Last month, dvDepot covered Fashion Week. New York City’s Fashion Week is followed internationally. Each September and February, the hottest designers, both up and coming and established, gather in Manhattan’s Bryant Park to debut their collections for the next season. Last month was displaying fashions for Fall 2010. For the past few years, we have been working on this event with Shanghai TV’s “The Style Today.” Host Penny Wei conducted interviews at 9 different shows including Max Azria, Tibi, and Diesel and shot the runways. These photos are “live” from Bryant Park on February 17th.

Roger Coraggio has been shooting for “The Style Today” since they first came to us several years ago. His excellent work and coverage of Fashion Week events have produced a strong working relationship with Shanghai TV, which is owned and run by the Chinese government. On this shoot he used the Panasonic SDX900 shooting with the DVCPRO50 format. Along with Roger were sound recordists Dennis Brioso and Diana Milani and Production Assistant Daniel Pleacoff.

Fashion Week is a fantastic event that occupies the entire city’s production resources. At every show, we meet people we know also covering the event. Add celebrities, exciting fashions and a healthy dose of overseas production crews and you have one of the more enjoyable jobs of the year for us.

The Weinstein Company is releasing their new movie “Youth in Revolt” starring Michael Cera this month. dvDepot worked on a series of promos for the film featuring Michael Cera and the cast of MTV’s The Jersey Shore.

As anybody who watches the show knows, the Jersey Shore kids are a wild bunch. They did not disappoint us here. DJ Pauly D took one look at Michael and decided he needed a makeover. They changed his wardrobe and spent an hour giving him Pauly’s signature hair style. Also, once they heard there was a hot tub on the roof, there was no keeping them out of it– not even the 20 degree weather. In spite of all the fun they had, our crew reported that everybody was professional and easy to work with. We can’t wait until the promos premiere so we can see our finished product.

The promos were shot on three Sony EX1s with our operators Jeremy Leach, Andreas Wagner and Chris Piazza. We had two audio techs on set to mic all the people: Diana Milani and Michael Correa. Kevin Provost was a camera utility and handled data transfers. Joseph Bandelli was our PA. We worked with Partizan, who were producing the spots.

You can see more pictures on the sites we borrowed these from: People Magazine and the Huffington Post. We also get mentioned in the article at New TeeVee.

At this point, everybody’s loving Showtime’s new series Nurse Jackie. My aunt, a retired nurse, is a big fan. We were lucky enough to do all the behind the scenes work on the show. We shot interviews with the cast and crew and B roll as well. It was exciting to shoot most of the stuff onset, so we got to see the show in production. The promo below includes a lot or our work.

One day, we got to shoot real nurses telling us about actual on the job experiences. The stories are hilarious, shocking and squirm inducing. Especially The Testicle Story. I suggest you take a look below.

Our work for Showtime was shot by Matthew Kulvicki, Derek Edwards, Ira Brenner and Ron McCain. The audio was done by Diana Milani, Alex Sierra and Max Kalmanowicz. Anthony Barrese was a utility, Lauren Dale Weinstein handled makeup and Mariclare Rivera operated the teleprompter. Their hard work kept Showtime coming back to us for more work.

You can check out more of our behind the scenes work on Nurse Jackie over at their site.

“Pitchmen,” on the Discover Channel is a great show. It features informercial veterans Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan searching for new products to sell. Rather than being a strict contest show, it is also a chance to spend time with the stars in their world as they shoot their commercials and run their business. It’s a project that we were proud to have worked on. Original Productions is a great company to work with and the cast were friendly and fun.

Unfortunately, one of the stars, Billy Mays, passed away recently. It was terrible circumstances to be involved in, but we were honored to be able to work on the memorial episode.

Matt Kulvicki (camera) and Ethan Goldberger (audio) worked on the show the most for us and spent the most time with Billy. Matt said, “Good man, small ego.” Ethan agreed he was “a great guy, and one of those rare celebrities you work with that leaves you with total admiration. A total gentleman and a complete professional, he always made sure everyone felt good around him, remembering the names of everyone on set (including the sound guy!).” Matt also assures us that “there is nothing like watching a soundman throw his headphones off in pain when Billy turned the volume up and made his pitch.” Billy’s pitches weren’t just loud, there were passionate and filled with joy. Billy always believed in his products and was his happiest telling the inventors on the show that they had a hit.

You can see a brief tribute to Billy Mays at the “Pitchmen” site as well other clips.

He believed in these products and took his greatest pleasure when telling the inventor they had a hit.

The camera ops on the show included Matthew Kulvicki, Alex Sierra and Andreas Wagner. Audio was done by Ethan Goldberger, Diana Milani, Alex Sierra and Stephen Collins.

R.I.P Billy.

Our clients came to us with a new idea: rap battles on mobile video. They wanted to shoot MCs battling each other, then give let mobile phone viewers the opportunity to vote for who advances on to the next round. The project was called “The Rap Game.”

We worked with them through preproduction and provided the shooting crew. We had five cameras, three on stick, one handheld and one Steadicam. Our crew lit the whole club. While the performances happened on the stage, we were also shooting the audience, wanting them to be as much a part of the

experience as the performers. Our audio crew had mics on the two battlings rappers, the host, the audience and a feed from the DJ. We also handled communications.

It was a fun experience for everybody and it went smoothly thanks to our awesome crew, which included DP Daniel McKeown, camera ops Matthew Kulvicki, Andreas Wagner, and Liz Rubin, steadicam op David George Ellis, audio supervisor Diana Milani, audio tech Gabriel

Cyr, utility Kara Haas and PAs Tory Clark and Mike Misslin.

The Rap Game was the first large shoot after I started working at dvDepot. It was great to go into the field and see our crew in action. It helped me to understand the ways they worked and in what situations they worked best. And nothing is more thrilling than taking on a challenge and succeeding.

You can see more pictures from the shoot at our flickr page

The Smithsonian Channel runs a show called Aerial America. The idea is to fly over every state in America and shoot it in stunning HD. They use the same techniques as they use to shoot Planet Earth.

We were lucky to be able to work with them in Princeton, NJ. Possibly the most exciting part was shooting a helicopter as it landed. Luckily, we had a brave, professional crew. Hats off to Matt Kulvicki on camera, Diana Milani on audio and our utility Derek Edwards.

There are more photos up at our flickr site.