behind the scenes

A little while ago, I mentioned we were working on a 20-minute athlete profile of Baja 500-competitor Gustavo Vildosola Jr for Redbull. Here’s a little sneak peak!

Special thanks to FLF filmer Greg, who actually rode in a chase truck for the entire Baja 500…. that’s 500 miles off-road, folks! I was dying to ride in the chase truck, too. Now that I watch the footage though, I’m guessing I would have been pretty sick. That’s some crazy driving!

It’s gonna be a fun documentary, and I’m looking forward to posting the finished project in July. Danny May’s been cuttin’ away at it in the last 2 weeks, logging footage and putting together the rough assembly. Jerry and I just got to watch a rough, first 12 minutes or so today. It’s lookin’ good!

Hey! Mike the Intern just letting you know what’s up in the FLF work world.

Today started with an 8:00 AM call time to meet at Ryan Baker’s house to prep our camera gear for an intensive morning of casting.

We arrive at The Glenn Group office and proceed to set up.  The people at this ad agency are as nice as can be, willing to help us with anything we need.  What a great work atmosphere!

Anyway, the auditions we’re filming are for a campaign called “Kindness is Your Currency”.  The idea is to reward people for random acts of kindness.

Candidates started showing up at 9:00 AM excited and seemed ready to go.  Each interview was approximately 10-15 minutes with appointments scheduled 15 minutes apart.  

I was in the lounging area greeting and checking people in, downloading the footage onto my computer after each individual interview, and being comical as usual.

Overall, everything went smooth and I had a great time on this little job.

Be back soon with some more updates!

It’s mania at the FLF Films office… once again!

Between 3 commercial spots, a sales video, and a series of interviews finishing up in post; a 20-minute athlete profile just starting in post; 3 national girls’ spots in pre-production; casting for a viral campaign we’re producing; and 2 national boys’ toys spots in pre-pro, FLF’s got a full plate at the moment. And we love it!

The last few days have been so busy in fact, that we had a first yesterday evening… A script meeting at the hair salon while Jerry was getting a new ‘do!

Here are some pics from our little hair parlor powwow:

Today just started and we’ve already got phones ringing off the hook. Here are some pics from our office this morning… The production department is hustlin’!

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!

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!

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!

We had a super productive follow-up shoot for the GX Racer product for Jakks.  It was a small but tight crew. Flew home that evening and had an FLF-style wrap party while Ryan F logged and sorted footage.

Sunday and Monday look to be a full couple of days of editing to get this cut ready for a big Walmart meeting. Then on the redeye to NYC for a couple of days. Check in soon!

J

It’s a beautiful day at the FLF office… 75-degrees and sunny outside, glass sliding door wide open for the breeze,  Xm81 rockin the office sound system, and a cool, bubbly glass of pelegrino at my fingertips.  Feels like summer.  

Though I’d love to go outside and play, it’s a prep day here at FLF.  Jerry and I fly out at 6 am tomorrow morning… LA for the day.  Not a huge shoot, just some pick-ups for one of the recent toy spots we filmed. 

So I’m about to go through my mental checklist and thought I might as well share that…

- Crew booked? Check.

- Petty cash?  Check.

-Shot lists printed?  Check.  

- Call times confirmed?  I’ll do one last call-around for double verbal confirmation from everyone.  It’s also my opportunity to see if anyone has last minute questions.

- Meals planned?  Check.

- Production kit? Check.  Sent down with our camera truck earlier today.

- Location checks? Check.  Note to self:  throw some extras in my wrap book just in case.  Mike the Intern told me they were packed in the production kit, but I didn’t have visual confirmation.

- Rental equipment pick-ups?  Check.  All taken care of this afternoon by my rad grip & art departments.

- New set printer tested with my laptop?  Check.  Mike the Intern installed the driver for me yesterday and we tested it.

- Client given map & calltime?  Check.  Requested phone call tomorrow AM when we arrive.  No problem.

-Wardrobe?  Check.  Fitting happened this afternoon.

- Airline itineraries dispersed? Check.

- Hotel for the crew staying overnight?  Check.  Some have arrived and checked in already.  No problem.

- Hard drive for the media?  A-ha.  I don’t have any info on that. Note to self: call Assistant Camera Baker to make sure that was included on the camera truck.

- Plan for returning all rental gear?  Sort of.  Needs to be solidified on set tomorrow.  

I think we’re in pretty good shape.  I usually have a production manager and/or production coordinator to help cover this (especially on bigger shoots when we have 30 - 50 crew and talent to organize), but since this is just a little day of pick-ups, it’s gonna be a pretty skeletal operation.

Anyway, we’ll check back in tomorrow… from La La land!