by Matthew Howe

I’m gaffing a horror feature out in eastern Long Island. The main location is this abandoned old house just outside of town in West Hampton beach. The director of photography is Larry Arleigh, a British guy who's friends with the producer. Larry's great. He’s shot some big stuff, is used to working for a lot more money with a lot more equipment and crew, but doesn't care how low-budget, understaffed we are. He's a super-nice guy and brings tremendous spirit and energy to the job.  

With one problem. 

by Matthew Howe

So I'm hired to work on my first "ride film." New York Skyride.

New York Skyride is a motion simulator housed permanently in the Empire State building. A box full of seats moves in sync with an image on a movie screen with the express intention of making everyone in those seats hurl chow.

by Matthew Howe 

Two months after a violent revolution, who would be stupid enough to go to Haiti to shoot a segment for a lame-ass reality show? 

That would be me. 

The show was called Repo Men, an early, unsuccessful, forerunner of the Operation Repos and Lizard Lick Towings  that currently grace the airwaves. Repo Men hadn't even officially gone into production, but when the production team got word that a daring maritime repo man named Max Hardberger was going to repossess a 70,000 ton freighter in Haiti, it seemed a no brainer. Someone had to go and shoot this. 

by Matthew Howe

For those of us in the freelance film business, corporate videos are a mainstay of our livelihood. There are a lot of pharmaceutical companies in the North-East and a lot of work making videos for them. One subcategory is the video-taped lecture. If a doctor or scientist can't make it to an important conference to present his findings on a certain topic, he'll simply videotape his power-point presentation and that will be shown in place of a live appearance.

We get the call to do such a shoot in Delaware. Since the doctor we're taping is going to be arriving at 8am sharp, it makes sense to set-up the night before so everything is ready to go without us having to drag our asses out of bed at 2am. (It's a four hour drive to the location.).