Get your saturday back.
Have Amazon set up your smart home products.
This is the long-from product explainer video. This is one of six original assets we created during our four day shoot.
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 handled casting with various local agencies and negotiated the rates and usage for Amazon. We held auditions in a 12 hour day, resulting in our A, B, and C ideal cast at the end of that day. With the nature of the product, we found that we had warm introductions to each of the locations we needed (a smart home, apartment, hotel, and office). 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 in four day; 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 an element we didn’t have access to was the Alexa response light. 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 that were versions of a sequence where a technician arrives at the couple’s home as they’re unpacking and sets up their smart home for them using their already owned tech with their new smart home. It took us three weeks to deliver those assets. We 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.