02/15/17

A Super Exhausting (But Super Worth It) Week

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WARNING: HUMBLE BRAG(S) AHEAD.

 

Admittedly, we often get a little over-absorbed with the everyday grind — our day-to-day shooting and editing responsibilities, pre-production planning meetings and post-production polishing on projects — to stop and smell the roses. Last week we had one of those moments where the three of us were rushing, monopods in hand, camera gear loaded onto our backs and shoulders (for the visual on this one, imagine it as a swaggered, slow-motion strut) to a shoot with a million different things on our mind. But somewhere along the way we stopped and glanced at each other, looked up at the massive NRG Stadium above us and realized, “Holy s%$*. We’re filming at the Super Bowl today.” (Did we mention we’d be humble bragging here?)

It was one of the cooler moments we’ve had and a fitting culmination to the long and stressful week of 12-hour shoot days for multiple clients. We brought on some outside help — thanks Brandon and Brian – to help us tackle some big projects over the course of the week. We worked with the NY Jets’ Brandon Marshall to create social content for DirecTV’s AUDIENCE Sports channel like we did in 2016. And this year we also worked for OnLocation Experiences which provides really cool VIP packages for fans attending the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl  (as well as other NFL events throughout the year), highlighting the fan experience. We were all over Houston in the days leading up to the Super Bowl: filming at the NFL Fan Experience, following Brandon Marshall through Radio Row and to the EA Sports and Super Saturday Night Parties, as well as shooting footage all over downtown and at the many tailgate parties leading up to Sunday night.

 

 

Which leads us to the big game. We were fortunate enough to have All-Access passes for game day so that we could wander around the stadium and show what it was like to be a fan at Super Bowl LI with OnLocation’s VIP experience. And did we watch the historic ending of the game? You bet, we even snuck into the media photo pit on the edge of the field just to watch the overtime finish up close. Steve drew the long straw to get to go on-field after the game and film New England fans dancing in the confetti raining down from the stadium and — well we’ll just let you check out the footage for yourself, it speaks for itself. Even for those of us slightly nauseated by the thought of the Patriots winning yet another Super Bowl, it was an experience you don’t get every week. Here’s a glimpse of our awesome, stressful — and totally worth it — Super Bowl LI experience.

 

 

 

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01/10/17

Invisible Shield at CES

What’s more fun than handing out free stuff at CES? How about walking around with a the Secret Service agents holding brief cases and THEN handing out free stuff?

Okay maybe they weren’t ACTUAL secret service agents, but convincing right?

 

 

ZAGG’s InvisibleShield phone screen protectors are touted for its “military-grade protection” (fun fact: the plastic was originally designed to protect military helicopter blades). So for the annual Consumer Electronic Show, ZAGG sent out a team of employees dressed in full secret service garb to install screens around Las Vegas.

That’s where we come in. ZAGG wanted us to film the entire activation and turn around real-time edits each day. Sounds pretty easy right? Only kidding.

Fortunately, we had a great team working alongside us as we cranked to get these videos out as fast as possible (picture Steve scrunched in the back of a Suburban, editing on his laptop for several hours at a time). We think the finished product(s) were pretty awesome — more importantly the client did too. Check out the teaser and recap video below. For more, check out all of the #ShatterShame videos on ZAGG’s Facebook page.

 

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12/14/16

Mophie Transparency Project

As we close in on the last few weeks of 2016, we’re excited that we can now share one of this year’s bigger projects with you.

In July, Mophie came to us and explained that they wanted to make a series that highlighted the intensive process of creating the next iPhone juice pack product after Apple releases a new phone.

The result was a five-part video “transparency series” that examined every step of production — design, engineering, manufacturing, testing and shipping — and took Threaded Films across the country (Michigan) and world (China) through the course of the five months it took to plan, film and edit. This project was definitely a beast of an accomplishment, but we couldn’t be happier with the end result. Here is the fifth and final film in the series. You can check out the rest at www.mophie.com/innovation.

 

 

And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t share some stills from our escapades in China.

 

 

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12/03/16

VIZIO AudioLab at the Spectrum

Ever feel like those consumer tests you see on TV are fake? Well, being on the other side of the camera we can actually guarantee that this one is legit.

VIZIO hired us to shoot their Crave SmartCast Blind Speaker test at the Irvine Spectrum this fall. No gimmicks, no tricks, just a room with covered speakers and a series of questions for your every day Irvites (Irviners? Irvinians? We’re still not really sure) at the mall to tell us which one they liked better.

The results were pretty astounding. VIZIO Crave 360 outperformed the Sonos Play 1 seven times out of ten — granted (in honor of full transparency) the Sonos Play 1 costs $170 retail versus VIZIO’S Crave 360 at $250 retail, but most consumers we talked to said the price was worth the quality. And the VIZIO Crave Pro Multi-Room speaker did even better, outperforming the competing Sonos Play 3 NINE times out of ten. Pretty impressive, considering those are at pretty similar price points; the Crave Pro runs $300 whereas the Play 3 sells for $270 retail.

Hanging out at the VIZIO Audio lab at the Spectrum on a sunny fall day made for a pretty fun shoot for us. Plus it was cool to see people’s honest reaction to a set of VIZIO products that seems to be pretty dang awesome (Christmas shopping anyone?). But don’t take our word for it, check out what the Irvinetonians (maybe?) have to think in the final film below.

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11/29/16

Vanessa and Derek // “Obnoxious” in the Best Way

You know how they say first impressions are everything? The story of how Derek and Vanessa met certainly bucks that trend. Derek met Vanessa at a bar with friends when, against his better judgement, he sloppily threw a cup of ice water at then-stranger Vanessa. The story of that night may have ended poorly but fortunately Derek and Vanessa’s doesn’t. A few weeks later, an embarrassed Derek and a slightly bitter Vanessa met up again. Any tension they had quickly melted when they quickly realized how much they had in common — their love of hockey, music, and good beer. Flash forward two years and here we are on their wedding day — the ice-water incident is of course nearly forgotten (well, at least forgiven).

The vows that they wrote to each other were the perfect narrative to this teaser. We could think of no better way to describe Vanessa and Derek together — sincere, heartfelt, loving, and of course, a little sassy. Derek about sums up the story of their relationship when he says he’s honored that Vanessa wanted to marry him forever because, in his words, “That’s a long time, and I’m pretty obnoxious.” Cup of ice water anyone?

Congrats to these two, we had an amazing time sharing your day with you. And it was such a fantastic day; we loved working alongside the incredible likes of photographer Jenavieve Belair (we’ll do family dinner again one of these nights), florist Karen Barch Mallory, coordinator Michelle Maciel, DJ Shane Ysais DJ, Kristy Warner and Angela Smith for hair and makeup, Chad of The Socal Wedding Officiant and of course Stone Brewing Company (a fantastic place to visit, event or otherwise).

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