behind the scenes

We just received first drafts of the scripts for our next toy commercial shoot. It’ll be three national girls’ spots, and the scripts look great so far… we’re excited to make them come to life!

I think the world of kids’ advertising is so interesting… It’s much more restrictive than the average TV-watcher might realize. Whenever we get into script writing, we have to watch for the following red flags:

1) Hard sell language like “Collect them all!”
2) Superlative language, like best, cutest, fastest, most stylish, coolest, etc.
3) Any implication that the product will make a kid cooler or more popular.
4) Shooting toys, water toys, etc: These toy spots usually need to show parental supervision in the background at some point, and should say “adult supervision required.”
5) Rigging and special effects: Everything we show must be “kid recreatable.” We can’t rig it or use special effects to make it look like a toy will do something it actually can’t.

There are also stringent rules about the disclaimers at the end: what the product includes, doesn’t include, etc. It’s all for a great reason, of course… making sure kids don’t get duped!

Here are a couple examples… Notice how there are always hands making the dolls move in this Hannah Montana spot?   Since the dolls don’t move on their own, we had to represent them accurately and show hands activating their movement.

Notice how the voiceover specifies 272 “scale” miles per hour in this spot?

The tricky part is with action toys. When they’re little pieces of plastic that drive and fly, they’re hard to control, and even harder to capture doing amazing stunts!   Jerry’s got a crazy knack for it though.

I can’t wait til late July when we can finally release our most recent action toy commercial. We’re pretty excited about the product, and the commercial is gonna blow you away!

Say hello to a new face in the FLF Films office…  Danny May, everybody!

Daniel Mayfield is joining the FLF crew while on summer break.  He attends school in Colorado, is proficient with Final Cut Pro and After Effects, and most importantly, he reads our BLOG!!!  Walking into our office this morning, the first thing he said was, “wow — it looks just like the video I saw.”  Too funny.

Daniel got right to work today on his first project… editing the interview videos with medical weight loss expert Dr. Kent Sasse.  He rocked it out, and after day 1, he’s nearly done with the project. 

Welcome to the crew, Dan!

It’s an absolutely beautiful day in Reno and here at FLF we’re looking forward to a long weekend!  

In the meantime, I just thought I’d post this article from Plumas County News about the short film “The Sierra.”  Our horse wrangler for the film, Lloyd Cooper, is based in Quincy CA, and this article takes a fun look at the production from his perspective and experience working on it.

Click on image to read full article

By the way, the “frantic call” is pretty accurate!  72 hours before production on “The Sierra” began, our original horse wrangler backed out.  It was a producer’s nightmare… horses were featured in nearly every shot of the film, and suddenly we found ourselves with none!  

I still owe Lloyd Cooper a debt of gratitude for coming through the way he did - and on 36 hours notice!  It was amazing.  He rolled up to Lake Tahoe in the middle of the night, the day before shooting began, set up his own temporary corral and made sure we had everything we needed…  right down to the black saddle (with silver hardware) for the hero, John.  

Thanks Lloyd, Alan & Fort Hope!

Part of being an intern is being a problem solver and learning how to use every second of the day to do something productive.  

Erika is busy doing pre-production work for our upcoming athlete profile on a competitor in the Baja 500.  Jerry is finalizing the GX Racers commercial, putting all the 3-D elements in and fine-tuning the timing.

Meanwhile, I have finished my to-do list and I don’t have much on my plate.  The temperature in Reno couldn’t be more perfect today…  So I just decided to take advantage of the extra time and I got into a little yard work in the FLF office courtyard.  Mowing the lawn, sweeping the deck, pulling some weeds, typical yard work.  Check out the action pictures!

Underwater RED Camera shot

One of the many highlights of the Tahoe Stand Up Paddleboard shoot was the appearance of the Glenn Group’s fire prevention team on set!

As we were shooting, a family of picnicers tried to light their barbecue with a can of gasoline.  This did not work out so well and the can caught on fire.  Then the panicked tourist dropped said can into a pile of pine needles.

Seeing this, the Glenn Group’s creative team, lead by BC, headed over to lend a hand (and foot, as it were).  The tourist had the right idea, trying to smother the fire by kicking dirt onto it, but his execution was less than desired: he was kicking more dry pine needles onto the flaming gas can!   “Adding fuel to the fire”…literally.   From this point, the TGG creative team kicked into high gear — stopped, dropped, and rolled the fire into submission.

