Meet the team
Small on purpose.
When you book Bella Amity you get the people who shot your reference, not whoever was free that week.
Front of house
Owner and lead
David “DARO” Rodriguez
Director and camera. Recording, mixing and live sound.
Born to Dominican parents and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. Six years and counting behind a desk as a recording and mixing engineer, and the same ear pointed at a camera.
That background is the reason the interviews sound the way they do. Most video people treat audio as the thing you fix later. I came up the other way round, so the sound is right in the room before we roll.
That same ear runs live rooms. I mix front of house for conferences and corporate events, handling wireless, playback and presentation cues, and I take a boom and a bag out on location when a shoot needs sound that holds up outside a studio.
I also started Hotel Freestyles with two friends, DJ Rico and JPEG Jhonny. It is a performance platform built to give artists a room to perform in. I would rather build a stage than wait for someone to put me on one.
Away from Bella Amity I am a resident producer and engineer at The SoundLab Recording Studios in Brockton, Massachusetts, which is where a lot of the artists on this site come through.
Portrait to come
Behind the scenes
Dilly Hendrix
Stills photographer. Sony shooter.
Dilly shoots the set while the set is happening. Not the posed version afterwards, the actual thing: the setup, the waiting, the take that worked, the room emptying out at two in the morning.
He has shot New York Fashion Week twice, which is the best training there is for the way we work. Fashion week gives you no second takes and no polite pauses. You either saw it and got it, or you did not.
The other thing, and the reason he keeps getting called: the files come back fast. Shot, edited and delivered while the night still means something, instead of three weeks later when everybody has moved on.
From his camera, on the road with us.
Who I bring in
The crew grows with the job.
For anything bigger than a one person shoot I bring in people I have actually worked with. Hair, makeup, second camera, sound. If you need a full crew, say so when you book and I will price it properly instead of guessing.
Second camera
For interviews that need more than one angle, and for events.
Hair and makeup
Worth it more often than people think, especially on camera.
Live sound
For performances and anything shot in a room with a PA.