Jason Maris Film & Photography Blog

Shake N’ Bake, round two!

Here are eight ridiculous, verging on strange, candid shots of me with some of the NASCAR drivers taken during a recent Coke assignment.  We were capturing the drivers for standees, in store life size cardboard cutouts, using the 60 megapixel Phase One camera. If you could not tell by the images, these guys are very fun, I look forward to working with them again!  Thanks to everyone at Momentum and IMG for a great shoot!  Click To Experience!

It’s a mouthful, but I honestly don’t know how else to describe this young lady!  Taking cues from the sun drenched sounds of the Brazilian pop form known as Tropicália, 70′s psychedelic folk and the recent revival of all such sounds (Akron/Family, Juana Molina, Arto Lindsay, Tom Zé, Os Mutantes, Fleet Foxes, Coco Rosie), Adron puts it all into a seamless blender and hits puree.  Her songs float along with strong acoustic melodies and those infectious tropical rhythms that just make you want to do nothing but relax. It’s all in service to a beautiful voice that effortlessly captures the feel of fading sunlight and awakening forests deep in the summer.  Wonderful.  Visit her Facebook HERE.

A few weeks back, Adron and her band came in with a head full of concepts for her new album Organismo‘s imagery and I was happy to help her see it through!  We’ll also be embarking on a music video soon, so look for that!  If you’re in town, come by the record release party this Friday @ Smith’s Olde Bar! Retouched by the velvet hand of Brad Kaye! Click to Experience!

Here is another from the series of images I took for  ReMIND.org / The Bob Woodruff Foundation; at the Center For The Intrepid / Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.    Click to experience!

See previous entry HERE.

I recently took two trips for ReMIND.org / The Bob Woodruff Foundation; one to San Antonio, Texas and another to New York City, New York.  My purpose was to document some of our service members who are now reintegrating their lives stateside. It was an incredible experience to spend time with everyone and maintain such meaningful conversation!  Thanks to everyone, especially those who served and continue to serve. This is this first series consisting of portraits, with more to come soon.  Click to experience!

Here’s a picture from the archive newly retouched.  Click to experience.

This is the ‘director’s cut’ of the Robot Chicken Season 5 DVD & Blu Ray spot featuring more footage of actor George Erdner selling his intended on the virtues of Robot Chicken.  The official spot, with actual footage from the program, should be airing on Adult Swim soon.  Thanks to director, writer and editor Nick Ingkatanuwat, producer Lear Bunda, our man Keith Roberts, wardrobe and stylist Morgan Lee Kestner and George Erdner; it was a blast, can’t wait for the next one!

Directed by Adult Swim’s own Nicholas Ingkatanuwat, produced by Lear Bunda and shot by myself along with Brad Kaye and Keith Roberts. Styling by Abby Morris, wardrobe by Morgan Lee Kestner. Starring Andrea Young, Jessica Pack, Sarah Blackman, Bria Kaye and Beth Del Nero as the Five Footloose Female Carls. With a voice over by Carl himself (aka David Willis – the director of the Hayes Carll “Another Like You” video)!  We used two Canon 5D MKII’s to shoot it.

Hmmm, how to explain Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 to the uninitiated… it’s a crude, some might say ‘adult’ Saturday Morning Cartoon that airs really late on Sunday nights.  It’s a surreal, satirical, black comedy about a team of crime solving fast food items (follow me here…) that don’t actually solve – or even investigate- any crimes.  Rather, they just exist in a decrepit suburban house as the world outside goes to hell.  Carl – the character the dancers in the ad portray, is their long suffering, knuckle dragging, sweatpant rocking neighbor.  The show is simultaneously inventively brilliant and willfully stupid, has been on the air for over a decade under it’s original moniker, Aqua Teen Hunger Force,  and even had full length feature in theaters back in 2007!  For you boomers out there, AUPS1 and it’s ilk are this generations’ answer to underground comics and Fritz The Cat.

A great shoot and a lot of fun, particularly the segments when the ladies messed around in their solo spots with the product; some seriously warped behavior arose!

The 15 Second Version

The 30 Second version

Here are a few pictures I took of Kenneth Keener who played the ‘second deputy’ in the 1972 John Boorman film Deliverance.  Kenneth was not only a huge help in tracking down the elusive Billy Redden (the unforgettable Lonnie aka ‘banjo boy’) but also a fantastic storyteller and all around great guy!  Click to experience!

Last month, Brad Kaye and I had the pleasure of spending a few days on Lake Powell in Utah with some of hydrofoiling’s greatest competitors.  It was a great experience and being out of the city and sleeping under the stars and actually being able to see the expanse of space above was something I’ll never forget.  If you haven’t heard of hydrofoiling, here’s the basic concept; it’s a contraption that combines water-skiing, wakeboarding and something unique all to itself – the hydrofoil.  Basically, the rider sits in a seat on a small board (similar to a wakeboard).  Affixed to the underside of the board is a long, thin, piece of stainless steel called a ‘T-bar’, and connected to the bottom of that is a pair of fin-like sheets of aluminum called the ‘foil’ or ‘front blade’.  What happens is, as the the rider is pulled along by a speedboat and rope, not unlike water-skiing / wakeboarding, the board will be raised out of the water – sometimes with only the ‘foil’ skimming across the top!  From here the rider, using their core abdominal strength, can do an assortment of tricks, from simple jumps to horizontal spins and multiple vertical flips.  It’s pretty wild.  In the following video you will see some of the sports finest Air Chair riders in Bryan Schumacher, Tyler Narans , Torey Narans, Ben Ferney, Al Lewin, Landon Hill, Jeff Lowe, Heinrich Hoerth and Adam Dietrich.  Enjoy!

Great news for all involved – the National Peanut Board: Peanuts – Energy For The Good Life campaign that I shot for Lawler Ballard Van Durand made it into this year’s Communication Arts Photography Annual!  As I’ve said here before, we couldn’t have done it with the awesome staff at LBVD – Steve, April, Gene and Rachel; hope we can do it all again sooner than later!  And, of course, the models – Beth, Jessica, Landon, Mike, Wayne, Emma, Eli, Madeline, Maya, Trevor, Rosanna, Porchea, Nyleta and, of course, Pete.  Thank you so much.  Click to experience.