Another tragedy averted!  Great day on the lake shooting and — perfectly — the next day was howling winds and grey skies.  Looks like we hit it just right.

For all the RED dudes out there, we used the Hydroflex underwater housing for the RED ONE.  It worked superb except for one instance where it overheated and locked up.  Nothing a reboot didn’t take care of… Unfortunately, it was after 20 minutes of frustration, 20 feet underwater, on the sandy bottom of lake Tahoe.  More pics to come!

J

Thanks to Ryan Fagan for taking some fun behind-the-scenes photos of FLF’s paddleboard shoot this past Sunday at Lake Tahoe.  Also — thanks to the peeps who hooked us up with some fun specialty gear… Tim from Burton for the lipstick cam, Matty from Action Grip for the gyro-stabilizer, Ray for the dry suit, and Mike the Intern for his scuba gear.

It was FLF’s first time completely submerging our RED Camera…  The closest we’d gotten before was sending it down a Slip N Slide for a Slip N SLide commercial.  It was a little nerve wracking submerging it completely,  but Hydroflex’s underwater housing did great… And our camera lives to tell about it!

It was a super busy weekend for the FLF crew… especially Jerry.  

On Friday, we had an interview shoot at Jerry’s ranch for Dr. Kent Sasse, an authority on weight loss, published author, and surgeon.  We also discussed an interesting potential project with him… One that would combine our love of documentaries with Jerry’s interest in medicine, and a very topical issue right now.   

Interview with weight loss authority Dr Kent Sasse

Jerry spent the day on Saturday editing, and Sunday shooting for a sports equipment brand on Lake Tahoe.  Or, perhaps more accurately, “in” Lake Tahoe.  Stay tuned for some pics of his underwater adventure…

Headquarters is buzzing this morning… Jerry’s upstairs editing with one of our favorite ad agencies, and meanwhile I’m prepping for an interview shoot tomorrow, and an action sports shoot at Lake Tahoe this weekend (with underwater cinematography!  Fun…). 

In the meantime, I wanted to post this little reel we put together last night.  One of the agencies we work with requested this for a potential project.  It’s samples of some of our non-fiction stuff, including a promo Jerry did for Richard Branson’s reality show, a clip from a property management video, a bit from our large scale installation at the Nevada museum of art, and portions of two of our extreme sport documentaries… Redbull Elevation and a show about Travis Pastrano.  

Although Jerry got his start in extreme sport films, most people nowadays think of us as a commercial production company.   It’s fun to give people a look into the other stuff we do!

It’s a quiet morning here at FLF, aside from Jamie’s (our freelance animator’s) iTunes playing over the office sound system.  Jerry’s in New York City today, Mike the Intern isn’t in on Tuesdays, and it’s a perfect opportunity to catch up on some work.

As I type, I’m actually listening in on a voiceover session.  Jerry’s on the call too, directing the talent from New York City.  Our client is listening in from Malibu, our sound engineer Matt Smith is recording the session in Las Vegas, and the talent, Kevin Lockhart, is reading his heart out from Colorado.  He’s actually shouting different versions of the word “Unstoppable!” into the phone right now… so fun to listen to.  Here’s the last commercial he voiced for us:

We have a pretty streamlined system for all of this…  Here’s how we select and record voiceovers for our commercial productions at FLF Films:

1. First, I send out the script to a few different sources and solicit auditions.
2. Once we have auditions, we pick our favorites.  If we can’t choose between our favorites, we’ll send the various auditions to the client and let them choose.  In other cases, we’ll just put our favorite voice in the rough cut and seek our client’s approval for it.
3. Once we’re all agreed on a voice, I schedule a recording session.  We always have to have the talent, the ad agency or client, Jerry, myself, and our sound engineer on the phone for it.  I usually just conference everyone through the magic of my iPhone.
4. I send out the final script to everyone involved, then we all get on the phone and record the session. We usually do a few full reads, and then get into line-by-line readings.  Jerry directs the talent.  Sound engineer Matt times the talent and keeps notes on which takes everyone likes.  The agency or client chimes in as much or as little as they like.

And that’s pretty much it… that’s how the announcer voice ends up in commercials!