all so much for being here. I hope, you know, people contact you and stay in touch. And I hope to see you all in San Diego. Comiccon maybe next month, maybe I’ll see you there.
Mark Schulze:
If you see us, you probably won’t be able to get to us. There’s too many people.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
I have my ways. You never know. <Laugh>
Will Pupa:
All right. Thanks Bonnie. Little boy. Nice meeting. All of y’all
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Nice meeting all of you. Thank you so much. Have a great night.
Will Pupa:
Take care. Thank you.
Bonnie Marie Williams:
Bye.
Mark Schulze:
Bye.
