I'm currently in the D.C. area as the National Guard has brought me out to talk about the videos I did over there, work on a couple projects and the opportunity to basically become the Guard Bureau's "in-house" cinematographer.

Armed with my laptop and it's contents, I've uploaded as many of the original videos as I happened to have (to the Warriors With Wrenches site until we get the G3 site back), and am presenting the virtual timeline of how I ended up here based on camerawork, as I think it's an interesting progression because in my free time I constantly wonder "how did I end up here?". I have hyperlinked everything that I could.

1997 - I filmed almost all of CAWG's cadet activities and along with Brian Reisdorf and Kevin Johnston two cadet collegues, we edited the footage for the following year's Cadet Programs Conference. It was a big hit, we called it "Cadets in Action" and called ourselves "G3" for "Glory Cubed" we filmed on a Sony Hi8 Handycam and edited on a Pentium II 400mhz.

1998 - We did the same thing. We wanted to do some cool credits, so we did a Spoof on the Beastie Boys "Sabotage" music video entitled "Mechotage". This was also a big hit, as it unexpectedly showed some of Reisdorf's emerging 3D talents at the end with a giant Robot. And we did commercial spoofs with a CAP twist including the "Diamonds are Forever".

1999 - This year was my last as a cadet and the first thing I did as a senior was film an entire encampment. After the success of the Mechotage video we show the preview to "Big Gun" at the Cadet Programs Conference. There was also a little known video we did called "Vampant" for a radio station contest that was spontaneously thrown together over a weekend featuring most of the same cast of Big Gun.

2000 - The CAWG Encampment video premieres. I wish I still knew where a version was linked, I'll get one up for nostalgia's sake at some point. But I do have a preview that was made for it: 1999 Encampment Preview The encampment video went ballistic. Also premired after a year of filming and more importantly 3D graphics rendering and sound editing, the 15 minute computer generated extravaganza "Big Gun". Later this year I acquire the awesome Canon XL-1 Camera. I showed up at the end of Encampment to film the closing Ceremonies in order to produce the first work with that camera a short "2001 Encampment preview" to showcase the cameras doubled resolution. Reisdorf and I moved up to northern California to attend a Digital Motion Picture college (Cogswell Polytechnic), Kevin Johnston followed his dream and Commissioned in the Navy.

2001 - I married my wife Christina at the end of 2000 (there's a montage for that too, and the wedding was performed by the amazing Ned Lee, known as "Ned" here) and after producing G3's last but probably most famous (it was getting links from cadet sites all over the world) video "Real First Sergeant", took a break for a while. In April CadetStuff.org would formally appear, and they asked to use the Encampment video as the inaugural issue piece. In the summer of 2001, based on the success of the little videos and the new equipment I'd got, I took the "Big Filming Adventure" documenting as many national activities as possible. That's where the little videos on the NCSA pages from CAP's site come from. Those were the first official videos because another CAP member made the music so we wouldn't have any licensing issues (such as the likes of the test edit). The month after I got back from that trip, I enlisted in the California National Guard with the goal of eventually piloting the UH-60 Black Hawk. The next month the World Trade Center was attacked.

2002 - Most of this year was spent in training.

2003 - At the beginning of the year, half of my Medevac unit deployed to Afghanistan, I was not one of them. Then in the middle of the year, a new unit was put together and sent over, I did deploy with them. It was a 6 month deployment that got extended to 9 months. I deployed as a Black Hawk Technical Inspector but I brought my video camera, and because of the first two little videos I put together on my laptop, my whole career in the National Guard is taking a different path.

I produced the following videos for the families to download off our unit website while we were overseas. In the following order (these are the low res links, go here for the hi-res options).

1. Trailer - Beginning

2. Apache Glory

3. 911 Tribute

4. Trailer - Validated

5. Fallen Soldier Ceremony

6. Christmas

7. Trailer - Reflection (The talent of my buddy SGT GRIMM)

8. Trailer - Difference

After the first two went up, we showed up on the radar of the Advertising section of the National Guard. And the rest, as they say, is history.

2004 - I got home in from Afghanistan in May, and now I'm here in the D.C. area where I'll be working on a couple projects and figuring out which of a bunch of new options to take while working on the documentary of the deployment. The goal is still, of course, to get stuff (I still want to do a CAP ad) up on the big screen.

It's fun to look at the progression of video quality over the years, and to close, as so many people I know do: I owe where I'm at to Civil Air Patrol (and this is all in addition to the amazing leadership experiences!)