Adventure

Betty Beyond.

It’s about time we check in with our favorite getaway car, Betty. She’s been cruising around Santa Fe for a while now, assisting our Southwestern crew on productions big and small. Not to worry, though: this 1980’s babe is a road tripper at heart. She lured our San Francisco team member Adam Kennedy back to the open road on his visit to Santa Fe earlier this summer. Here’s a little photo essay from the BettyVenture, complete with a stop at Sonic and a grand finale at White Sands National Park. Next week, Betty is headed out again on a return trip to Monument…

Escape Artists.

Inspired storytelling and travel go hand-in-hand. Seeking out new places heightens your senses and pushes your limits. It gives you new perspectives on the familiar, challenging old assumptions about your place in the world. Because our clients are scattered across the globe, travel is part of our jobs. However, even when we’re on vacation, creativity is our compass. We’ve done quite a lot of globe trotting this season, and the adventures will only multiply this summer. Check out some of our past and future adventures below, and let us know if our paths will be crossing sometime soon! Alaska In late…

Finding the Happiness Within.

The remote mountain kingdom of Bhutan and the Burning Man festival in Black Rock City; they have more in common than you would expect. Around the world, micro-economies are carving their own paths to wealth and well-being. Nations like the island of Vanuatu and Los Pueblos Mancommunicados in the hills of Oaxaca are choosing to reject the looming presence of global capitalism and the adverse effects it creates. Filmmaker Dan Porras, communications director of the Christensen Fund, sets out to tell the stories of these peoples who are creating their own unique economic systems. They often strike a careful balance between traditional knowledge…

Dawn ‘Til Dusk.

Life on a Vermont hilltop farm is much more action-packed than you might expect. Folks have been farming the 600-acre parcel known as Galusha Hill Farm & Lodge in East Topsham for over 200 years now. Early settlers cleared trees and brush, built walls stone-by-stone, and raised all kinds of livestock. Nowadays, owners John Harkins and Dallas Anderson do all of the farming and upkeep, integrating innovative eco-agriculture techniques into an age-old practice. The many guests that pass through Galusha’s lodge, farmhouse and charming off-grid cabin each year experience a wide array of adventures. Galusha hosts conferences, reunions, family vacations, weddings and many other special events. In the…

Betty’s Back.

It’s been nearly a year since our production vehicle Betty joined the 12FPS crew. Back then, she had an orange-and-white paint job and a bum engine. Fixing her up felt like a passion project, but once she was up and running, it didn’t take long to realize that Betty means (serious) business. We are classical storytellers for the digital age, and our sunny yellow van has an old-fashioned look that’s fused with timely technology—a 2016 archetype of romantic road-tripping. She rocks her own Instagram account and hashtag, complete with an ongoing journal where you can experience compelling stories of travels to remote locations, like the desolate wilderness…

Over The Edge.

It’s a chilly February day, and we’re an hour away from Santa Fe lugging a heavy camera up a steep trail. At the top is a craggy cliff overlooking Diablo Canyon. There’s not a trace of civilization in sight, and the pale winter sun is setting. It’s time to make a movie. Our latest project is a spring recruitment video and campaign for Santa Fe University of Art and Design. It’s our second collaboration with SFUAD: we’ve already explored their studios and classrooms for a fall recruitment campaign. For this round of storytelling, the university sent us far away from campus. They wanted to reveal the wild…

Room to Roam.

Storytelling has evolved. 12FPS is a creative agency that transcends mediums to promote revolutionary ideas. We’re excited to unveil a powerful new website that pulls back the curtain on our creative process. As we started building it late last year, we dreamed up a platform for our wildest ideas. We found that sharing projects only on Instagram and Facebook was not enough…some stories need a bit more room to roam! 12FPS is all about authentic storytelling, and here we reveal behind-the-scenes photos and anecdotes from San Francisco, Santa Fe, New York City and beyond. We approach every project with an eye for compelling stories that traverse different styles and formats. We enjoy working with…

Meet Betty.

The road trip has been a hallowed American tradition since the dawn of the commercial automobile. Every classic adventure—the Disneyland pilgrimage, the Route 66 joyride—came with an essential array of photo opportunities. Postcards, Polaroids and interminable slideshows proved to friends back in suburbia that you really did ride Dumbo or stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Our story begins with Betty, a 1980’s ambulance with a dead engine and a hungry look in her headlights. Our first glimpse of her is in an overgrown Colorado Springs backyard, but we can already imagine 1,000 adventures at her helm. Road tripping is…

On Camera, Off-The-Grid.

When your business takes you on rugged adventures that are far off the grid, there are inherent challenges to spreading the word about it. Try packing a full set of camera equipment along with your tent, sleeping bag, food and water purifier. It’s enough to burst an ultralight backpack. We have a lot of experience coordinating productions in remote locations with difficult conditions, from rural Indian villages to snowy Rocky Mountain peaks. When Boreas Gear recruited us for a special expedition, we were ready to answer the call of the wild. We joined the Boreas Gear design team on their first-ever Wilderness Design…

Shot in the Dark.

MONKEYLECTRIC knew the world had never seen something like the Monkey Light Pro. It’s a bike light comprising 256 color LEDs that can display images and videos on your wheels. Not only had the company struck upon a scientific breakthrough for bike safety, but they’d designed an eye-popping visual experience that was the toast of tech fairs and science museums alike. When MONKEYLECTRIC enlisted 12FPS, the startup had already tested nine prototypes for the Monkey Light Pro over the course of five years. They were ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign that would make their product go viral. The world’s most advanced bike light needed a…

Sweat, Blood and Symmetry.

Wes Anderson’s aesthetic is intricate, precise… and apparently effortless. In his award-winning films, the camera glides smoothly through stylized sets, lighting on symmetrical compositions that please the eye. We teamed up with Mellow Velo Bicycles to film a playful tribute to the acclaimed director, and kick off Outside Magazine‘s Bike and Brews event for National Bike to Work Day. The eye-catching aesthetic would help us raise awareness about an eco-friendly cause. It didn’t take long to learn that Anderson’s look is the result of grueling work. Setting up shots called for a heightened awareness of everything in the frame, and mapping out the…