MAUI · DOCUMENTARY · BRAND· EVENT
FIFTEEN
YEARS BEHIND THE CAMERA. THE ONLY PLACE TO FILM A STORY IS INSIDE IT.
Lawn Chair Creative is a film studio on Maui making documentary shorts, brand campaigns, and event films — directing, cinematography, editing, photography, and production support, all in-house. The work has taken us from indigenous villages in Panama to a stage with world leaders on it, through a decade of expedition films and product launches. We work with agencies, producers, and local businesses who need the real thing on screen. Whatever the room, the question is the same: what does this film have to do?
PATAGONIA · META · RITZ-CARLTON · SUBARU · CAN-AM · LULULEMON · BLACK PROJECT SUP · WILDERNESS COLLECTIVE · REEF · STETSON · SEA-DOO · VITAMIN A · MAAP · DOMETIC
WHY MOST OF IT DOESN'T WORK
A beautiful film that doesn't do the job is a failed film.
Most people who call us have paid for video before. It looked professional. It went up once, did nothing anyone could measure, and by the following week it may as well not have existed — because it was made to look good rather than to accomplish something.
So before anything is shot, we want to know what the film has to do. Fill a room. Move a donor. Explain the thing a brochure can't. Then every interview, every shot, and every edit gets built around that answer.
STUDIO REEL · 90 SEC
HOW WE WORK
INSIDE IS A PLACE YOU HAVE TO EARN
Documentary filmmaking is a discipline of proximity. You get close, you stay past the moment, and eventually the camera stops being a camera. We bring that to commercial work — which is why the Bacara campaign looks like a family's actual weekend rather than four ads about a resort.
01
Get close first
We spend time before we spend footage. With Wilderness Collective that meant riding the expedition. At Marin Montessori it meant ordinary school days long before the film that mattered. Access isn't a permission slip — it's a relationship.
02
Stay past the moment
The scheduled part of an event is usually the least interesting footage of the day. We're still rolling when the speeches end, the crew relaxes, and the room forgets there's a camera in it.
03
One set of hands
Directed, shot, and cut by the same person. Fewer handoffs means fewer places the story leaks out between what actually happened and what you end up watching.
SELECTED WORK
THREE STORIES, THREE KINDS OF ROOM
A Maui waterspouts company, a California resort, and a school that has to move a room before it asks it for money. Two more on the work page.
IMAGE: A FACE, MID-MOMENT
IMAGE: A FARMER, CLOSE
IMAGE: THE ROOM-MID ASK
MAUI · LOCAL BUSINESS
BLACK PROJECT SUP
Six months in with a Maui water sports company — campaigns, an original series, and a content engine that keeps running.
RITZ-CARLTON BACARA
HOSPITALITY
Four social films for the Santa Barbara resort, built as one story instead of four ads.
MARIN MONTESSORI
INSTITUTION · FUNDRAISING
The films that open The Gather for Good — and move a room before the ask.
WHAT WE MAKE
SIX THINGS, ONE APPROACH
Documentary shorts
Stories with a subject - not a script.
Brand campaigns
Commercial work that doesn't look commercial. Meta, Vitamin A, Stetson
Event films
Live coverage, same-night recaps, films that carry the night forward.
Hospitality
Story and social for resorts and restaurants. Most recently a four-part campaign for the Ritz-Carlton Bacara.
Expeditions & Remote
Ten years of off-grid trips — Baja, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon. If it's hard to get to, that's usually the reason to go.
Photography
Stills from every shoot, built in rather than bolted on.
ONGOING PARTNERSHIPS
The best work we've made came from being around long enough to see it coming.
We spent ten years inside Wilderness Collective — leading the expeditions, filming them, and building the brand partnerships that came out of them. That's where this way of working came from, and it's what we now build with a small number of partners each year: a film calendar mapped to your actual year, not a project quoted one at a time.