JESSE PADDOCK

I worked with Croatan Institute to create a video for their Soil Wealth campaign to highlight the work they and their partners are doing to encourage investment in regenerative agriculture.

I was honored to work with Jake and the good folks at Paradise of Bachelors to record this fabulous collection of songs for their NPR Tiny Desk video series.

The museum of the University of Mississippi commissioned Kate Medley and me to produce an installation video to accompany this exquisite collection of photographs that will tour the United States. William Eggleston is, as Bill Ferris says in the film, the greatest living photographer, and it was a true honor to have the opportunity to work on this project.

Counter Histories is a series of short documentaries commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These films were commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance and are focused on lunch counter sit-ins that took place across the South. I directed and edited this film about a sit-in at a Durham ice cream parlor in the summer of 1957, nearly three years before the landmark protests in Greensboro in February, 1960.

I was thrilled when Mac asked me to help him film a video for a song off the new Superchunk album. For one thing, it was an awesome concept he’d come up with—an homage to The Replacements’ classic Bastards of Young video—and for another, Superchunk is the goat, and this song rules. That’s Charles Chace’s hands popping the tape in the tape deck and finessing the zoom out, while my shaky paws are all over the pan and tilt. Speaking of shaky paws, keep your eyes peeled for a lovely cameo from Birdie the dog.

I went to Kenya several times between 2016 and 2018 to work on this documentary about the near extinction of the Northern White Rhino, shooting alongside the film’s director, David Hambridge, and cutting scenes and acts. The finished film received its world premiere at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize. It won a special jury award at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, as well as two awards at the Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham: the Audience Award and an Environmental Documentary award.

A Woman’s Choice is a woman-owned and operated abortion clinic that provides high quality care to women and families in the Raleigh area. They were plagued by antis who were misleading their patients to park illegally along the traffic circle, which often resulted in patients leaving their appointments to find their cars had been towed. I teamed up with them to make this short video that conveys where to park and how to recognize the clinic’s volunteers. We created English and Spanish-language versions that patients can watch in advance of their appointments, which has helped ease the confusion.

Whole Foods Market commissioned a series of videos highlighting the collaboration between Anson Mills and Guild-baker Lionel Vatinet, whose renowned bakery La Farm has partnered with Whole Foods for over twenty years.

I love movie scenes that take place in elevators. So I collected a ton and made a supercut of the surprisingly variable ways they're used. This was originally published on Slate.com's Browbeat blog.

A look at the collaboration between Whole Cities Foundation and Landmark Training and Development Company that’s bringing fresh produce to the Orange Mound community of Memphis.

I worked with UNC’s Southern Cultures Magazine to produce this short profile of Ricky Moore and his Durham seafood restaurants for their Summer 2018 issue, focused on North Carolina seafood.

Firsthand Foods is a woman-owned food hub specializing in selling local meats raised on pastures right here in North Carolina. We got to travel across the state with them for a few days this summer and spend time with some of North Carolina’s most passionate independent farmers. This video highlights the way that Firsthand Foods works with these farmers to get their products into restaurants and grocery stores. Learn more at https://firsthandfoods.com/

I AE’d this short film that was produced by Red Hat. I was tasked with editing the Spanish language segments of the film, which highlights work that communities on the ground in Chile are using to increase awareness of climate change and energy usage. I cut the interviews that were conducted in Spanish, laying in subtitles as I went, and worked alongside the director to lay out the story flow. I also cut a teaser that was released in advance of the film.

I edited this video that explores how Old Rucker Farm, which started in the Whole Foods Market South Regional Office parking lot, has grown into a community-centered educational farm operated by the City of Alpharetta’s Recreation & Parks department.

Durham Academy’s sixth-grade history course focuses on how civilizations develop, through the lens of the oppression that the indigenous people of the Americas suffered across centuries. This year, students have taken a deep dive into the history of lacrosse among the Iroquois people. Thanks to his connection with boys lacrosse coach Jon Lantzy, Kalen Bennett — a member of the Mohawk tribe and an accomplished lacrosse player — was able to virtually visit the class to discuss his heritage.

I served as Director of Photography for this documentary on Merge Records. It was produced by Google Play on the 25th anniversary of the founding of the label.

Louis Osteen was a mainstay of low country cooking for four decades. From his start in a French restaurant in Atlanta to his beloved Pawleys Island Inn, this film tracks his impact on the culinary culture of South Carolina and the south more broadly. We were lucky to spend a few days in his world: a place of loud music, flavorful food and cold Amstel Lights. He was a wonderfully big-hearted man, and I’m grateful to SFA for giving us the chance to tell his story.

