Santa Rosa film company works its way up

Dreams of making movies someday often start with fantasies about hitting it big in Hollywood. But a modest Santa Rosa company is moving toward that goal without even leaving town.

Three years ago, independent filmmaker Jamie Tuell, 40, and his wife Jennifer, 32, formed a partnership with Adam Menconi, 37, a full-time real estate broker and former musician. Since then their company, Culture Pop Films, has worked with some of Sonoma County’s biggest names.

Collaborating closely with Guy Fieri, Santa Rosa celebrity chef and television personality, Culture Pop has contributed to a series of projects, including the Emmy Award-winning “Guy Fieri’s Family Reunion” special for the Food Network and videos for Fieri’s “Cooking with Kids” event.

The Fieri family reunion included a fishing party aboard a boat off Nags Head, N.C., which Jamie Tuell remembers vividly because of the brutal attack of sea-sickness he suffered.

“It was very choppy, and I personally hadn’t spent a lot of time on the sea,” Tuell said. “I had no idea that the sun could disappear behind a wave. I remember hanging onto a pole with my camera rig in my right hand.”

Culture Pop also has produced on-line promotional films for the Lasseter Family Winery of Glen Ellen, owned by John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, and his wife Nancy.

“We do a lot of work for the Lasseters and their winery, about organic farming,” Tuell said. “They really gave us the reins on the project to tell their story and use our storytelling abilities.”

Other work includes promotional films for Wal-Mart and other corporate clients. Culture Pop placed 11th last year in a national contest for the chance to produce a commercial for Doritos.

Menconi, the Tuells and their staff also contributed footage to “The Levi Effect,” a 2012 biography of former professional cyclist Levi Leipheimer of Santa Rosa. Leipheimer announced his retirement from racing in 2013, after a six-month suspension in 2012 for doping.

The annual mass bicycle ride Leipheimer founded, Levi’s GranFondo, continues to draw more than 7,500 participants to Santa Rosa every year. Culture Pop Films produced its own documentary about Leipheimer and the event, “Levi’s GranFondo: Behind the Curtain” in 2014.

Jamie Tuell’s daring style with a camera caught the eye of Greg Fisher, marketing director of Bike Monkey, the company that produces the GranFondo event, as early as five years ago.

“I saw this guy filming at the starting line,” Fisher recalled. “He was getting an amazing shot. He stood right in front of 7,500 riders and he didn’t move. They rode around him. I thought, ‘Is this guy crazy?’”

Culture Pop is currently negotiating for a large studio space not far from downtown Santa Rosa for filming, production and training.

“That’s going to allow us to do a lot of things we’ve been wanting to do, including put up sets and teach community workshops,” Menconi said.

A new studio space also will allow more room for Culture Pop’s large inventory of filming and production gear.

“We have 18 different camera rigs, up to 35 lenses, and a camera crane. We’ve really built up a lot of equipment over the past few years,” Tuell added. “We’ve worked at it.”

Menconi’s career history includes selling real estate for Sotheby’s before he started his own brokerage, where he still works. He also started a string of Quizno’s sandwich shops and performed with the local band The Coast Pilots for a couple of years. He first got acquainted with the Tuells while selling them a house.

“After that, we wanted Adam with us in our work,” Jamie Tuell said. “He was skilled in business.”

And what about the partners’ dreams of making movies? Those have not been forgotten, as the partners learned their craft and set up their business.

“We want to do a feature film next, We’re talking to people about some ideas now,” Menconi said.

For more information on Culture Pop Films: culturepopfilms.com.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Culture Pop Films contributed to the Food Network special “Guy Fieri’s Family Reunion.” A feature story on page D1 Jan. 18 incorrectly identified the company’s role in that production.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.