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.