Why They Run

Lesley Spencer – Composer/Producer

Lesley is a professional free-lance composer and producer who has worked with the San Francisco Opera, Victory Gardens Theater, Urban Gateways, and Radio City Recording. Her music has been licensed for various documentary & film projects and airs regularly on NPR’s nationally syndicated program Morning Edition, plus hundreds of public, satellite and internet radio stations in North America and Europe. Lesley ventured into video production in 2002 with her SEPT 11th ANTHEM, the subject of an NBC Channel 5 news story, and she recently produced a documentary about people living with chronic illness called, “IT’S ABOUT LIVING,” which premiered in May of 2008 at De Paul University in Chicago. Lesley also donates her music to help not-for-profit organizations including: Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, The Chicago Food Depository, The Hunger Project, The People's Music School, The Cancer Crusade, and The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, to name a few. www.lesleyspencer.com

Olga Arango – Director/Photographer

Olga is presently an instructional designer at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A former Fulbright Scholar, Olga is experienced in all aspects of filmmaking and has numerous films, videos, industrials, commercials, and DVDs to her credit. To name a few: she has produced, coordinated and directed the acquisition of video footage for the Fountain Project at Millennium Park, Chicago - produced, directed and edited a documentary for the University of Illinois - and scripted, directed and edited several industrial and educational documentaries for The Colombian Ministry of Development, The Ministry of Agriculture, and PROEXPORT. Olga was the assistant director and cinematographer for the film, “In Passing,” winner of the 1990 Illinois Film and Video festival, and director of cinematography for the feature film, ”A Imagen y Semejanza”. Olga recently shot, wrote, directed and edited a full-length documentary about people living with chronic illness called, “IT’S ABOUT LIVING.”

Dan Bora – Writer/Film Editor/Associate Director

Dan has been engineering film soundtracks for Philip Glass since 2002, most notably The Hours (Golden Globe, Grammy and Academy nominations 2004 and BAFTA winner 2004), The Fog of War, Going Upriver, Secret Window, Taking Lives, Undertow and the series Pandemic: Facing Aids (Emmy nomination 2004.) At the Looking Glass Studios in New York City, he has consulted David Byrne and Lou Reed on recent surround (5.1) mix projects and has worked on surround mixes for music videos in David Bowie's last album "Heathen." Dan has produced video installations for various art events and exhibits, including the NYC Fringe Festival. He is currently producing the DVD for Orion, a 90 minute show, featuring the Philip Glass Ensemble and guests, that premiered in Athens for the Cultural Olympiad 2004.

Martin Stebbing – Post Production Sound /Audio Mix

Martin is presently an audio mixer at Chicago's largest production house, Towers Productions, Inc., where he has worked on documentaries for various cable networks including: A&E, The History Channel, National Geographic, Biography Channel, and others. Previous to that he had a four year stint at Jive Records/Battery Studios, where he helped to churn out countless gold records, which gave him a wealth of experience in recording all types of music and studio management. An independent sound engineer/technician, music programmer, arranger and producer for many years, Martin began his association with Lesley Spencer in 2001 at Studiochicago where the two completed several recording projects together. An accomplished musician in his own right, Martin plays bass and performs regularly with his band RUBIES - and is actively involved with his other band - the well known and widely popular POI DOG PONDERING for whom he constructs brilliant arrangements and provides superb sound. www.poidogpondering.com

Mike Costello of Echelon Digital Media – Online Editing

Mike is presently on staff at Towers Productions in Chicago. In his tenure there he has worked on hundreds of hours of documentary programming for various cable networks, including A&E, The History Channel, National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet, Outdoor Life Network, truTV, The Military Channel, and Biography Channel, to name a few. Mike completed two video projects for Lesley Spencer in 2008: "WHY THEY RUN" and "IT'S ABOUT LIVING." For these films he conducted the on-line edit, which consisted of conforming the offline edit up to an uncompressed resolution, color correcting the raw material from start to finish, and providing the final output of the master tapes. Mike also provided similar services on the feature-length documentary, "THE SECRET LIFE OF MOE BERG," for FlashRock Films. His freelance work is done under the umbrella of his freelance entity, Echelon Digital Media, for which Mike is constantly expanding his home editing setup.

Alexandro Silver – Camera Operator/Lighting Designer/Sound

Alexandro is an M. F. A. candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has worked for the History Channel and on numerous other video projects in and around the Chicago area. He has often assisted Olga Arango and worked with both Olga & Lesley on “IT’S ABOUT LIVING.”

Sasha Dobbs – Camera Operator/Lights/Sound

Sasha received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She enjoys offering her videography and sound recording services to the many independent projects that start with a little dream. Sasha relocated to San Francisco in 2007 (accomplishing a little dream of her own) where she is presently an Audio Visual Technician at the San Francisco Art Institute.