Bowmansville Roller Mill

Biography for David D. Speace, Producer/Director/DP

A Temple University Film School graduate, Dave started his career as a production intern with the Mike Douglas Show. Subsequent television work included working as a freelance production assistant for ABC Sports and NBC Sports for golf tournaments, baseball and football games. A highlight here included working at the World Series in 1980.

In 1977, he worked at Wren Associates in Princeton as a photographer. The following year he worked as a producer for ITS Corporation. These two positions started Dave on a career in corporate communications. Subsequent producer positions were held at Bell of Pennsylvania and AT&T.

In 1980, Dave began his own production company and took it full time in 1985. He has been involved in numerous corporate communications projects, AV presentations, computer graphics, animation, video production, commercials, VNRs and broadcast assignments. He has done assignments for NBC News, The Today Show, QVC, WRC-TV (RNC2000 - NBC4 WashDC), WPVI-TV, KYW-TV, KVP-TV, WRC-TV, CNBC, PBS, WPHL-TV, The Speed Channel, Inside Edition, ESPN’s Wire-To-Wire, ESPN Drag Racing, 6ABC Philadelphia - Primetime Weekend, New Visions and FYI Philly news magazines, Thunderbox, Entertainment Tonight, Life Moments and steeplechase horse racing for ESPN, Hunt Cup Productions, and the National Steeplechase Association. Video news release assignments for a number of area biotechnology companies have been seen on 20/20, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning and various media outlets around the country. He has won the Flame Award, Telly Award and four Communicator Awards for his work in video production.

He was the Steadicam operator and 2nd unit camera for the digital feature film, Waiting, one of the first DV features ever made, and now known as the “original” Waiting. Waiting was shot on location in and around Philadelphia during the Spring and Summer of 1999 waitingthemovie.com. The film has won awards at the No Dance and Brooklyn Film Festivals. David was the Director of Photography for In His Wake, a short DV film released in the fall of 2000. He was Director of Photography for Thanks, We’ll Call You, a short DV film shot in November 2001. He was Director of Photography for Crosswalk, a short DV film shot in the fall of 2003. In the summer of 2004, he was Director of Photography for Pass The Buck, which won the audience award at the 2004 Palm Beach Film Festival. In 2005 David was Director of Photography for 2 short films, Looking For Love and Farewell Liberty.

He has a personal family project called Janka...One Minute of Perfect Happiness, based on his mother's 1945 60-page letter which documents his mother’s experiences surviving the Holocaust. The project has spawned a book, a documentary and a play. The play was performed off-Broadway in April, 2015. The documentary is a 2002 Telly award winner. For more details, you can visit janka.tv, jankafestinger.com, and jankaproject.com. The book is called Janka Festinger’s Moments of Happiness and is available on Amazon.com.

He has been working on a documentary project, The Bowmansville Roller Mill, for the past 2 years. It is now complete and is being offered to various film festival venues around the country.