“Have you met our friend Murphy?” is a pretty commonly spoken phrase in the studio. You may be familiar with old Murphy’s Law yourself — you know, that mantra that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong? Usually Murphy brings us airplanes flying overhead when we’re about to sit down for an interview, gusting winds when we’re trying to set up stands and screens or of course, halting traffic when we’re moving locations on a busy shoot day.
Last week, our friend Murphy brought us — in the midst of a historic drought mind you — more than an inch of rain in a 5-hour window in San Diego. You know, that city with the perfect weather every other day of the year? Yep, we have a way with Murphy.
Vizio had hired us for a fun project — to capture Stevie Johnson, San Diego Chargers wide receiver handing out $30, 000 in VIZIO technology to college students who returned to school this month. The catch was that, well, students actually had to make a catch — they had to reel in a 30-yard pass from Johnson to get a choice of a 32-inch VIZIO HDTV or a sound stand. It’s an awesome promotion and a blast to shoot. It’s just not quite as fun when you’re hauling your cameras under umbrellas out into the pouring rain.
The good news is we were due for a little good luck. Sure enough, as Ben, Matt and Steve stood huddled together under a tent canopy with soaked pants and soggy socks devouring pizza and waiting for Johnson to arrive, the rain began to soften. A half hour later, we were standing out on the field doing a standup interview with Johnson and the sun was poking through the clouds.
We may have been a little nervous watching the water pour out of the sky earlier, but we couldn’t have asked for a better day. The students were pumped, Stevie was amped to be there and had a blast throwing passes and we got to witness some pretty awesome (and admittedly, some pretty awful) touchdown, free-television victory dances in the mud. As you can tell, more than a few students went home wet but happy — not a bad week to be back at school.