August 10, 2012
Back in April, I flew out to Portland to spend some time visiting with Mark Hellweg, owner of Clive Coffee, and to visit some of the local shops I’d heard so much about. I instantly fell in love with the comfortable, unique, and neighborhood-like feel of the city, and was exposed to some great coffees and spaces laced throughout the city.
The main reason for my trip, though, was to work on a film project with Clive. The premise of the video was to explain some of the differences between home espresso machines, and to visualize some of the benefits and qualities you should be looking for when approaching espresso machines for home use.
The video starts off with a Venetian style coffee house—symbolizing the first time you ever fell in love with espresso. From there, the video walks through the thought process of trying to figure out how to get the same experience at home.
Highlighting some different espresso machine styles—from the simplistic and cheap plastic models to the over-complicated Rube-Goldberg style with unnecessary bells-and-whistles, the video finally lands on some good quality options to use at home.
The whole experience was really fun for me—getting to travel to Portland and immerse myself in some of the coffee scene out there was an added bonus, but getting to work with Mark and the gang at Clive to put this together was a real highlight. Great people doing great things—I really appreciate the oportunity to work with them and look forward to connecting with them again in the future.
Be sure to check out the entire page to learn a little bit more about different espresso machines and boiler types.
**Also, I learned a lot about drawing and myself while I was out in Portland. Being filmed while drawing really adds a strange dynamic to my thought process. I really started to over-analyze every movement, and started worrying about things like staying out of the way of the camera, lighting, subtle movements, etc. Needless to say, I don’t think the drawings in the video are my best work, but they sure did a great job with the video as a whole, adding in some nice B-roll and annotations.**
