New Commercial in the Works!

No spoilers here though.
Wonder what it’ll be about...

Mikes Hard Lemonade commercial spec

My Mikes Hard Lemonade commercial has gone live and can now be viewed on Vimeo. Before I discuss my journey in creating this ad, I would strongly suggest you watch it first to avoid any spoilers!

NOW… where do i even start…

GROCERY STORE: When I originally scripted the concept, I didn’t take into account whatsoever how hard it would be to film at a grocery/liquor store. I figured the only way was to go a Safeway at 4am and hope no workers would catch me and guess what? WIthin 10 minutes I get kicked out by the store manager, even after my bribe of 40$ for letting me finish. I proceed to get kicked out of 3 more stores in 3 different cities throughout the entire night. 

FIELD OF BERRIES SHOT: One of the original shots I designed for the ‘girly’ montage was to pick berries from a berry bush. I got this shot from Shorline Park in Mountain View, CA near the google offices. Big mistake to shoot on a weekend. There were tons of people at the public park staring at my stupidity standing as close as 5-10 feet away from me. I borrowed the hat from my aunt’s hat collection, where i spent 20 minutes in her closet deciding which hat looked funniest.

RUNNING IN FOREST SHOT: This shot in particular needed to be framed perfectly. If the camera had panned 2 inches to the right, you would see a freeway. 2 inches to the left would spot a small residential street full of houses. Quite deceiving indeed. I drove through this area a while back and wrote down in my sketchbook to come back one day to do something with it. 

SWIMMING SHOT: I had no problem with renting an underwater rig but my friend suggested to film at his house in Dublin, CA. He has a custom built pool thats elevated from ground level with an open glass window on one side, so we just setup a tripod right next to the pool and covered the cam with trash bags to prevent glare. What you can’t see from the video is the water temperature being below subfreezing that day. I only did 3 takes before I got out and just prayed that I got the shot.

The ending sequence that mimic the ads currently on TV was all filmed in my kitchen. I turned on the fireplace to strengthen the composition and give it an extra punch. Overall, it was a ton of embarrassment and I didn’t even know if I was going to put this online but the responses have been really positive so far which is great to hear considering how fun it was to make

Shanghai World Expo highlights

I can’t believe it’s already been a full month since i’ve returned from my trip to Shanghai! During my time there, I was lucky enough to spend 2 days at the world expo, which will soon be running their closing ceremony at the end of this month. This means that in 3 weeks from today, they will no longer be offering public entrance to THE largest fair in the world (checked wiki to make sure i didn’t make that up).

If you can withstand waiting in long lines and the asia heat, then what you’ll find is a global exhibition of what each country has to offer. Not to mention some of the most amazing performances. 

Whats MOST IMPRESSIVE is the sheer architecture for the buildings itself. The china pavillion (photo by Meiguoxing) will be kept there and remain as a flagship landmark, but I was told many of them will end up being deconstructed when the expo is over. Some of these pavilion buildings were so incredible that I could NEVER justify tearing them down.

Unfortunately, you won’t find too many good expo pics on my flickr. I reasoned against bringing my mono/tripod because of the extra weight in the 110+ degree weather, but that’s ok. Whats a lifetime amount of regret anyways.

I did, however, take lots of handheld video on my T2i/550D. I took so much that I decided to go through the footage to find the coolest stuff for maybe a montage vid of some sort. Hopefully i’ll get around to making it soon. 

EDIT: video is up!
http://vimeo.com/15652304