Dir: Kate Medley and Jesse Paddock

DP: Jesse Paddock

Editor: Jesse Paddock

Produced as part of Hopscotch Music Festival's "Summer of Love" series, here's Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange) covering Neil Young's "Harvest Moon," shot and edited by me.

Each year, the SFA makes a film to honor a member of the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs. Kate Medley and I produced this film to celebrate the contributions of Karen Barker (Magnolia Grill) to the field of southern baking.

This thirteen minute film was commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of Bill Neal's Southern Cooking (UNC Press) in 1985. This is the first look at the short life and lasting work of one of the important figures in Southern food. This film premiered to a standing ovation at SFA's 2015 Symposium in October.

I went to Peru with the writer Wells Tower for AFAR Magazine to cover a story on ayahuasca, a thoroughly hateful brew of bad-vibes roots. The story ran in the July/August 2017 issue of the magazine and is available here, with my photos and video accompanying the article. 

In 2017, the town of Chapel Hill hosted a series of community meetings between developers and residents of the Northside community, Chapel Hill’s largest historically Black section of town. The purpose of these forums was to allow stakeholders from both sides to collaborate on standards for commercial and economic development that would remain consistent with the vision statements of the Northside Neighborhood Conservation District. The result was a guide for development along the Northside corridor, with visual representation of design concepts that honored the legacy of the community while allowing for future growth along West Rosemary Street. I recorded the debates and created a series of video updates for the community that incorporated the iterative designs and marked each stage of the process.

This is the story of a collaboration between Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia, the chef Marc Vetri, and the folks who own the Castle Valley mill in Bucks County, which is bringing locally-milled flour to breads baked right in the downtown Philly Whole Foods stores.

I edited and co-directed this video for Mount Moriah with Soleil Konkel.

Participate Learning is a force for good that connects teachers and students through global education programs to foster human understanding and create peace around the world. I worked with them to make a video celebrating their ‘Best for the World’ B Corporation status, which underscores their commitment to being socially accountable as they strive to support teachers and administrators in the endeavor of developing open-minded, curious citizens.

This video looks at a unique course offering that provides Durham Academy students the opportunity to partner with District C, a local nonprofit that empowers high schoolers to solve real-world problems for businesses and organizations.

This short was commissioned by the Southern Foodways Alliance. It played at their 2019 Fall Symposium, where they awarded Ann Abadie with their lifetime achievement award, in recognition for her dedication to and celebration of southern culture.

I've been collaborating with the artist Charles Chace on video for several years. Our latest was a filmed performance piece with the dancer Ginger Wagg performing in a room as Chace proceeded to cover the room in paint and debris. The piece debuted at SPECTRE Arts Gallery in Durham in August 2016, and was voted one of the most essential pieces of local art of 2016.

Here’s another video collaboration with the artist Charles Chace, with whom I’ve made several installation and gallery videos. In this one, Chace plays a Van Gogh-esque painter, compelled to drag his fur-covered canvas deep into the woods where he can paint it. This is the first in a series of films that will be filmed on location as Chace paints the canvases in real time.

Mediterranean Deli has been a landmark on Franklin Street for twenty-six years. In this video, Jamil Kadoura explains his philosophy for feeding a community, which stems from the time he spent in a Palestinian refugee camp during the Six-Day War. He's never forgotten that experience, and he tries to honor it by fostering a strong sense of community in his restaurant. This video was commissioned by the Town of Chapel Hill as part of their series on entrepreneurs and small business owners.

In the spring of 2012 I worked with a consortium of groups opposed to Amendment One, which sought to codify anti-gay marriage into the North Carolina state constitution. Unfortunately the measure passed, but this was one of the last pieces we produced in the campaign, and captured the energy and passion of the people who were coming together to fight it.

Over a decade ago, I had the good fortune to work with Jason Perlmutter, who was reissuing soul records first through the Paradise of Bachelors label, and later through Carolina Soul. I accompanied Jason on several trips across North and South Carolina, meeting musicians and listening to them play the tracks they wrote and recorded.

On one such trip, we met Chuck Wells, who played a wonderful rollicking song on his piano, ‘The Love Knot,’ which lives on as a Northern Soul spin. This video has lived on my Vimeo page since then, but I kept it off my website out of embarrassment for the low-res DVX100 video quality and the amateurish editing. But a recent conversation with the great folklorist and archivist Bill Ferris reminded me that it’s the performance that matters, the lively and authentic quality that can’t be reproduced by any other means. And so I’m including this clip on the site twelve years after I made it. Enjoy!