Here at Axiom, we get to tell a lot of really cool stories. From a kitchen remodel project that brings a family together, to a neighborhood baseball league that convenes in a delicately detailed backyard diamond, our video team has captured some great moments.
However, despite our best efforts, the best laid plans don’t always stick to script. During a recent commercial shoot for a client in California, we had to deal with several variables that made our Hollywood moments more challenging than we had hoped for.
Nearly Gone With the Wind
Nearly Gone With the Wind
Spring in Orange County, California, is notoriously windy, thanks in part to the infamous Santa Ana Winds. Wouldn’t you know it, while we were shooting customer testimonial interviews, the winds picked up and made it hard to capture clean audio. Our solution? Change locations across the street and use the neighborhood infrastructure to cancel out some of the wind. Sure, we had some noise from the rustling trees swaying in the wind, but the use of a lavalier microphone tucked under the shirt and thick wind screen on our boom ensured two clean voice tracks.
Beauty and the Bricks
Because we were shooting this spot out of season, we needed to take a few liberties in staging some pretty product shots. Seeing that our ‘bread and butter’ come from the gardening and outdoor industries, we made a dull sidewalk rock-scape look like a beautifully maintained garden with splashes of color and stone. Our agency president, Mike Reiber, really rocked this display - literally. Four rolls of sod, a handful of annuals, and one flat river stone gave us the ‘money shot’ we had all been waiting for.
Beauty and the Bricks
Because we were shooting this spot out of season, we needed to take a few liberties in staging some pretty product shots. Seeing that our ‘bread and butter’ come from the gardening and outdoor industries, we made a dull sidewalk rock-scape look like a beautifully maintained garden with splashes of color and stone. Our agency president, Mike Reiber, really rocked this display - literally. Four rolls of sod, a handful of annuals, and one flat river stone gave us the ‘money shot’ we had all been waiting for.
The Landscape Before Time (Ran Out)
In order to capture the most beautiful images of our client’s new product, our crew went to painstaking detail to bounce light and enhance the quality of the video. Take after take, we made tiny tweaks to get the shot right. And while things looked great, the swiftly setting sun made additional takes tough to tackle. So, in order to preserve the continuity of the natural light, we had crew members crawling on the turf, brushing back the grass after each pass of the lawn mower.
When the sun set on this shoot, we had exactly what we needed. We’re excited to say we’re in post-production on this project and hope consumers embrace this product as much as we have. If it was up to us, the Oscar/Emmy/Grammy/Tony/Telly would go to everyone who helped make this project possible.