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Volunteers Make Promo To Help The California Campaign

Don Starnes, a California Director of Photography and filmmaker, attended a Kucinich meetup in December and was moved by the campaign's need to convince voters to register before the state primary. Within a few days, Starnes volunteered to make a voter registration commercial for the Kucinich California campaign.

After writing the ad and getting it approved by Dennis Mitrzyk, the local campaign's media coordinator, Starnes set about the task of making the commercial. "I called on many of the most talented people in the Northern California film community, asking people to donate their time and equipment," said Starnes. "The most common answer was 'I'd be happy to'". Many people knew of Kucinich's campaign and wanted to help.

One of the first people Starnes contacted was Director Peter Lengsfelder, who agreed to direct and help produce the commercial. Lengsfelder assembled a talented cast, including Brian Vouglas as a homeless man, Chris Schambach and Tammy Dong as the two young people, Rick Valentine and Veneita Porter as the parents of an American soldier in Iraq and Carolyn Kraetsch as an infirm woman.

In the commercial the young woman, a teacher, is attempting to teach children in a leaking classroom during a rain storm. One of the problems that Starnes, gaffer Charles Griswold, camera assistant Vance Piper and art director Sean Rainey had to solve on the fast paced one day shoot was how to achieve the rain effects. They got the dramatic "leaking roof" shot by suspending the camera on a jib arm, pointing straight down from the ceiling and attaching plastic tubes to the camera. Rainey and set dresser David Loya controlled the water flow, producing raindrops as the camera boomed slowly toward the distracted students.

Starnes photographed the commercial in 24P HDCam with equipment from San Francisco's Videofax and Magnetic Image. Starnes edited on his Final Cut Pro system; the post production was finished at San Francisco's Video Arts by Kim Salyer and Zac Pineda.

Thank you very much to all of the talented people who took part in this powerful production.

Scenes from the video promo "Register"