VIDEO SHOOT EXPECTATIONS
On a humid summer morning, a white Chevy Astro van backs into a quiet loading dock – each of the van’s 136,000 miles glistening in the cloudless sky. The doors open. Gear pours out. Clients’ jaws drop.
It never gets old. No matter how many shoots we do, inevitably, our clients are always amazed at “all of the stuff” we bring. They gawk at our hand truck – pushed to its 500 lb. max. Stare at our cart carrying sandbags that collectively weigh more than they do. And eye the countless bags of equipment strapped to our backs.
Video production is just that – a production. It takes time and the right equipment to capture the perfect images to represent our client’s companies. But more importantly, it matters how we use that time and equipment to create the right images.
Often times, it requires scores of pieces of equipment to make a shot work. Maybe it’s a scrim to cut down the key light on a white shirt. Or throwing a dimmer on a 300-watt Arri light to get the right element to pop in the background. There’s a method to our madness. Nine times our of ten, we’ll use every piece of equipment we bring on set. Not because we lugged it there to begin with, but because we need it to make our clients’ shots look the way we want them to: just right.
We’ve collectively spent decades learning the subtle nuances of each piece of equipment. Learning exactly what they can do, and why they come out of the van in the first place (trust me… we don’t want to carry more than we have to). But just because I have a hammer doesn’t mean I know how to build a house. (that said – give our crew a 5-Ton grip truck, and we’ll make your hair catch fire…)
I almost miss the days when we used to roll up to a shoot with a couple lights, a C-stand and a boom pole. Almost. We’ve added so much since then. We’ve constantly been updating our equipment list – it might be as simple as getting a washer for the boom pole, or something more in-depth, like selecting the right tripod for our cameras – our equipment are our tools. We use them to the best of our abilities.
Let us build the right shots for you.