Winding Waters: Great Trip!

I had the pleasure of running down the Lower Salmon River with Paul Arentsen of Winding Waters River Expeditions this past week. It was a great experience. I will save the details of my trip for a good write up full of photos and video and more. I will post when you can check it out. In the meantime there are a few photos on their site from the trip if you would like a sneak peek at why I wasn't around this last week.

We have a couple projects in mind for the collection of video and photos and cannot wait to share them with you. Visit windingwatersrafting.com. We are the trip in the top left... but there are many others to help you get a good look at this great outfitter. If you need some good relaxing I suggest a trip down the river with Winding Waters.

I'll post ya!

Source to Sea: Website Development

We are pleased to announce that we have teamed up with Writer/Filmmaker Andy Norris to help support his film "Source to Sea: The Columbia River Swim".

A group of thirty–plus Northwest filmmakers, led by Andy Norris, followed Swain’s swim, and created a modern history of the Great River of the West. The result was a ninety minute film that one viewer called, “a heart–wrenching tale of a man and a river.”

The film includes stunning pre–inundation footage of Celilo and Kettle Falls, as well as a broad spectrum of interviews with tribal members, agency representatives, fishers, authors, nonprofit leaders, and citizens who trace the natural history and present–day challenges of the Columbia River in their own words. One educator described it this way, “The interviews weren’t just riveting, they made this grown man cry.”

C.H.A. Productions issued an offer to filmmakers of Oregon to help promote a film project that brought value and thought provoking concepts with it. Our goals of becoming integrated with the film communities of Oregon begins with this wonderful project.

We are finishing up some final touches on the site and plan to launch it by August 10th! We'll keep you posted.

Ye ol' Email Newsletter Campaign

For about a year now we have been looking for the best way to create stunning Email Newsletter campaigns for Eastern Oregon small businesses and orginizations. After building a system from scratch (which by the way was really slick) we found that general hosting services often limit the amount of emails they can send out at a given time. Smart - to prevent mass spamm attack. However, this limited our ability to offer our scripts (as we do not have our own email server).

So I went on the look out for a Open Source campaign manager, one that could be customized to our clients needs and also valuable feed back on on the deployment and delivery of the campaign. After searching high and low we were able to find the perfect system. And after a bit of time customizing, hammering, and painting, we now have a wonderfull email newsletter service to offer.

Kneads Bakery, of La Grande is our first client to implement the system. We are excited about offering this email newsletter system to our Eastern Oregon Clients. This puts powerful tools in our hands in an effort to reach out of the valley and connect to our audiences more universally.

Check out The Kneads Bakery Newsletter. and visit the site to subscribe. www.kneadsbakery.com

Don't forget your browines!

Waypoint Studio Bound

C.H.A. productions has just nestled in with a group of artisans at Waypoint Studio in La Grande. This collection of artists have developed a very community driven skill set to both offer sevices relating to their trades and to allow for creative development and personal artistic growth.
We are very happy to be a part of this group and look forward to offering skills at a digital level to affect the greater good of this collection of individuals.

The group contains John Mueller, a scultper and carpenter by trade, Bill Atwood ( Metal Smithing), Annie Eskelin (Painter), Kevin Boylan (Glass Blowing), as well as the studio houses the rehearsal space and recording stusion for "Test Audiences".

This looks to be a very exciting and creative new time. We look foreward to the creative energy and challenges to keep designing and creating at a cutting edge level.

Valley Video Services

We had the pleasure of updated the Valley Video Services website recently to house a series a new options, as well as helped give it a new spit-shine design. The site now integrated with a company blog, and a new shopping section, so you can purchase back copies of natable local events and other goodies.

We are continuing to develop a portfolio section that is updateable by Valley Video and integrates with Google Video to provide a strong marketing presence. Visit their site today and check back in to see it as it develops.

Blogs have been around for a while...

C.H.A. has finally got the blog up and running. This "blogging" idea has been around for a few years now and with the integration of Google API and other RSS fed applications, customization and integration of free flowing information has now reached the fingertips of the Eastern Oregon internet user.