Dnapps Productions

09/02/2026

Had a great time attending the second Pittsburgh screening of the documentary film “Becoming Benjamin Lay” by Tony Buba and Marcus Rediker. For those who don’t know, I assisted in helping bring life to the imagery in the production through my Adobe After Effects skills. It was great to watch the film with a brand new audience at . After the show I purchased the book and had Marcus sign it! I feel like reading the play will allow me to understand more about the character outside of what I learned in the film!

If it ever is screened in Pittsburgh again I highly recommend going to watch it!

08/26/2026

Had a great time connecting with the arts community at Greater Pittsburgh’s Arts Council’s “Creative Hive” event earlier this evening. I was able to meet a lot of new people and learn what other artists are doing in Pittsburgh. Some of these artists are brand new to the city, so it was interesting to hear their perspective of living here. This event also provided me the opportunity to catch up with friends and see what they have been working on.

I look forward to more networking events in the coming weeks and meeting new creatives in our community!

08/21/2026

DNAPPS Productions hopes everyone has a wonderful weekend! I will be spending time working on creative video projects and writing new music. For those of you that are unfamiliar, I’ve been playing guitar since I was 12 years old and have been in a variety of bands over the years. Recently, I’ve been focusing on writing songs for my solo band, The Imperfect Strangers, and really trying to find my voice as a songwriter. My approach to writing has been more focused on the theme of the song rather than writing a ton of riffs. This process definitely takes a lot longer since I’m the only one writing the initial demo but it’ll be worth it once I get 5 songs completed. My goal is to get back on stage and perform these new songs at some point in the near future!

I hope you’re inspired to work on something fun this weekend and look forward to sharing more stories with you about my creative journey!

08/20/2026

DNAPPS Productions Throwback Thursday : This is where it all began in Video Production 101 class in 10th Grade. You can tell by the frosted tips that the Mark McGrath (lead singer of Sugar Ray) hairstyle was popular amongst teenagers.

08/19/2026

Dnapps Productions had a great time yesterday filming for Cribs for Kids® National Infant Safe Sleep Initiative at various locations around the city! Going into this I had a general idea of what shots would be the easiest to capture knowing we were working with non actors and they had limited time. I utilized quick thinking to setup the shots and direct the talent while operating the camera. In this situation I grabbed a few performance takes just so I had options in the edit. After grabbing the performances, I got my drone in the air for a few aerial videos for b-roll.

The entirety of this shoot, which amounted to maybe :18 of footage in the final edit, took an entire day to capture. Also when I got home, I immediately got to work and finished a Roughcut while it was fresh in mind which added another few hours. When it’s all said and done, productions like these aren’t as simple as they look. Good quality work takes time and I’m glad I was able to spend the time to work on something that I’m proud of!

Let me know in the comments what aspect of video production/photography/drone you would be interested learning about! I can try to share more stories based on my experience working in the industry!

08/09/2026

Check out this video Dnapps Productions produced, directed and edited for WQED and Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy on the Schenley Plaza 20th Anniversary Celebration!! Hope you enjoy watching it

Nestled within the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Oakland on the Univer...

08/02/2026

Check out this promo video that my company Dnapps Productions shot, directed and edited for Cribs for Kids® National Infant Safe Sleep Initiative . I mainly used a drone and my Blackmagic Pocket 4k to create this video! I hope you enjoy watching it. Let me know in the comments what you think!

07/31/2026

NEW WORK! DNAPPS Productions is pleased to share a video we produced for Burns and Scalo’s 70th Anniversary. I’m very proud of this project because of all the time and effort that went into making it happen.

The video project started back in April when I received an email from Burns and Scalo inquiring to use my services to produce a video that would screen at their 70th Anniversary Celebration. They told me, “I know you previously worked on a video for Scalo Solar that told the story of Mill 19….That video is best video I’ve seen from our archives and want to bring you back to work on a potential new project.” I thought to myself, “Wow! That was one of my favorite videos that I worked on because it focused on telling a story rather than selling a product.” This really was a testament to the quality of work my company offers!

This was also one of those projects where I could hire a production team ( Ryan Kroboth and Led By Light) for the shoot days and focus on producing/directing. We filmed this using RED cinema cameras to produce a high quality film aesthetic and also allow me more options in post production. We had one main space to shoot all the interviews and utilized different angles to mix up the look of each subject.

I handled the post production process which took about a week to complete. I had to transcribe the interviews and figure out a good way to build a story. The client and I worked together to craft a fine cut. To add icing on the cake, I worked with my long time composer friend Chris Catone to create an original score that provided rhythm and emotion to the story.

This was a truly a labor of love project from start to finish and I’m thankful the team at Burns and Scalo brought me back to create this for them! Thanks to Julianna Everly and her amazing team’s hard work/dedication to ensuring the success of this video project!

I hope you enjoy this video about a company that has sustained for 70 years/three generations and look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below!

07/29/2026

The use of Ai and how it integrates into our professional lives has been a hot topic as of recently. Since I don’t have the luxury of hiring an assistant editor on most projects I decided to test ChatGPT and see if it could pull some viable selections from interviews for an assembly edit. I had to first transcribe all of the interviews in Adobe Premiere, scan the document for spelling/grammar and then export them as a TXT file. From there I asked ChatGPT to act as my assistant story editor and create a rough paper edit based on the transcripts that I uploaded. The result looked great and sounded like it would work…but when I started piecing it together it felt like something I would’ve done in College while still learning the art of editing. The quotes ChatGPT selected didn’t seem to flow and just sounded like random pieces strung out on a timeline. I had to manually go through every interview and pull out clips that would actually fit together in a sequence. Fast forward to 5 hours later and I finally had a rough edit. This experiment taught me that ChatGPT is good at providing some great advice for story and direction. It does not possess the ability to replace the role of an experienced editor and pull clips that actually make sense when pieced together. I would still hire an assistant editor to do this job rather than rely on Ai Tools because in my experience the tech just isn’t perfected yet. In the future, ChatGPT might be able to pull soundbites from a transcript for a highlight reel but I don’t think it will ever have the ability to replace the knowledge of a skilled editor. If you had a different experience or opinion of utilizing Ai to improve your video editing workflow, I would love to hear more about it in the comments below!

Thanks for reading and looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you regarding video production!

07/28/2026

Hot off the presses! Check out my latest work for Burns & Scalo Roofing which is a event highlight of their 70th Anniversary Celebration at Iron City Distillery. For those who would like some background on how this was created, I employed my knowledge of editing music videos to highlight reels. As you watch this video you’ll notice a rhythm and flow to my shot selection. I almost always begin with a music track and then dive into the pacing. The music selection is a key element. I also feel music selections can make or break the final edits. I learned this skill of carefully selecting the right music over the course of 18 years of working in this business as a editor. Also my extensive background as a musician also gives me a unique perspective. I hope you enjoy watching and would love to hear your thoughts on my work in the comments!