About Tributaries Digital Cinema
At Tributaries, we chase that perfect convergence where sound, image, soul and connection meet.
An independent, award-winning studio headquartered in Montana, we partner with leading brands around the world to craft stories that resonate.
We're known for our ability to create amazing profiles of your ambassadors, successfully introduce product, produce unforgettable branded documentaries and, most important, create an emotional and lasting connection with your audience. If we can make them laugh, even better.
Our Clients Include:
YETI | Patagonia | Sage Fly Fishing | DECKED | NBC Olympics | See our full portfolio here
What We Do:
We're capable of tip to tail brand storytelling making us a one-stop shop for full campaigns or help putting the puzzle pieces together.
Tip to Tail
From development to delivery, we are a turn-key brand storytelling solution. We're hired by creative directors and producers because of our experience, dedication to craft and professionalism.
Brand Storytelling
Our experience working with niche brands in the outdoor space has taught us how important authenticity is when talking to our audiences: it's critical.
Superior Creative
We're hired because everything out there starts to look the same and we have a proven track record of distinguishing brand's stories from the rest of the noise.
Nuts and Bolts
We are team players: need a high-end interview? Need someone to develop a branded script? Post-production? We're flexible and we know collaboration is key.
Our Favorite Projects
The following are projects that spoke directly to the team at Tributaries.
- The Accord - winner of the Creative Excellence Award at Banff Film Festival, this is one of our classics. To bring Iceland's North Atlantic wind alive was truly our honor.
- YETI Presents | Japan to Jamaica - if you were to analyze Tributaries for all the things we love, this is the film that brings it all together. Travel, great music, good humans, adventure.
- The Hill Country Sliders - Tasked with bringing the magical lore of Howler Bro's Hill Country Sliders collection to life, this story and film always cheers us up and we think it'll do the same for you.
Director, RC Cone
An experienced and forward-thinking brand storyteller of 15 years that believes authenticity and a lot of love is the key to great stories. An entrepreneurial business owner with a proven track record of working collaboratively to achieve big goals with billion dollar brands.
RC likes long walks with his dog and a shotgun and, somehow, luckily, he's loved by his beautiful wife Jess. You can read more about RC here.
Behind the Scenes with Tributaries
Our Process
We've spent 10 years working with clients, producers, networks - the key to our process is collaboration. Familiar to professionals, a refreshing breath of air for newer brands - our process helps create successful, on-time, on-budget stories loved by all.
Development
Everything starts here. The creative of films is so important to us. Anyone can shoot an interview and edit b-roll on top of it. The local news does it on the daily for cheap! We always like to make sure there’s that last 1% of stubborn effort. Here, we’d bring in a writer. In collaboration with our client, we’d be researching, conducting remote, preliminary interviews with talent, watching what’s been done and writing. We’ll start with a treatment for approval and notes. From there we’ll develop a script for another set of collaborative reviews and approval. Here, we’d have a script, a budget and a plan. Moving us into:
Pre-Production
We have a Super Producer, Zach, that’s worked on much larger projects but we’re lucky to have him because he likes fishing as much as we do. Zach IS the wheels-on-the-bus. Coordinating schedules, booking permits, running with logistics, taking our script and our shot-lists (also collaborated on during this time) and turning them into an actionable, on budget production.
Production
We do so much pre-production to counter expensive surprises in production, but we’ve done this for long enough to know it can all go to shit. That’s where experience kicks in. Deported out, stolen from, apocalyptic weather, no fish - we’ve dealt with most of it. We are problem solvers. With that said, solutions are run through the EP’s before any major decisions are made.
We shoot on RED cameras, we own two. Our favorite setup is our boat mounted TAV (Tributaries Assault Vehicle) for getting smooth, sustained, non-wavy boat-to-boat cinematography. We also recently put together and modified a set of vintage Canon cinema lenses.
Lastly, we have an attached studio in Bozeman for product inserts, efficiency for serial production and for rent to the public.
Post-Production
I personally have a love/hate relationship with editing. It sucks up all of my time but as a director I can really hone in on the footage and try things. Which brings us to:
Collaboration. The best idea wins, is a good policy in the edit. My post-production team has been in Tributaries’ orbit for a long time. Not only is our priority the client and audience, I think Dadi (colorist) and Colter (post-sound) have created a level of A/V that has set a standard in fly fishing.
I have a humble edit suite in downtown Bozeman for live editing with 70+ terabytes of online storage. I’ve been known to travel with an editing computer and, we collaborate via Frame.io when schedules and budgets don’t allow live cutting. For further collaboration, we employ a tool called Parsec to allow remote, live editing. We transcribe all interviews to make the radio-edit process a breeze between writer, client, edit team. We do post using a “picture-lock is the goal” philosophy.
Let's Work Together
We'd love to hear your ideas for stories. On the other hand, we're always happy to pitch and bid our own ideas with a little direction from you. Feel free to contact Tributaries through our contact page, or you can book a call directly with RC here. If you just want to stay in the know, subscribe to our newsletter below.