First Commercial of 2011

This is our first commercial of the UMC 2011 Campaign.

We wanted to have a kick-off spot that, much like last year, was separate from the narrative style of the rest of the campaign.

This commercial kicks the year off with the intention to communicate what it means to be a teaching hospital. In any community the idea of a "teaching hospital" automatically has a negative connotation, so we decided to embrace the title and explain what this really means to our patients and our community: state of the art care, cutting-edge research, 24/7 care, multidisciplinary care, and an environment that encourages cooperation and teamwork among all staff members.

We're pretty proud of it, but there's no time to waste. I'm already planning to start shooting our next spot this week.

No rest for the weary, but I love this stuff.

UMC Cancer Center Spots

Cancer Center Shoot

It's been a hot shoot this week! With temps in the 90's every day, the crew was grateful to be shooting indoors...at least, until tomorrow.

We've been shooting four new spots for UMC's Cancer Center, highlighting two patients' stories.
The shots are looking great, and we've been shooting in some interesting areas such as a biochem lab and the cancer center's infusion area. So, it's been a challenge to make the shots visually interesting, but I think we hit the mark.

Tomorrow's shoot should be fun. One of our patients coaches a girl's soccer team, and we're using this to juxtapose the idea of his "team" at UMC. So tomorrow morning we're shooting at the Texas Tech soccer complex, where our patient will show up with about 14 of his girls and their families. We'll be doing b-roll shots of the team playing, him coaching, etc. Should be fun.

I'll have pics from tomorrow's shoot up soon, and we will wrap this shoot at the end of the day Monday. This will be another quick turn around, as we put these out for broadcast on July 1.

Crown Ranch Spot

I've been waiting to do a project with my good friend (and brother-in-law) Casey O'Quinn at Gravity Digital, and finally got my chance. This was a commercial spot on a tight budget for one of his clients, Crown Ranch Properties in Montgomery, Texas.

Basically, we had no budget to shoot any footage, but we had some good elements to work with. Casey had managed to get some aerial footage of the area, in addition to some great stills of the trees and entry to the neighborhood that he was using heavily to brand the company. After a quick search, we added to our content with an HD golf clip from iStock to support one of the aspects of the spot.

The aerials gave a good feel to the beginning, and we were able to add some movement to the golf shot since we opted to get the HD version. To add some visual interest to the stills, I used movement and light rays to accent the trees still shot, and did a 3D breakdown of the final still in order to create a 3D dolly move (could be its own post later).

Anyway, it was great to work with Casey and I hope to do it again soon.

Children's Hospital Spots - Second Round

Here are the latest spots for the UMC Children's Hospital. They should go to air tonight or tomorrow, and while these are done, there is still plenty of work to be done on the long versions of each story in addition to the thank you DVDs I make for each shoot we do. This should keep me busy for the rest of the week.

In Texas, you can solve any problem with a pickup

While getting the edit finalized for one of our latest UMC Children's Hospital commercials, we realized as a group that we were missing a shot. Not that we had not shot what we had planned, but after looking at the spot on screen, as opposed to on paper, one additional piece was needed.

So, we decided to do get this "pickup shot" on Tuesday and get it into the final edit before we deliver them for broadcast at the end of the week. In a normal ad agency/production agency client situation, this kind of thinking would just not be possible, at least not if money was important to your business.

The shot we needed yesterday was of the Children's Hosptial signage and main lobby, and took about 5 minutes to actually shoot. However, because of the camera movement I wanted, it took over three total hours of equipment moving and grip/lighting setup. If we were a client of a production/ad agency, it would usually not be worth the minimum half-day rate just to get one shot.

This is the beauty of our little, self-contained department. We decided on Tuesday that we needed the shot, I cleared my schedule for Wednesday morning, got some help from Alex (our intern) and Eric (our staff writer), and we made the shot happen. It didn't cost us anything but time, which doesn't come for free either, but at least we can stay on budget and still make our spots look as good as we can.

We'll have the latest commercials on UMC's YouTube site on Friday, and out for broadcast on Monday. I'm looking forward to getting them out the door.

New Commercials for the UMC Children's Hospital

It has been a busy two months since we first conceptualized these spots in early March, but the first three commercials (of six total) are going out for broadcast today. I'm really happy with how these have come out, and I'm anxious to get the other three edited next week.