Castner Range National Monument!

In our video series Hope, Culture, & Community: El Paso’s Bold Fight for a National Monument, Ángel Peña of the Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project says, “It’s about the opportunity to be connected to your place and your land.” He and other featured locals – Emily, Chris, and Ben – are part of the 50+ year fight to protect Castner Range from development and ensure that future generations have access to this vast, beautiful open space.

When FGP was in El Paso filming, it was a big question whether President Biden would give Castner Range national monument status, but during post-production, we got the wonderful news that it had indeed been designated! There will now be a Castner Range National Monument. Congratulations to everyone we met in El Paso who has been working so hard to make this happen.

Beloved Community Build

We were honored to cover Habitat for Humanity’s Beloved Community Build in Walnut Creek this year! They hold this event every April to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King and the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Malkia Device-Cyril – activist, writer, and public speaker – provided a spiritual anchor to the work of about 70 volunteers, giving an electrifying speech about how expanding access to affordable home ownership is an act toward justice that brings us closer to realizing Dr. King’s vision of The Beloved Community.

“There is another element that must be present in our struggle that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.”

Martin Luther King Jr.
April 15, 1960, in Raleigh, North Carolina

“The racial wealth gap didn’t start yesterday; it started hundreds of years ago and it’s progressed to today. It’s important that we understand that every home you build…you are affecting something that is hundreds of years in the making. We’re not building a house, we’re building a future.”

Malkia Device-Cyril
April 1, 2023, in Walnut Creek, CA

Heading Home

We just wrapped our annual end-of-year video for Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley, which featured Michael, a future homeowner at Esperanza Place in Walnut Creek. Michael never thought he’d be able to own a home but with encouragement from his daughter Michelle, already a Habitat homeowner, he applied and was accepted. He’s excited to be able to provide a safe place for his grandkids to play and says, “I’m looking for the first day I move in so I can let my kids go out front, so they’ll know that this is going to be theirs.” We loved hearing Michael’s heartfelt story and working with the other star of the video, Patti Huang.

Talking Conservation in Tilden

For our latest shoot we rented a Xanadu-inspired retreat space overlooking Tilden Park, where we interviewed leaders from The North Face, Bank of the West and the The Conservation Alliance. These interviews will be part of a video that aims to inspire other businesses to become members of The Conservation Alliance and join in its efforts to protect wild places in North America.

The Boundary Waters, Minnesota

As part of an ongoing project with The Conservation Alliance, we visited Ely, Minnesota to film the stunning Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area and interview conservation and business leaders who have joined forces to fend off a potentially devastating copper mine. We got here just after the leaves had turned and luckily caught the two sunny days between rain and snow. Thank you Becky, Steve, and Joseph for sharing your stories with us!

Sacramento Goes Greener

We teamed up with the City of Sacramento and Circlepoint to help teach Sacramento residents how to use the new green recycling program, looking at everything from wrapping paper to dog poop! We worked directly with the team at the city to deliver their message on video. We had a great time collaborating with them and Circlepoint to create this educational video series!

Disappearing Billboard

Climate change is decimating our kelp forests, an essential and often overlooked coastal ecosystem. To bring awareness to the issue, Bank of the West partnered with Sustainable Surf and artist Andres Amador to create a massive sand mural at Dillon Beach. The dramatic “disappearing billboard” washed away the day it was made and left no trace. We took on post-production for these videos and included our own original kelp forest footage.

Manure => clean energy

Our latest video and its accompanying article has been rolled out on Bank of the West’s Means and Matters, a site dedicated to finance and sustainability. The project’s goal is to get dairy farmers interested in using methane digesters to offset their energy costs, create power for electric vehicles, and fight climate change. Using Bar 20 Dairy in the Central Valley as an example, the video encourages dairy farmers to get on the methane digester train by partnering with Bank of the West and BMW.

Catching Up With John McEnroe

We had an amazing time interviewing John McEnroe during the BNP Parabis Open tennis tournament! In partnership with Bank of the West, we produced a series of videos with McEnroe discussing gender equity, the pressure on young athletes today, and how he sees his former, 1980’s big-haired self.

We also got to speak with several other tennis stars off the court alongside a vibrant living wall and managed to avoid getting sunburned in the desert sun of Palm Springs!

Better Place Forests

Last year a couple lost their son in a tragic accident. Instead of a traditional cemetery, they chose to work with Better Place Forests to find him a final resting place. They located the perfect spot at the base of a tree with a view of a valley and mountain beyond and had a ceremony there with their loved ones where they told stories, held each other, and remembered their son. We worked closely with the bereaved couple, editor Eva Brzeski, and BPF’s Creative Director Lindy Kae Patterson to create a piece about the couple’s powerful experience. See our video Remembering Andre: A Forest Memorial in Flagstaff as featured in Forbes magazine.

Conservation Alliance Award

We just received the great news that The Conservation Alliance gave Bank of the West the Outstanding Partnership Award for our series of short films Guardians of the Owyhee! The series, which tells the story of the movement to protect the Owyhee Canyonlands, screened at Oregon’s Wild and Scenic Film Festival last October.

Here's Conservation Alliance’s full news article and the related press release.

EXPLAIN IT LIKE I'M 5

We collaborated with LA-based Third Shift Creative on a series social videos for Bank of the West that explains the economy in simple terms. As co-producers on the project, we combined our talents and crews to make a truly unique product. From casting the little ones to helping them and their parents find the makeup room on set, the young actors were a delight to work with.

Special thanks to Cynthia at Church of All Faiths for providing us with everything we needed (and more!) to create a classroom using their historic space, Bridget Bruce for her creative set design, Kadidja Sallak for her smart styling and easy way with kids, Susan Gill for being a stellar set teacher, and Covid Compliance Officer Blair Hunt for helping us all stay safe.

North Beach's famous fudge shop

In collaboration with the owner Mike Zwiefelhofer, we created six videos about his artisanal candy shop, Z. Cioccolato, and its famous fudge. We made sure the footage was as mouth-watering as possible and worked with Mike to distill the story of the shop and illuminate his creative process. Needless to say, we are now fudge fans. As the holiday season approaches, we hope these videos will entice others to try and gift Z. Cioccolato’s delicious specialty.

LIFE ElderCare Tutorial Series

Treat our elders with dignity and respect. That’s the main lesson of all the training videos we’ve made for LIFE ElderCare, whether they teach Meals on Wheels protocol or LGBTQ sensitivity. These latest videos for student nurses and general volunteers could not have been made without the expertise and dedication of our crew and cast. Special thanks to Director/Producer Ephi Stempler and actress Mica Daniel, who always knows how to hold down a scene.