Easier Said Than Done

There has never been a time where the challenge of budget has been more at play than now.

Sure, I could have written that back in the early 90's as well – even in the 1980's, as my little production service was just beginning to take off with projects working for any number of A-List commercials production companies – 80% of the time it was 'Sorry, but we've just been handed a pretty slim budget to work with here...' And now, just in the past 5 or 6 years I keep getting 'Do you have it in your files?' This to start the conversation – even before getting booked!

With the price of fuel increasing at the trajectory it has – with no top in sight – as I write this mid-2008, the cost of travel alone (people, equipment, motorhome and grip truck) must now create The New Great Debate in advertising, considering whether or not to simply come up with a new dynamic altogether for promoting goods and services to the masses. Why, I can remember when it used to be more cost effective to shoot on location rather than to build sets on a stage and hire computer-gods to sweeten things in post! Perhaps it is more, today, that a photographer needs to be instead the Maya magician, a film director even-more the multi-proficient Master Of All disciplines in order to conduct a smaller ensemble creating reality within a suite of applications – locations, actors, music – all pulled from thin air, zero's and one's.

I have traveled extensively throughout the west – Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, California. (I haven't been 'everywhere', but I have traveled to and scouted the most sought-after environments for pictures always keeping in mind they must work logistically as well as conceptually for production.) I spent much of one vacation traveling and scouting both sides, up and down the Mississippi River. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I have traveled extensively through and am most familiar with the heartlands of America, the Midwest. Also, having set for myself early-on in my career as a scout the assignment of finding what remains of historic Route 66,