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MillimeterCreative Draw
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer
How to make it in Philadelphia.
CHP Productions
CHP Productions is the company that freelance director/producer/camerman/editor Chad Jenkins started last year as a way to relaunch his professional profile on the Web. It was a formality more than anything else, considering that he'd been working steadily wearing those many hats within the Philadelphia production scene.
Jenkins discovered the world of video production by accident. He'd been drumming and singing in bands when, at the urging of his then-girlfriend, he decided to return to school in 2000 at age 27 to finish his bachelor's degree. At the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, documentary media production was part of the core curriculum, and in that course of study, Jenkins became familiar with computers for the first time in his life, learning to edit video on early versions of Final Cut Pro.
As he devoted more and more of his music time to the time-consuming craft of documentary production, Jenkins was at a crossroads. “I approached college as if it was my job. I'd go in, put in my eight hours, and get out so I could get back to my life. Little by little, it became 14 or 15 hours a day,” he says. “I had to make a decision: Am I going to do this, or am I going to try to play music?”
The deal was sealed when a school assignment brought Jenkins his first taste of success. Using the school's Final Cut stations and Sony DSR-PD150 cameras, he produced a documentary about a fellow drummer, the venerable Blue Note session man (and Philly resident) Mickey Roker. WYBE, a local PBS affiliate, picked up the 20-minute Sideman for broadcast.
The station also picked up his senior project for the University of the Arts — Priority 3, a documentary about school violence in Philadelphia. As Jenkins was producing that project, he and a friend who had already graduated were also producing a self-financed film. After finishing that project in October 2003, they sent it out and soon compiled a stack of rejection letters. “And then all the creditors start calling,” he says. “I was a little too cocky at the time, so I spent 2004 recovering.”
Even with two broadcast credits under his belt, the recent graduate couldn't find any work for six very humbling months. Eventually he'd find freelance editing work, for local production company MediaActive, and as production sound technician and second camera operator for a documentary project called First Person. Jenkins regained his financial footing, but as a business tactic, he soon drove himself back into debt.
“I'd made a decision that the only way I could actually stay in this business is if I owned as much gear as I could,” he says. The musician started with location audio gear: a Shure FP33 field mixer, a Sennheiser ME66 shotgun mic, a Lectrosonics wireless system, and an AKG C 1000 S condenser microphone. Jenkins' gear helped him get steady work crewing local projects, sometimes as a location audio guy and sometimes as a cameraman. But a camera still wasn't on his gear checklist; next up were a small lighting kit, flags, and C-stands.
Jenkins continues to do a variety of work, including corporate work and television shows. He did sound and second-camera work for the first season of reality show The Biggest Loser. He shot a documentary called Electile Dysfunction, which will premiere at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival. He has both shot and edited two episodes of Studio Jams, a BET Jazz program produced by Ace Entertainment.
A top-level MacBook Pro with 3GB of RAM, Final Cut Studio 1, and an external FireWire compose the editing suite in his apartment. Jenkins says that although that Studio Jams, a live taping of a jazz concert, requires four or five camera streams, he's able to work in realtime serving the standard-def video from his external drive.
Having stockpiled quite a collection of production gear already, the camera finally came last year when Jenkins started shooting another documentary project for local filmmaker Tigre Hill. Hill had won best feature at the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival with Shame of the City, which examined controversial Mayor John F. Street's 2003 reelection. Hill's current project, The Barrel of a Gun, examines both sides of the case of convicted murderer and international cause célèbre Mumia Abu-Jamal. Before what turned out to be more than a year of shooting on both coasts and in Europe, Jenkins purchased a Panasonic AG-HVX200 and four 8GB P2 cards. He shot Barrel in 24p native, anticipating a later film release.
For this project, Jenkins also acquired a Glidecam 4000 Smooth Shooter package with sled, body harness, and articulating arm. “For a small package,” he says, “it was like $1,500 to do a poor man's Steadicam for documentary — why not?”
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