Behind the Scenes With Chris Petruccio of Krispy Media

I’ll never forget my first impressions of Chris Petruccio of Krispy Media at First Class Fitment a few years back. This tall, lanky young guy was walking around the show with a “Production Assistant” (his father) and a homemade camera jib. I was a young, judgemental 20-something at the time, and I thought to myself, “Who is this kid and what does he think he’s doing?”

Not only has Petruccio become an extremely popular automotive filmmaker and influencer, but he’s also become a really great friend of mine. So when Chris hired me to act in an upcoming commercial he was shooting with Anthony Purcell for MSI Gaming, I knew I finally had the opportunity to not just work with them but also tell their story.

Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

As a young kid, Chris always had an entrepreneurial spirit. in his early teens, he was already taking advantage of Youtube’s Partnership Program, creating technology and paintballing channels with high subscriber counts.

Now, if my first impressions of Chris from earlier don’t sound bad, imagine what they were of Purcell:

“What’s this dude from New Jersey who never went to film school doing filming car shows?! A man who doesn’t have a four-year media degree and on-set experience like me surely won’t succeed in this business!”

That statement couldn’t have been less true.

Anthony progressed on the opposite end of the spectrum. Before making the transition to automotive filmmaking and photography, Purcell was pursuing a degree in accounting. To pay the bills, he worked at Starbucks and was fairly high up on the managerial chain.

…Anthony demoted himself and spent his newly acquired free time creating.

Photography was initially a hobby, but after developing an extensive portfolio and client base, he decided to drop out of college and pursue automotive media creation full-time. Why? According to Anthony, after attending school-organized career fairs, he realized that “no one looked happy” at them. Following this realization, Anthony demoted himself and spent his newly acquired free time creating.

In short, both Anthony’s and Chris’s respective career progressions were first-hand, rude awakenings for me to NOT judge books by their covers.

Seamlessly Working As One

I could spend even more time than I already have told you about how Chris and Anthony ultimately started working together, but instead, I’ll keep it short and simple: The two met at a car show and started hiring each other for wedding gigs. Both Petruccio and Purcell are firm believers in collaborating as a means of improving the quality of the creative endeavor. “We both really wanted to up the bar in our creative careers,” Purcell explained.

To hear about their collaborative experiences from them was one thing; to see it in real-time was a whole other animal.

Of course, the ultimate test of their collaboration theory and the working relationship would come in the form of a documentary Krispy Media shoot for an RWB build, where the two literally had to dance around one another while Akira Nakai San worked his magic. Needless to say, they passed the tests and have gone on to create a sizable portion of the RWB documentary films to date.

Symbiosis: On Set With The Masterminds

To hear about their collaborative experiences from them was one thing; to see it in real-time was a whole other animal.

As someone who’s been in the film industry for ten years now, I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever seen three (can’t leave out Cody Greenstone, their assistant) people work so seamlessly together on set before. Whether it was finding the cars to shoot, planning the next scene, or literally handing off the camera to one another to get as much coverage as they needed, everything was a dance. Whether I was taking direction from them to act in a scene or photographing them while they worked, the symbiosis between them was as clear as day.

It seems the three amigos have developed telepathy and can sense what the other needs on set at almost any point without saying a word.

In eerily similar words, both told me over the phone that they “know each other’s looks.” It seems the three amigos have developed telepathy and can sense what the other needs on set at almost any point without saying a word. It sounds crazy, but again, I’ve seen it first-hand.

Bright Futures

Chris Petruccio, Anthony Purcell, and Cody Greenstone are all talented in their own right. Individually, Greenstone’s automotive mechanical background and welding talents give him the ability to do things like fabricating Purcell’s Kia Soul camera mount—which, believe it or not, has helped Purcell attract Kia’s attention—while The Two P’s have their respective clients and social followings. But together, they are a trio of bright futures.

All the guys have their respective aspirations for the future. For Anthony, “Every shoot I do is all preparation for a Super Bowl shoot for Lexus,” he told me confidently. Chris hopes to not be a “one-man-band” for too much longer. “I’d love to start doing bigger budget stuff so I can hire more of my friends,” he explained. “I’d like to pick up another camera and start a YouTube channel of my own,” says Cody. Greenstone still wants to work with Chris and Anthony but also wants to travel and do “in-depth install videos so that the novice car person can feel comfortable tackling bigger projects.”

Be sure to follow Krispy Media on their creative journeys as they’re all likely to be working on more awesome stuff together real soon.