Director, Patrick Spohrer, has over 20 years experience in the film industry. His experience stemmed from his passion for surfing. Just out of high school, he and his friends would go on surf adventures to places like Costa Rica and Panama. Patrick enjoyed the trips so much that he insisted on capturing them on film. He began reading up on cameras and playing around with super 8 film. He started editing his home videos into mini-movies, adding music, and small special effects.

Hearing of Patrick's filmmaking hobby, a friend-of-a-friend enabled Patrick to meet up with another filmmaker in California shooting surf films. They hit it off, joined forces, and made a few surf films together (Gone Surfing and Rolling Thunder). Later they made two skateboard films for Santa Cruz Skateboards Wheels of Fire and Streets of Fire, which became quite popular back in the day.

After all of the years Patrick has spent traveling the world making different films and commercials he has built up an impressive repertoire of accomplishments. His work can be found at Cinema Ride, a 3-D simulation ride in Las Vegas (It's amazing, you actually feel like you are skiing!). He has shot running footage for Nissan (Chiatday / Warren Miller), worked on commercials for Yamaha Watercaft (vitrorobertson), Ugg boots and made music videos for the record industry. Patrick helped shoot a pilot for the Discovery channel, and the list just keeps going and going. Patrick has even spent 5 years working with the legendary Warren Miller producing world-renowned ski films.

While living in Colorado working on ski films for Warren Miller, Patrick began to miss the ocean and surfing. He had to find something to fill this void and quickly picked up on the rush of playing paintball. After becoming quite the weekend warrior he quickly turned amateur and began playing the circuit. He continued to play even after moving back to California. He was hooked; and those who know Patrick know, when he finds something he likes, it won't be long before he makes a film about it!


So thats how Monkey with a Gun came to life. Now, with a quiver of stellar films under their belt, Monkey with a Gun is renown for they quality and cinematic film in the paintball industry.



Back log:



Working for Warren Miller


Patrick's past experience filming in the water for his old surf films paid off here. When Warren Miller wanted some wakeboarding scenes for their stock footage library, they turned to Patrick to take over. Check out this hairy shot! Isn't it funny that the wakeboarder got the credit for being the stuntman? I'd say floating there inches away from being whacked deserves some credit.







On Location in Peru


Here's Patrick down in Peru in'96. He traveled with the International Explorer Society to shoot a pilot for the Discovery channel. Notice all the town's people that came out to meet him. Let's just say, it was an exciting day for the people that lived in the little town of Chachapoyas.









Yamaha Watercraft 2002


Here's Patrick after a long day of shooting out on the water for the Yamaha watercraft 2002 TV commercials. On this shoot Patrick was one of the camera operators (once again Patrick was the one in the water with boats flying by him at 50+mph. and wakeboarders jumping over his head) His good friend, Ron Condon, was the Director of Photography. In the picture is (left to right) the famous "Whitey" (he owns and runs the custom made flat cat that we are standing on), Ron's nephew and Patrick.





3D Simulator Ride


Directing this 3-D simulation ride is one of Patrick's favorite accomplishments. It was done for Cinema Ride in '98 and is still playing in Las Vegas. Warren Miller relied on Patrick to direct and set up the cameras on this production, due to Patrick's past experience with 3-D filming. He had done 3-D filming once before when Radioactive records contracted him to produce a long form music video to play at CMJ and other large music conventions.





You can email Patrick at:
spohrer@monkey-with-a-gun.com