For their latest commercial, BT needed to capture how the speed of their Fibre-Optic Internet would have a positive effect on a regular family. A combination of creative from AVBrowne and, production from Streetmonkey pulled the whole thing together. After a few casting and recce sessions the Braniff Family were chosen.
It was really important to not interrupt the natural element of the families interactions, so New York director Mac Primo insisted that nearly all the shots would be captured as they happen, and not set-up.
This presented a challenging situation in terms of lighting, ncamera set-up and sound. We needed the family to be able to roam around their house as normal throughout the week without any kit getting in the way, and without camera/crew set-up becoming too dominating. Our gaffer came to the rescue and helped us set up 8 Kinoflos in as discrete as possible locations around the house, which hardly restricted movement at all and provided a beautiful natural light source. It was a compromise between being as unintrusive as possible and getting the best lighting/camera set-up. We did spend additional time lighting certain shots and interviews but apart from that, the Kinos did a great job.
We had three cameras on location, a combination of 60d, 7d, and 5d mkiii. Chris Heaney picked up most of the screen shots on his 5dmkiii because it dealt with any moire or aliasing issues better than the other cameras. Mac was fond of the hand held look for this commercial so we used a lot of fast prime lenses for a super shallow depth of field and let the cameras move into focus rather than pull to focus on many of the shots.
The audio setup was also quite a challenge – syncing up three DSLR cameras while being ready to shoot, run and gun style, at any time. Any shots which we knew needed audio would be slated with a ‘time of day’ digislate. This was one of the most difficult aspects of this shoot, and I’m sure our sound guy Mike McKnight, and editor Andy Keil were cursing us.
In the end, the many people involved in this production worked well together to pull of another great set of commercials…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5IVXhiqG2k
