Lucas Longacre’s extensive technical expertise was earned through over 20 years in the industry; dangling from the rafters as a grip for Nickelodeon, shining a light into Paul McCartney’s face as PA for MTV, running tapes and batteries for cable news at ground zero during the 9-11 attacks, capturing location audio for Extreme Makeover Home Edition, interviewing celebrities on red carpet events, recording audio for Rockstar Games at their motion capture studio. Directing Alec Baldwin for US Open spots (more like being directed by Alec Baldwin); Lucas has worked professionally in almost every position in almost every format. Buy him a beer and he will chew your ear off for hours with his weird adventures.
He’s THE one-man band, producing and directing from behind the camera with audio gear dangling from his belt. And as he will remind his students at the Art Institute of Portland (where he teaches part time), “Audio is the 50% of your product, and the most underappreciated part.”
Lucas’ skills allowed Iron Way to capture our feature length documentary, Big Dream, in 4 countries on a limited budget and even smaller timeline, and created the visual narrative for the first food series of its kind, now on it’s 5th season at PBS.
His short films have been accepted into festivals and won awards. Once upon a time he won 2nd best fight choreography for his short, Beat, at the Action on Film Festival. He’s been profiled in the Oregon Business Journal. He is currently wrapping post production on his latest short film Food Cart, a lampoon and celebration of the Portland food scene.
For the past 10 years I have been working in verité documentary. I missed working in the fiction narrative space and was looking for a project to leverage my resources in both the food world and the film world, bridging these two communities together that rarely intersect. When my friend Damian approached me with his idea to simultaneously poke-fun at and celebrate the Portland Food scene, I knew I found my next short film.
Writing the script gave me an opportunity to add in a lot of the issues and frustrations I’ve had covering food stories with the show and do so in a humorous and creative way. Like any industry (I’m looking at you, Hollywood) the rhetoric rarely matches the reality. I think factory farming is one of the greatest moral stains on our food system and future generations will look back in horror at what we’ve created. Outsourcing the moral hazard and turning a blind eye to how we treat sentient beings is horrific. At the end of the day, the fault lies with the consumer. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” I also enjoyed poking fun at the self-seriousness of the food world. I adore the food scene in Portland (it’s one of the reasons I moved there) and I hope the film is received as a lampoon and not an attack. The people we are satirizing are my friends and I really wanted them in on the joke, hence the cameos and casting decisions. The only way we improve is by taking a serious, unabashed look in the mirror and that was our intention with making this film. Well, first to entertain. Then to hopefully educate, just a little.
