Welcome to Mt. Toll Productions
Telling Stories with an Engaging, Compelling Perspective
Documentary Filmmaker – Dale Crum
How Mt. Toll Productions came to be.
Becoming a Filmmaker
I bought my first SLR camera in my early 20s (a Pentax SP 1000) and have been taking pictures ever since. For many years I contemplated making the jump from still photography to videography, and dreamed of becoming a filmmaker.
So, in 2014 when I retired from teaching people would ask me what I was going to do in retirement. Travel? Ride my bike? Sleep late? The answer to all of those was a resounding “Yes!”
However, after telling them that I wanted to become a filmmaker, most of them looked at me with skepticism. “That’s nice”, they would politely reply, “what kind of movies do you want to make?”
Documentaries.
Living The Dream
Learning the craft.
Below are the video projects I produced in the first two years of retirement.
The best part about becoming a filmmaker is that I’ve learned something new almost every day. And I’m still learning.
I’m tackling more and more challenging projects. And with each new project, I learn something new. Kind of a cool way to spend retirement, Eh?
Make sure to check out the upcoming projects page for future blog topics.
My First Video
Vincent
The very first video I ever produced was about a hike my wife and I had taken. It was about two and a half minutes long, and took six hours to produce. When I showed it to my wife she lost interest after about one minute. I was so mad at her. Didn’t she realize how much work went into making it?
I went back to work on a new project. This one was about Vincent van Gogh. It took me over 12 hours to produce.
When I showed “Vincent” to my wife, she watched the entire video (an improvement) and then when she looked up there were tears in her eyes. “It’s so beautiful”, she said.
I knew right then that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life… make my wife cry. (jk)
Ruby Hill Bike Park
This was the most fun I ever had filming and producing a video. In the summer of 2016, the City of Denver opened Ruby Hill Bike Park. I was there on opening day. It was an event to remember.
This was my first short film produced with my own videography. I was just learning how to shoot and edit film and I’m proud of how it turned out.
Sammy and His Human
More practice
My wife is a competitive equestrian. She wanted to critic herself so she asked me to video her and Sammy (her horse) during a riding session. Of course, as a filmmaker I had other creative ideas.
This project proved to be the most challenging undertaking in my budding career as a filmmaker. Filming a moving horse and rider? Really?
(BTW, to this day when my wife watches this video she completely ignores my creative take on her relationship with Sammy and focuses solely on critiquing her own riding style. Drives me crazy.)
My Father
My First Feature Length Project
(This project was originally released as a feature length documentary on DVD, but who does that anymore?)
We sat across from my father, (in his late 80s at the time) turned the video camera on, and asked him to tell us stories about his life.
He told us about growing up during the great depression without running water or electricity, surviving dustbowl storms, joining the navy and hitchhiking across the country after his service was up.
During our very last interview with him, just months before he passed away, he shared some closely guarded family secrets too.
Priceless
Teacher Talk
My Second Feature Length Project
(This project was also originally released as a feature length documentary on DVD. Get them while they last, supplies are limited.)
We have been interviewing teachers since 2016. We always ask these three questions:
What is the best part of teaching?
What is the most challenging part of teaching?
If you could change one thing about your profession, what would you change?
Then we listened.
(During COVID we continued talking with teachers via Zoom about what it was like teaching during those trying times.)