Director/Producer: Bradley Lanphear
Production Assistant: Cole Blakelock
We were asked to film 7 commercials in 3 days… No, that’s not a typo…
1 video for each of their 5 locations, a TV commercial and a brand video.
And we did it!
How did we accomplish that? We’ll show you…
Pre-Production is everything.
Project Scope
The client wanted to prioritize 2 main concepts throughout the project: 1) emphasize that HVPC is a family-owned and operated business, and 2) make each specific city as recognizable as possible.
Each of the 5 location videos needed to be 60 secs or less for social media use. The TV ad needed to be exactly 30 secs to fit with TV programming and we had to travel to multiple cities across Central Washington to film each of their locations.
Because this was an out-of-state production, we had to come up with a solution to fit all of those requirements within the timeframe and (most importantly) stay within their budget.
The Solution
In collaboration with the client, we produced a very versatile script and a highly efficient production schedule. We would begin by filming the 30 sec TV ad version. We tightly scripted and blocked each shot to fit the allotted time and kept it (mostly) in a single location. For certain shots, we scripted A and B versions which would allow us to re-use those scenes for the other location videos without needing additional set ups or locations.
The script and concept of the TV ad would serve as the main theme for each of the other videos. We created it to be essentially a drag and drop sequence which we used in each of the videos, and then the remaining 30 secs of runtime would be filled with location specific footage and voiceover. Once the 30 sec version was done and accounting for logo screen time and other copy-paste elements, we actually only needed to fill about 15 seconds of footage from each city location.
The main logistical problems were the travel time between cities and limited daylight because we filmed this in winter so it was dark by 4pm each day. We had to plan our schedule down to the minute and stay on target the whole time.
The entire trip would take 5 days. Monday would be a travel day, Tuesday-Thursday were production days, and Friday would be our return travel day. We spent the majority of the first shoot day on the drag and drop sequence and then finish by collecting B roll of that city. For the next two days, we would then travel and film B roll of 2 cities per day and then record voiceover in the evening after dark.
We coordinated with various company employees and several real customers to use their respective properties for B roll and planned our travel between cities based on the geography where they were located.
Additionally to ensure that we didn’t miss any critical shots, we compiled a quick reference master shot list and a blank list where we could add ideas for pick up shots as needed. We checked off each shot as we went.
Behind the Scenes
This highly detailed level of planning enabled us to accomplish what otherwise would have been a massive project in a very efficient and cost-effective way. Not only did this plan make the production filming go smoothly, but it also made the post-production editing extremely fast by being able to create copy/paste sequences and use them across multiple videos. The entire project took 3 weeks start to finish. 1 full week for each phase.
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