Anatomy of an Advertising Shoot
Greetings from Phoenix. (I'm sitting in a Days Inn about 20 minutes outside of Phoenix as I write this.)
Most of the time, I'm posting about one of the various weddings that I'm doing. This time of year, the weddings have slowed to a trickle so if I wait until my next wedding, you might be waiting a long time before I have something new to report. Instead, I figured that I'd write about an advertising shoot that I'm in the midst of. As many of you know, I had shot advertising for many years before shooting weddings and I still do several ad shoots a year.
Ad shoots are much different from weddings. With a wedding, I pretty much show up and shoot. With an ad shoot, it's like I'm planning the wedding and then shooting it. This photo shoot is for a higher-end housing development in the Phoenix area. It's my responsibility to scout the locations, hire the talent (models), arrange for props and wardrobe, and finally bring it all together so that I can record something (hopefully) amazing on film. No small task.
Here's a shot of the main street within the development.
The good news is that I have a small army to help me. Tomorrow, I'll be doing a location scout with the account exec from the ad agency and a representative of the client. In the meantime, I've got my producer working on getting talent lined up from the talent agencies and I'll have a separate crew putting together a casting call for the people that we want to see. In addition, I'll have separate wardrobe and prop stylists to pull that end together. The ad agency will help with the concepting and finally, i'll have a crew of assistants to get things done on the shoot days.
People often mention that they could never handle the pressure of photographing a wedding. I guess because of my background in advertising photography, I've never thought of shooting weddings as being that much pressure. Trying to plan a big wedding in a week is what pulling off a big ad shoot is like. And with over $100k riding on the shoot, it has to be done right. Fortunately, this ain't my first barbeque. ;-)
Today, I spent the day just cruising around the development so that I could get a feel for the place. I had my shot list and was looking for locations that would work. The tower and flag below will probably work great for a Fourth of July parade that we'll be setting up.
I'd be happy using "real people," but the client decided that they wanted to hire agency talent. (Trying to cast 20 plus models in three days is going to be a challenge even going through talent agencies.) Still, just walking around, I was able to capture some fun, but real moments.
Your typical scouting shots are just boring, here-it-is snapshots. I, of course, got bored of that so I began getting a little artsy with my compositions. Eventually, I just turned the day into an art project of sorts.
Once the sun set, the light was amazing. It rained earlier in the day so there was that beautiful desert light getting the clouds to just pop with yellows and pinks.
That's it for now. As things progress, I'll keep the blog updated. We're shooting this weekend and into the following week. There's a lot of work to be done between now and then though. I return to San Diego tomorrow and then will come back out on Friday morning. Wish me luck!
Most of the time, I'm posting about one of the various weddings that I'm doing. This time of year, the weddings have slowed to a trickle so if I wait until my next wedding, you might be waiting a long time before I have something new to report. Instead, I figured that I'd write about an advertising shoot that I'm in the midst of. As many of you know, I had shot advertising for many years before shooting weddings and I still do several ad shoots a year.
Ad shoots are much different from weddings. With a wedding, I pretty much show up and shoot. With an ad shoot, it's like I'm planning the wedding and then shooting it. This photo shoot is for a higher-end housing development in the Phoenix area. It's my responsibility to scout the locations, hire the talent (models), arrange for props and wardrobe, and finally bring it all together so that I can record something (hopefully) amazing on film. No small task.
Here's a shot of the main street within the development.
The good news is that I have a small army to help me. Tomorrow, I'll be doing a location scout with the account exec from the ad agency and a representative of the client. In the meantime, I've got my producer working on getting talent lined up from the talent agencies and I'll have a separate crew putting together a casting call for the people that we want to see. In addition, I'll have separate wardrobe and prop stylists to pull that end together. The ad agency will help with the concepting and finally, i'll have a crew of assistants to get things done on the shoot days.
People often mention that they could never handle the pressure of photographing a wedding. I guess because of my background in advertising photography, I've never thought of shooting weddings as being that much pressure. Trying to plan a big wedding in a week is what pulling off a big ad shoot is like. And with over $100k riding on the shoot, it has to be done right. Fortunately, this ain't my first barbeque. ;-)
Today, I spent the day just cruising around the development so that I could get a feel for the place. I had my shot list and was looking for locations that would work. The tower and flag below will probably work great for a Fourth of July parade that we'll be setting up.
I'd be happy using "real people," but the client decided that they wanted to hire agency talent. (Trying to cast 20 plus models in three days is going to be a challenge even going through talent agencies.) Still, just walking around, I was able to capture some fun, but real moments.
Your typical scouting shots are just boring, here-it-is snapshots. I, of course, got bored of that so I began getting a little artsy with my compositions. Eventually, I just turned the day into an art project of sorts.
Once the sun set, the light was amazing. It rained earlier in the day so there was that beautiful desert light getting the clouds to just pop with yellows and pinks.
That's it for now. As things progress, I'll keep the blog updated. We're shooting this weekend and into the following week. There's a lot of work to be done between now and then though. I return to San Diego tomorrow and then will come back out on Friday morning. Wish me luck!
Labels: advertising work
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