A participant speaking with another attendee at the Resilient Pathways gathering

Some work is easy to miss. We make sure it hits.

Grain & Thunder is a documentary production company in Minot, North Dakota, with commercial credits from Los Angeles.

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Still: Resilient Pathways

Bronze, 47th Annual Telly Awards Millennial Taekwondo Tortoises Featured by Minot State University The B.O.G. television pilot Profiled in the Minot Daily News “Minot native brings stories to screen”
Minot, North Dakota On location across the Northern Plains and nationwide

Selected crew credits

PepsiBeyond MeatDisneyCanonWolfgang PuckDC ShoesJCPenney

Selected work

View all projects
Residents talking outdoors during the City of Tioga's 75th anniversary celebration

Cinematography & editing — Derek Olson

75 Years of Tioga

City of Tioga, North Dakota

A three-part documentary about the people and history of Tioga, North Dakota.
Sunlight through a hand tending young plants in a Montana field, from Planting Change for Beyond Meat

Cinematography — Derek Olson

Planting Change

Beyond Meat

A documentary campaign filmed with farmers in Scobey, Montana. More than 3 million views across platforms.
A bullfighter takes a black bull shoulder-first under the Battle of the Rumblehorn title

Direction, cinematography & editing — Derek Olson

Battle of the Rumblehorn

Arena Wear · North Dakota State Fair

Two nights of freestyle bullfighting and bull riding, cut overnight into a highlight film and vertical socials.

Podcasts and video series

We produce podcasts and recurring series for organizations. We set up the cameras and sound, shoot each episode, and deliver the full episode with captioned clips for YouTube Shorts, Reels, and TikTok, on a schedule you can plan around.

If your team would rather run its own show, we set it up for you: the gear, the workflow, and the standard each episode should meet.

Each episode: the full cut · five captioned clips · vertical and widescreen

Start a podcast How we make Thought Mining
Thought Mining episode thumbnail: Derek Olson and Nathan Anderson with the title Does Money Ruin Your Hobby? A vertical captioned clip from the same episode, with both hosts in a split frame
Thought Mining, our talk show: the episode and one of its vertical clips

How we work

We build the crew around the job and manage the production from prep through delivery.

Tell us the goal

Who you need to reach and what should change once they have seen it. Scope, dates, and budget if you have them.

Talk it through

We'll reply within one business day with questions and next steps.

Make the work

We handle the crew, locations, production, and post.

Direction · Cinematography · Crew · Locations · Aerial · Production · Post · Podcasts · Consulting

Original work

We develop and produce our own projects, too. It keeps the company doing the thing we ask clients to trust us with: finding the idea, building the team, and carrying it all the way to the screen.

Crew operating a gimbal rig on the support-group set while the director gives a note to a seated actor
Shooting THE B.O.G., support-group set, North Dakota

THE B.O.G.

THE B.O.G. is a half-hour ensemble comedy created and filmed in North Dakota. The pilot is complete.

Meet the show

Millennial Taekwondo Tortoises received a Bronze award for comedy animation at the 47th Annual Telly Awards.

Read the announcement

Have a story to tell, or an audience you need to reach?

You do not need a finished brief. Tell us who you are trying to reach and what should change once they have seen the film. We will help shape the production from there.

Talk about a project