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Amazon Smart Home Service

The technician assistance product video using the same production elements for a cohesive branding experience.

30 Sec Spot: Amazon Smart Home Install

Short spot design for social.

60 Sec Spot: Amazon Smart Home Install

Designed for Amazon landing pages to help define and explain the service.

pre

I acquired this client through a friend of a friend who heard that their team needed a video produced to explain the purpose of their project, in addition to showcasing it to home developers and buyers.

I wrote the scripts for this project and its ad assets and refined each version with the client team until we had locked scripts. Once there, I brought them back my technical creative team to begin breaking down our requirements. I utilized another producer to handle casting with various local agencies and I negotiated the rates and usage for Amazon. We held auditions in a 10 hour day, resulting in our A, B, and C ideal cast at the end of that day. With the nature of the service (Amazon working with developers of homes, apartments, and hotels), we found that we had warm introductions to each of the locations we needed. While locations were somewhat easily sourced, my team and I still needed to scout for production feasibility and crew travel/parking options before locking them in. I onboarded a full crew of 17; a director, additional producer/AD, camera team, wardrobe, HMU, prop master, PA’s, a full lighting crew, and a sound tech.

I was heavily involved in all pre-production of this project, being a key planner in the production timeline so that we could appropriately capture everything.

peri

Production for me was pretty simple; the scripts had already been locked so we knew what we needed to capture and how much time we had to do it. It was my job to run the production meeting at the beginning of the day, then stay with the on-set client to keep them from interrupting the crew. 

We shot for four days; the first two being the house for the family scenes and the technician storyline. The third day was divided between the apartment and hotel, meaning we had a full company move. The final day was reserved for all the office scenes since they were shot in two different buildings that were close to one another. This was the one “fire drill” that required me to step in; we were unable to fit our production vehicle into any of the nearby garages, and street parking wasn't feasible for the amount of time we required for the day. So, I went to local businesses and asked if we could use their back alley spot. I was successful with Goodwill, and I bought them a dozen donuts to thank them. From there on out, it was back to watching the crew work and checking in with the AD. We wrapped on time and on budget.

post

Post production also went smooth because the script had been locked in. The only main discussion points were around graphics and music, both of which were easily chosen when presented with an option deck that I created.

One interesting issue that came up – we had shot a product that had been announced by not yet released. The apartment scene where the daughter talks to her father on her (at the time, unreleased) Echo Dot required us to do screen replacement, but the Alexa response light wasn’t an effect asset we had access to. I worked with my animator to locate the product announcement footage and recreate the animation they used in that to indicate Alexa responses; we never had to go to the client and ask for additional assets or time. 

It took us one month to get to final cut on the main product video. I handled communication between the client and the editor; I was able to parse out the requests and change their notes into actionable change requests we could activate on. Once we hit final cut, we moved onto the ad units; it took us three weeks to deliver them.

After we closed this project, I opened up some bandwidth in our editing team to stay close to the client in the event of requiring assets that had specific logos, voiceovers, or product sequences removed or altered; this happened six different times are were always turned around same-day.