About Barnard!

Last fall, we had the pleasure of collaborating with Barnard College to create a sort of comprehensive video for their new website that answers the question... "What is Barnard?"  As you can probably imagine, it's not a simple task to create a video that shows off the best of what a college has to offer, in both academics and campus life, while staying true to the student voice AND doing so in 4 minutes.

As an alum myself, it was great to be back on campus talking with these incredible current students and hearing about their college experience.  It made me proud to see that, in every student it admits and educates, Barnard is living up to the ideals we're hoping to get across in this video.

So, after many months of prepping, doing test shoots, filming sit-down interviews and taking beautiful shots of every inch of the campus... we are proud to show off the final version! 

I'm most excited about the fact that the video can be found on Barnard's homepage, so I've taken a screenshot to commemorate the occasion.

Please have a look at the finished version below, and tell us what you think!

The Olevolos Project - New Video!

As the Holidays draw near, and we get farther and farther away from our summer trip to Africa, it's been a gift to be able to look through the footage we shot and photos we snapped to remember what an incredible journey we had.

Some of you may remember from our post in June that we had the opportunity to visit The Olevolos Project just outside of Arusha, Tanzania.  The Olevolos Project is an organization that strives to "develop young leaders in the Olevolos Village through formal schooling, tutoring programs, and extra-curricular activities."  One thing I can attest to from our travels, however, is that it is one thing to say that's what you're about; but it's a very different thing to actually be those things and work towards them every single day.  Everyone at The Olevolos Project walks that walk, and does it with a HUGE smile. 

Don't take my word for it... just watch our brand new video about The Olevolos Project.  It is guaranteed to make you smile!

Energy in Common- Flip that switch!

The smell of cooking fires.

Certainly one of the sensory souvenirs we left Africa with. Indeed throughout the developing world, energy poverty (lack of access to clean, safe, reliable energy) is something you can physically feel.

Energy in Common is a wonderful organization that uses the fundamentals of micro-finance to help entrepreneurs in the developing world improve their livelihoods through clean, modern energy technologies. In turn, lenders from the developed world get carbon offsets for their investments.

Our 30 sec spot for EIC attempts to tell this story in an energetic and passionate way. Take a watch! Its sure got us looking at every light switch we flip as a small miracle.

NCLEJ - Moving Mountains

As we are catching up on sharing some of the videos we did earlier this year, we simply can't forget NCLEJ - the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

NCLEJ is a nonprofit organization that advances the cause of economic justice for low-income families, individuals, and communities. Their work is hugely important and very often overlooked. While NCLEJ doesn't work with individual clients, they do tackle the systematic stuff that ends up moving mountains. It was a challenge to create a video without personal stories, but with the help of solid music and motion graphics, I think we created something that will help add life and vitality each time NCLEJ goes to tell its story.

The Bronx River Alliance- I am the Bronx

One afternoon late this spring I came upon the boy in this picture skipping rocks with his friends. I should say they were trying to skip rocks. In the Bronx you get the feeling that no matter how streetwise our urban youth may seem, they still have lots to learn out on the water.

Still this kid came right up to me and began to tell me all about his river. We were in Concrete Plant Park, a gorgeous community park developed by the Bronx River Alliance and apparently there were all kinds of cool things to see. He showed me where crabs live under the rocks. He told me about a few of the ducks and who was "with" who. He pointed to the massive scrap metals yards in the distance. I showed him how to skip a rock.

This was the highlight of the few days we spent in the Bronx putting together a video for the Bronx River Alliance. It was symbolic of how many treasures there are in a place that is notorious only for it's severe problems. What I loved was this teenager's unabashed interest in nature. In a place that I'm sure demands some toughness to get along, his gentleness reflected that of the river... an oasis in a busy borough. He reminded me that there are beautiful things everywhere. Especially in the Bronx.

Enjoy this video and get out to the Bronx River some time!

Building Futures- When I Walk

It is the deep beauty and privilege of childhood to be able to smile in a difficult place.


That's what I learned on one hot day walking along a winding dirt path towards the hillside school yard of Mbaka Oromo Primary. Ahead of us, two girls walked. Bare feet. Torn sweaters. No books. Giant smiles. As they continued their dawdling dance towards school I realized that this is the side of Africa we never get to see. This is the image that should move us all to contribute to a better life for Kenyan kids.

In many ways Western Kenya is a difficult place.... one of limited opportunity, poor health care, fragile ethnic tensions and even food insecurity. But as these kids made their way to school, I believe they were thinking about what all kids think about on their way to school.... pushing each other in the mud.

It's our great pleasure to present the first fruit of our trip to Kenya.

We hope this video will share with you the tremendous enthusiasm these children have for learning and the boundless love they show for their world, however torn. Hats off to Building Futures for the work they do to make sure that these kids are walk towards something... a solidly built school and a solidly built future.

Back Home- Slow lessons from the students of AFS

I was riding my bike the other night and it hit me. I’m back in Brooklyn.

This wasn’t a revelation. We’ve been back from our African adventure for over a month. It wasn’t that I suddenly “woke up” riding my bike in Brooklyn. To the contrary…. it was this sinking feeling at how quickly our adventure had been covered up by the waves our daily life back here in America. I was back on my bike… going back to my apartment after a long day, back to my kitchen, back to my dinner.

I think we are all hitchhikers who just like to play house. We are made of whatever we have eaten for breakfast…. Whatever color and nationality the dirt is under our fingernails from the day’s travel. We like to think that we inhabit every moment but the truth is that every moment and experience inhabits us (and then moves on).

In some ways it has been disheartening to Erin and I that we can’t keep the sights and sounds of our remarkable travels in our brains and on the tips of our tounges… but we cannot. I can tell the rest of this year will be spent carefully crafting videos for our various project with not only the goal of telling these important stories, but also with an eye towards meditating on the people we met, the problems we saw and the occasional small moment that made us feel like there truly is a world worth doing anything we can to improve.

But as I’ve said… life moves on (whether you want it to or not!) and so does our work. This month, while I’m already lamenting the quick fade of my Kiswahili skills, we had the pleasure of working with one of our favorite clients AFS, one of the oldest international exchange organizations in the world.

We shot two videos for AFS, interviewing exchange students at the end of their 10 month high school exchanges and to my surprise the answer to my malaise came from the mouths of these impressive young people.

Half way through one interview, a student who spent a year in Ghana was struggling to define her difficult experience. As she stumbled I saw familiar look in her eyes, the look of all people who see things so different and wonderful that the right words can’t be found. But then struggled on to beautifully about the magic of bonding with her host brothers, of eating with her hands, of learning to play the drum, of traveling the country.

Still more impressive were the exchange students from abroad who descended on Washington DC to meet officials at the State Department. During a Q&A session, we heard some of the bravest, most intelligent questions from these kids (all from countries with large Muslim populations). It moved me to hear the collective voice of those kids in that room. It made me proud to live in a country that makes itself open to such questions and proud to work for such an organization that teaches kids they have the right to ask them.

What we learned from the students of AFS is that it takes a lifetime to absorb the lessons of traveling abroad. It takes patience and creativity to tell these stories. From Good Eye Video we can promise the full force of our talents and the commitment of our hearts to try to share a piece of the gifts we were given by people in little villages and in sprawling slums. Of simple words and food and sights that really have changed us… even though we don’t know it (yet).