Cameraman Joseph Tolitano has had a busy year. He spent the summer shooting a PBS series about a horse whisperer, he and his wife welcomed twins in September, and he started his own company.
B-Reel Productions fills the void left by the closing of Tom Vlodek’s Big Cameras video crew and equipment service, where Tolitano had worked for five years.
At Big Cameras, Tolitano says, “I covered shoots for commercials, corporate, news organizations, standard ENG/EFP field recording, and national TV shows like ’48 Hours’ and ?Oprah’? exactly what I’m doing now.”
B-Reel owns and operates its camera equipment and offers any format available. Each camera package includes lighting and sound equipment. Crew size generally runs about four to five persons and includes Tolitano as cameraman/DP.
Tolitano’s first assignment for B-Reel was shooting “Saddle Up with Dennis Brous,” a 13-episode PBS series about a horse trainer and horses, for Glass Onion Productions of Connecticut.
The series shot entirely on location in and around Iowa City and in Iowa Amish country, on farms and at horse including a thoroughbred auction at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines , says Tolitano.
Brous is a famous horse trainer who uses phenomenal skills to train a horse. “In one of our stories, a horse approaches him and quickly runs away. Dennis’ big secret is the way he gets a horse to follow him on an invisible lead rope, as if the horse is being led by a real rope.”
“Saddle Up” premieres in January and in February Tolitano will head for three weeks in Arizona where he will shoot the show’s second season.
Tolitano started in production in Comcast’s local programming department “where I learned every aspect of TV production,” he says. He studied TV and film at the University of Nevada where he received a BA in communications.
He then spent five years with Tom Vlodek’s Big Cameras. When Big Cameras closed last June, Tolitano started B-Reel on July 1.
B-Reel Productions is located at 3224 N. Kilbourne ; phone 773/680-7810. See
