User:Placerville UM/sandbox

Spencer Bruttig is an Emmy award winning film maker-editor, a cinematographer and director.

Early Life: Spencer Bruttig was born in Redwood City, CA. He was raised in Newark, CA. He attended C.C.S. in Fremont and acted in several play productions for the school. He also played saxophone in the school's band that he had inherited from his great-grandmother "Margie". His parents moved the family to Placerville-El Dorado, CA. area where he grew up living on a 10 acre ranch home in the "ground-zero" area of the CA. gold rush in 1849. He excelled at sports but also had a great love of creating stories on film. He loved to host and attend "paint-ball" wars with his friends in the great outdoors of Placerville area. He started to experiment with his family's video camera with friends and the pets in and around his home. He attended grade school 5th thru 8th in Placerville. Several teachers sparked his interest in film making during those early years. He went on to Union Mine High school in El Dorado, CA. where he joined his high school's "Diamond Back TV" station that made in-house school PSA videos. He was the school's varsity "goalie" keeper on the soccer team all four years. He also excelled on the schools' tennis team. He was elected as the student body VP of the school in his senior year and served on several school & community advisory boards. He joined his high school's theatrical troupe and the local Placerville, CA. "Imagination Theater" community theater and he was in school and community plays as a teenager.

University years: Spencer was accepted to University of California at Santa Barbara. He was an " RA-dorm advisor" and also lived in Isla Vista, CA. He applied and was accepted as one student of 20 into the very competitive prestigious UCSB "Blue Horizon" film making program under film maker Richard Hutton. He was part of a four student film making team that produced 'No Otter Zone" about sea otters. He volunteered at the highly acclaimed Santa Barbara-Hollywood film festivals every year.  His team's student film, "No Otter Zone", won awards and was featured at various film festivals including the Hollywood Santa Catalina Island film festival. Spencer was accepted at University of Edinburgh, Scotland for a semester away and he played on Edinburgh's University basketball team as a "starter" throughout the U.K.

After graduation, UCSB sought out and hired Spencer to work in their public relations media section developing, producing and filming the University's various media videos and films. He was asked to travel to Ghana, Africa as the film maker of a documentary about African children playing soccer to improve their lives. He also was commissioned to travel to Guatemala, Belize and head up a team filming with the renowned archaeologist Annabelle Ford, who was documenting the great Mayan civilization in the jungles.

Tegna Corp. and Google: Spencer was hired away from UCSB by Google in the SF Bay area. Then Tegna News Corp. in VA. offered him a position as a film editor and producer of domestic news videos-films in DC. He was nominated and won an east coast news EMMY award for producing a news segment. He also became involved in crime podcasts. He has covered various national news interests. Google offered him another position and he currently works for Google as a film editor and films Google's videos. He also is the cinematographer on an east coast drama web series called "Anacostia" that is produced and filmed in the DC area. That show was nominated for a Hollywood Emmy award in 2022.