Films that connect

Sierra Media is a director-led production company creating high-end films for brands, companies, and organizations—along with original documentaries of our own. We bring decades of production experience to every project, assembling the right crew and approach for the story. Led by Daniel A. Cardenas — director, DP, and producer.
I started Sierra Media in 1987 in Crystal Bay, Nevada, with a camera, a love of storytelling, and the idea that I could make a living doing this.
A year later, I moved to Everett, Washington. Sierra Media came with me.
What followed was a career behind the camera telling stories for companies, organizations, agencies, and people with something worth saying. The technology has changed enormously since then. The fundamentals really haven’t.
Listen. Understand what matters. Surround yourself with good people. And make something worth watching.
From Sierra Media to Bakerbuilt Works—and back again
For its first years, Sierra Media operated as a sole proprietorship. In 1999, I incorporated the company in Washington as an S-corporation and continued building a production business serving clients throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
In 2015, Sierra Media expanded in a new direction. I created Bakerbuilt Works, a creative agency and production studio operating from Everett’s historic Baker Building.
Bakerbuilt gave us room to grow. We built a team and expanded beyond production into a broader creative agency, producing commercial, branded, and corporate work for clients ranging from local organizations to international companies.
It also gave me the opportunity to pursue something I’d wanted to do for years: make a feature documentary.
That film became Hopped Up: How Yakima Valley Changed Craft Beer Forever, an exploration of the people, history, agriculture, and culture behind one of the world’s great hop-growing regions.
Making Hopped Up changed the trajectory of my work. Documentary filmmaking became more than something I wanted to do someday. It became an important part of what I wanted to do next.
Back to Sierra
In August 2023, our ten-year lease in the Baker Building came to an end. After the pandemic and nearly a decade of Bakerbuilt Works, it felt like the right time to leave the agency-and-studio model behind and return to where I started: Sierra Media.
Not to start over, but to simplify.
Today, Sierra Media is deliberately lean. I stay directly involved in the work and assemble experienced crews around the needs of each production.
Sometimes that means a full commercial crew, carefully controlled lighting, motion graphics, and a substantial post-production process. Sometimes it means a few experienced people, a couple of cameras, and the ability to recognize the moment when it happens.
The scale changes. The standards don’t.
Commercial work + original films
Today Sierra Media works in two worlds.
We create commercials, brand films, product launches, interviews, and documentary-style content for companies and organizations. I continue to work with longtime clients while taking on new collaborations and projects that interest me.
We also develop and produce original films.
Our latest, Beyond the Salish Sea: Crude Truth, continues that work through an independent documentary exploring the Salish Sea, crude-oil transportation, and the people working to understand and protect this extraordinary place.
I don’t see the commercial and documentary sides of Sierra as separate careers.
Documentary filmmaking makes me a better commercial filmmaker. It teaches you to listen, ask better questions, recognize what’s happening outside the shot you planned, and find the human story beneath complicated information.
Commercial production brings another kind of discipline: preparation, collaboration, visual precision, problem-solving, and knowing how to deliver.
Each makes the other better.
Nearly forty years later…
I’m still doing what got me into this in the first place.
I’m still curious. Still making films. And still looking for the next good story to tell.
Have one? Let’s talk.