This isn’t a wedding film or a tutorial. It’s a personal travel film about one of my favorite places on Earth, and about my brother.
My family started visiting a set of cabins on a ranch in southern Colorado in 1992. I was five. My brother was two. Fishing, creeks, horseback rides. For kids with too much energy it was the perfect place to spend a week every summer.
Time seemed to stop up there. Or more correctly, time slowed down to the speed of the forest, as slow as the spruce trees around those cabins would grow. To the two of us, in that forest, it was always 1992.
Five and two year olds grow faster than pine trees, though, and soon we weren’t so young anymore. Carefree childhood gave way to the world’s reality and strife. But we could always go back to that place to remember our youth.
Like a fire, the world burned away our childhood dreams and soured our relationship. And back in Colorado, a fire nearly took the forest retreat as well.
Fires cleanse as well as burn, though. In the end our brotherhood came back stronger than ever, and new life springs up after every forest fire. Our cabins were surrounded by smoke, and in the end they still stood.
While you’re here, take a look at How I Filmed A Cinematic Travel Film in Colorado! BTS of Always 1992.
This summer we went back. It’s been 27 years since our first visit, but to us the place still feels like 1992. The cabins may be unchanged. We aren’t.
This time I brought along my own daughter, and it’s my hope that she’ll make memories there the same as I did.
Here, it’s always 1992. Here, we’re always five and two.
How I Made It
If you want to see how this one came together, from the old family camcorder tapes through to what we shot on the trip, I made a behind the scenes video about it.
Everything here was graded with my own LUTs. And if you want to see more of what I make, personal work included, I send a monthly newsletter.
Thanks for watching this one. It means a lot that you did.