SpaceX: Starlink

The brief

This was a product demonstration for Starlink, SpaceX's satellite internet service, shot in 2022. The production company running the job was based out of state and hired me to cover Texas.

The frames show what the demonstration covers: a hand holding a phone open to the Starlink app, the kit laid out on a wood table with the dish, kickstand, router, and cables, and hands setting a dish on its kickstand on an outdoor table.

My role

I was the producer and director of photography in Texas. I handled gear, crew, and logistics on the ground, and I coordinated with the production teams in New York and California who worked the rest of the job.

That is a different kind of producing from the Tigé films, where I ran the whole production from the estimate to delivery. On Starlink the hire came from another production company, and my part was the Texas ground work.

How it ran

Most of the decisions on this job were made by the teams in New York and California. My part was making those decisions work on the ground in Texas: the right gear on hand, a crew that could deliver, and logistics that held together when the cameras rolled.

A job split across three regions is a coordination problem before it is a picture problem. When the producers are in New York and California, someone in Texas has to know where the gear is, who is on the crew, and what happens if a piece of the plan changes. I wrote about the crew side of that on my blog: the people on a set matter more than the line item, and trust takes repetition.

What I took from it

The Starlink demonstration shows two parts of how I work on one job: producing in the field for another company and serving as its director of photography. The finished demonstration is embedded on this page.