For the production of the show, I’ve traveled to Las Vegas and a city outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.  If the show gets picked up (even for six episodes) it looks like I’ll be spending a greater deal of time in small town Utah.  Utah is gorgeous, so I really wouldn’t mind that.

I cannot describe the show on my blog (hopefully America and the rest of the world will know about it come September), but it has been an exciting roller coaster.  We’re working with an executive producer that has a ten year history in reality television with huge pitch meetings lined up for next week.  I’ve been in charge of the visuals and produced all of the materials that they’ve been using thus far.  I’ve developed a story and characters that I’m really excited about.  This would be the first time where I completely take my hands off the camera to concentrate on story development – something that I’ve wanted to do for a really, really long time.

It would be such an adventure if this took over my life – we’ll see.

I’ll also be traveling to Madrid for the entire moth of July (don’t ask me how I’ll work on the show and be in Madrid, because I’m not quite sure…)  I have to finish up my USC language requirements, so I figured that it would be best if I went directly to the source.  This will give me an opportunity to distance myself completely from the city that I’ve found so much comfort in and experience something entirely unfamiliar.  If you know me, I live off of the thrill that comes with that.  I had a meeting about it yesterday and cannot wait to board the plane to Europe.

Lastly, I’m working on my first project for a new, smaller record label that I’m really excited about.  Their roster includes artists that I actually listen to (!).  No more music videos or meaningless videos for me – a kid has to grow up at some point.  We’ve got real projects in mind.  I’ll write about that another time.

If you’ve been reading my blog since I was working with Warner, you’ve come with me on a long journey that seemed to come to a violent halt when I decided to go back to school.  I spent the last several years with over-the-top anxiety about getting back into the working world.  It is all starting up again.  I didn’t give up, I didn’t lose passion, I didn’t lose my contacts and I can’t wait to share the continuation of my career with you.

From the shoot for Never Shout Never's "I Love You More Than You Will Ever Know"

It has been a while since I’ve had a video go to broadcast.  Dry spell = over.  The video that I directed and produced along with my brother, Garrett Ruggieri, for Never Shout Never’s “I Love You More Than You Will Ever Know” is heading off to broadcast land WITHOUT the annoying lyric scroll on the bottom.  Keep an eye out on MTV and FUSE in the late hours of the night.

Embedding is disabled on the video, but click here to check it out on YouTube.

Band of Skulls “Light of the Morning”

http://www.bered.com/2009/07/17/video-exclusive-jacks-mannequin-the-making-of-swim/

Or below:

Let me know what you think!

Added to The Media Collective website!

Leanna, Andrew and I – June 5th, 2009

It’s hard for me to avoid writing about Jack’s Mannequin when Andrew McMahon is one of my favorite artists to work with.  Yesterday, I got to the pleasure to work with Andrew and the team on Jack’s Mannequin’s new video for “Swim” directed by Stephen Murashige.  It was a long sixteen hour shoot, but ended up being a blast.  Keep an eye out for the “behind the scenes” videos that I shot and will be editing.  They’ll be released in the next couple of weeks.