The Local Flare

There are the big productions with big price tags that have creative briefs, a board of higher ups you have to please with countless rounds of Frame I/O notes. There are protocols, branding and all those other marketing words you have to use and rules you have to follow with those larger productions.

Then there are guys like Marty McDaniel who I absolutely love working with. He says, “I don’t care how you get there as long as the commercial’s theme says THIS.” That’s easy enough. That’s the only note you get.

I come up with concepts. He comes up with the money and we go to work. He opens his doors and allows me to shoot what I want. The last round of his Gold store commercials were very reality based and did well on social outlets.

When he wanted to do some commercials for the gaming store, we wanted to capitalize on the success of the previous spots but make them a little more “cinematic.”

We had our female spokesperson dressed like Chun Li from Street Fighter.

We had a customer who comes in dressed in full Batman Costume looking for the next Batman game.

We EVEN got to do Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob.

Most of the commercials are product, product, but we have these great bookends of scenes at the front and back shot in 4:3 on a Cinema camera. I can’t wait to get started putting these together.

They are kooky for local television spots and I hope they resonate with the market we are trying to pull in.

Here are some out of camera stills of some of the scenes: