BRAND
Rosetta Stone × American Airlines — A five-season travel film series for in-flight programming. 2021–2022.
PROJECT
In-Flight Travel Film Series
Rosetta Stone × American Airlines
DP on a five-season, 25-episode travel film series created for Rosetta Stone in partnership with American Airlines. Shot in Mexico, France, Israel, Brazil, and South Korea, for in-flight programming on AA flights.
SUMMARY
ROLE
Director of Photography
Visual Style / Grading
Editor (early episodes)
LEARN THE LANGUAGE
BEFORE YOU LAND.
THE BRIEF. Rosetta Stone partnered with American Airlines on a five-season in-flight travel series — short, beautiful episodes designed to play on the seatback screen before a plane landed, introducing passengers to the destination’s language and culture.
WHAT I DID. I was DP across the series. I established the visual language in the early seasons — the look, the lighting, the camera movement vocabulary, the grade — and cut the first episodes so the style was locked in. From there I focused on shooting, working with small on-the-ground teams: me, a second camera, a local producer, and the talent. Five countries: Mexico, France, Israel, Brazil, and South Korea. Each season ran five episodes, five to fifteen minutes each. The series blended real places and real food and real people with gently-woven Rosetta Stone lessons, so by the time a plane landed a passenger could already say hello.
OUTCOME. Five seasons, twenty-five episodes, distributed on American Airlines in-flight programming.
The project grew out of a longer relationship: in 2016 I DP’d a scrappier Rosetta Stone series with my friend Peter — scootering top-to-bottom of Italy, Peter learning Italian on the road as the talent. When Rosetta Stone came back years later with the AA partnership, that earlier trust turned into five seasons of in-flight programming.