Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a PSA I shot and edited for a non-profit organization called Our Spirit, a web-based spiritual resource for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) youth.

Produced by Robert Guthrie, Directed by Kent French, Music composed by Russell Wolff.

For more info check out my blog post.

This video, entitled “I Like”, is going to be used as part of the site and organization launch later this fall.  Robert had the script a while back, and we discussed several visual treatments for the piece.  In the end we decided on an extremely simple approach of just a stark white backdrop.  My initial concern was that this look could seem too “corporate” or too “clean”, but we did some tests and it seemed like the right approach.  In the end, I couldn’t have been happier with how it came out. The bright, young, colorful faces go perfectly on the clean, white background.

Robert worked with the Maura Tighe casting agency to find the majority of our wonderful actors. The rest we found through a local gay-straight alliance.  While Robert worked as producer/writer on this piece, his partner Kent French, a Boston-area actor, (and now a minister) directed our actors.  The location was donated by the First Church of Cambridge, who gave us use of their theater space.  It was a large, empty theater, but was quite “live sounding” and had large windows that we could control.  So we ended up shooting on the stage with the heavy curtains drawn to help drown out the Harvard Square traffic (which was problematic at times, but we were able to work around it) and deaden the sound of the room.  We had “just” enough space on the stage, but you can see in the pictures it was a fairly simple setup.

Robert and I have two other projects in the works for Our Spirit.  We are in pre-production now on a web series called “The Romeo Files”, which we are going to shoot and release this fall.  Next Spring, we hope to be working on his featurette entitled “God is Gay”.

You can check out the “I Like” video here (with music wonderfully composed by my friend Russell Wolff, a Nashville-based songwriter/producer).