Filming Three Travel Videos around Detroit for Destination Marketing Tourism

Last summer I got to take a trip back to my old stomping grounds in Michigan, as I was hired to film some tourism video content for a destination marketing agency.

In a jam-packed two day schedule, we were to film at Jazz Fest, Atwater Brewing, and caught up with RiDetroit (Slow Roll) for a bike ride around the city. I met up with the talent for the shoot, Amon Focus, who was great to work with and had an infectiously positive attitude for the whole weekend, despite some really hot temperatures in the city.

My kit for this shoot needed to be lean and mean, as a lot of this ends up being run and gun, with limited time at each location. A compact 4K camera (sony a7iii) with 3-4 zoom lenses was my go-to, but also in my pack I had a GoPro 5, compact drone kit (DJI Mavic), and even a small gimbal (Ronin-S)! Pretty impressive that all of these things can fit into a single pack (F-stop Gear Ajna).

I actually knew Jason Hall from my days teaching at Specs Howard many years ago. It’s great to see what he’s doing in and around Detroit with the Slow Roll and RiDetroit.

Later that day Amon and I hit the Jazz Festival. The heat really started to slow us down, so we chased shade in between takes of performances and Amon reading lines to the camera.

Our shoot the next day was checking out the food trucks down in Cadillac Square. The food smelled great and looked even better– thankfully Amon was open to sharing a bit of it once we got the footage we needed.

We rolled through the Jazz Festival for a few more clips that afternoon, then made our way to Atwater Brewing. I’d been in their warehouse once but this was before they had even built the bar/restaurant. The staff was welcoming and being there was a great way to wrap up a successful weekend of filming!