Starz Entertainment

I worked at Starz Entertainment in Denver, Colorado for 13 years. I started as an Intern in 2004. After my internship with Starz, I worked for a new channel in Colorado Springs for a while before being hired as a P.A. (Production Assistant). I did all sorts of projects as I worked my way up to Senior Producer before being laid off in the fall of 2016. It was a pretty fun job. Watching all sorts of movies and making what are essentially music videos with them to promote whatever Starz or Encore channel, or show I was aiming to promote.

Starz Movies Sales Video (2016)

Finding the perfect music in an almost endless library of songs can be difficult. Fortunately, I got very lucky with this one. For image pieces, such as this, we would often license a popular song we heard on the radio or through other media, but this one was in our vast music library.

Once the song was decided on it was just a matter of finding the best shots from each film to match the music and there we went.

Power

I had the privilege of working on the Starz Original series POWER. The show started off low in the ratings, but after they brought me in to handle the episode promos, it became the highest-rated original series on Starz.

Starz Originals Image (2013)

Licensing and using the hell out of a song for high-profile spots became common practice at a certain point. Here we used, "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)" by Fall Out Boy.

Using an expensive song long always meant that there would be edit after edit done to complete these spots as managers wanted this or that added or taken out of the spot.

The Amazing Spider-Man - Starz Saturday Premiere (2012)

You'd think it would be easy to promote a blockbuster movie. Find some flashy music, highlight the actor a bit, show some action, the villain, etc., and you did, right? Wrong!

This was a tough one because it was such a bit movie for the time many managers were looking at it and picking every edit I made apart. Also, because we were a Television channel at the time we had a certain time constraint to fit into. So this had to fit into a 30-second window. Not an easy task.

The Amazing Spider-Man Teases

The Amazing Spider-Man SSP

The Heroes Collection

Promoting movies from different cinematic universes has always been a challenge. Fortunately, the team we assembled for this project came up with a great idea: a dispatch department that would send out heroes to people. These promos won me my first industry award.

Looper - Starz Friday Night Feature

Looper - Starz Saturday Premiere

Movie promotions were always in my wheelhouse, and I relished the opportunity to work on them for movies I actually enjoyed watching (which was pretty much all of them).

Looper - Tease

Party Down - Character Spots

One of the Starz Original series that would later gain a cult following was Party Down. With some future stars and a whole slew of guest stars, the show struggled to find an audience initially but later gained popularity.

Starz Cinema - Broken Embraces - The A-List

Some movies were more important to the channels than others. Broken Embraces had some star power but it wasn't something that everyone was watching. So I didn't get a lot of support when making the spot, but because of that, I was able to make the broken shard effect with the images that made this spot a bit different. I didn't have a lot of time to make it though, so it looks a little less polished.

Starz Fear Fest

I always enjoyed the horror movie genre, and Starz Fear Fest was an opportunity to create promotional videos for genuinely scary movies.

Spartacus: Blood & Sand (2010)

Spartacus: Blood & Sand was Starz's first real success in the world of original programming.

I was tasked with creating character long-form pieces as well as the premier POC (promo over credits) that would air just before the show. Using interviews and footage from the shows I scripted each character piece and worked with video, graphics, and audio editors to create these pieces.

Quarantine - Starz Saturday Premiere - Tease

Quarantine - Starz Saturday Premiere

I was always good at the horror genre and this really showed it. I thought this movie was great when it was released and only found out it was a remake of the Spanish thriller REC. The simple pulsing of the repeating music creates dark suspense and you wonder what horrible fates befell this reporter and the people living in this apartment complex. The repeating tones also reminded me of another horror classic I loved, The Thing.

Starz Edge - State of the Art

Starz Edge had a State of the Art tune-in category, which allowed for some pretty experimental takes on some long-form promos.

Encore - Movieoke (San Francisco)

I got to travel to San Francisco for this Encore top-titles spot. The idea was to create some fun spots with movie fans who would use quotes from the films to show their enthusiasm for the films and their content.

Looking for Starz was an early foray into original programming. The Looking for Starz show was a take on emulating American Idol in the way it would go across the country looking for talent to put into a part in a film from Revolution studios.

I was put on the show from the beginning and traveled with the crew to every location except the last one, Las Angeles. I was in charge of setting up the set and wrangling the contestants. I was also in charge of tracking and taking all the tapes from the set to Starz headquarters where I was tasked with logging all the footage in preparation for the edits for the shows that were to be produced less than a few weeks after taping of the shows.