All things are moving forward on Beer Pioneers, and at a good pace. I have two major film shoots set to go before the summer begins, some studio work to wrap up, and a new edit system on the way.

The first production is in Los Angeles in late March-- all studio interviews. Pretty simple.

The second is set to take place in May at the Brewers Association's Craft Beer Conference in San Diego. (Thank you for the media passes!) I hope to set up as many interviews as possible with attendees and BA staff before the crew arrives. If you are going, and have any experience(s) with craft beer in the late 1970s and the 1980s, please give me a holler! I'll be testing out the Sony F3 camera on this trip. It's probably the smallest camera I've ever used, so it will be interesting to see how well it does.

The third production travels with a small crew throughout Northern California to multiple beer-y locations for many new interviews. This was originally planned for this week, but logistics and schedules didn't jive, so it's a go for mid-July now.

Late summer studio days will be killer: high speed Phantom cameras, Technocranes and one wacky green screen set full of breweriana. And, of course there will be beer. I hope to shoot a couple of interviews one of those days with the trustworthy Panavision F900 camera. The days will be long and the nights even longer. Production assistance is welcome.

After all of this new footage is tallied with the archive from years past, it should be in the 300-400 hours range. A new edit system is on the way to handle it. I'm very excited to tear into the post side of production, but I'm also very ready for this beast to be done. It's going on 18 years now. I must love craft beer, or I'm just plain nuts. Or both.

Next up: Segment writers wanted.