BTS: Nissan Grey Cup

The lovely assistant Abe with our stand-in for the Grey Cup.

It was mid October, and there we were trying to make our shot look like a chilly scene from the Grey Cup game day - not an easy endeavour given the shoot day temperature was above 10°C. To make matters slightly more interesting, our hero prop for the shot was the one and only Grey Cup – not an item to be trifled with. Thankfully we had a few tricks up our sleeve get the shot. This campaign for Nissan came to us from Guilherme Bermejo and Nicholas Doerr over at TBWA Toronto. The main shot shows a football player kissing the Grey Cup after a chilly winning game, while his lips get stuck to the frozen metal trophy. The second shot shows players celebrating and pouring Gatorade on their coach, only what comes out of the cooler is a solid block of ice, knocking the coach unconscious.

We knew it would be the fine details that would really pull this campaign together. Beginning with the Grey Cup itself, we needed to have our talent’s lips stick to the cup, and we wanted the trophy to look frosty. Two things easily solved with a little double sided tape for the lips and some polymer special effects ice crystals for the frost. Without being sure if we could apply either of these to the actual Grey Cup, we had a backup plan to apply them to a stand-in cup we built ourselves, then transfer them to the real cup in post. In the end, we were permitted to use the actual trophy to shoot both elements, and sadly the stand-in cup never saw the limelight.

“Our final cold element was the block of ice we had custom flash frozen out of Gatorade.”

To bring us further into a cold world, we layered in some steam for the breath and the sweaty players. We then took a layer of snow and applied it to the field in post. Our final cold element appearing in the second shot was the block of ice that came from the cooler, which we had custom flash frozen out of Gatorade.

Finally, we needed to fill the grandstands with a crowd. We opted to shoot this at a CFL game in the same stadium the night before. This gave us a seamless blend with our hero shot, and kept our budget in check by eliminating the need for background talent to fill the seats.

Thanks to Gui, Nick, Rodger Eyre and the team at TBWA for such a great creative project. And thanks to Natalia Zurawska and Kirsten Reader for making the guys looks like sweaty athletes, and to the crew: Dwain Barrick, Abe Roberto, Ian Patterson, Sam Grant, and Spencer Robertson for another long day.

The Cup caretaker carefully places the trophy onto the rig.

The set on location at Varsity Stadium in Guelph.

BTS: Nissan SickKids

What do you do when you have three days notice to pull off a location car shoot? Well, after sheer panic and some frantic scheduling, the adrenalin kicks in and there's no more time to waste. The call came in from the folks at TBWA and the self proclaimed, ultra laid back team of Dan Bache and Matt Williamson. Seemed like a bit of a misnomer considering the lightning pace of this project. This particular shot was highlighting Nissan's sponsorship of SickKids hospital in Toronto. The concept involved a young patient holding her hand out the window of a moving car, playing with the wind on her way home from the hospital. A simple visual that pretty much anyone who's been in a car can identify with.

First and foremost, we made the decision to shoot on location. Sounds like a no brainer, but often times cars will be shot in studio, then dropped into a location background in post. By shooting everything on location, right away we have a more realistic feel to the shot, showing subtle environmental reflections throughout the body panels of the car.

I had pitched the agency on shooting into the sun, to create a warm and positive feeling. As luck would have it, with our shoot only days away, the forecast was looking terrible. With two of our three pre-production days spent location scouting, lo and behold on the day before the shoot there were blue skies. We jumped at the opportunity to head out and shoot a few sunny backgrounds. Consider it an insurance policy in case the weather didn't cooperate on the shoot day.

An outtake from our background shots the day before the shoot. I always think these blurred road shots have an interesting artistic sensibility just on their own.

In order to make the car appear moving, we needed to have a background that shows motion blur. While it's possible to blur a shot in post, there's no substitute for the real thing. So we hop in the car with yours truly hanging out the trunk shooting long, blurred shots of an empty road. Nothing like an exhilarating shot out the back of a car to add some excitement to the madness of our three day pre-production.

“There we were, in the pouring rain, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day.”

Sure enough, when we show up on our shoot day, the rain is pouring down. Given we were on a very tight budget, we had a small crew, and very little provisions to deal with rain. While it was great to have the sunny backgrounds to fall back on, we had one major hurdle to deal with: rain drops on the car. A tarp over the car was out of the question due to reflections and colour casts. We decided to fly a large sheet of clear plastic to protect the vehicle from the rain, while still giving us a realistic sky reflection in the car. Well, not only is a large sheet of plastic good for blocking rain, it's even better at picking up wind and almost blowing over our entire set. It was all hands on deck from that point forward.

There we were, in the pouring rain, with a battery light acting as our sun, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day. It was an endless task wiping down stray raindrops from the car. Dan sent a snapshot of our soggy production to Creative Director Allen Oke. It's all part of the act, I reassured Dan.

Coffee toting Art Director Dan Bache snapped this picture of our drenched hero car.

After getting our shot with the talent, there appeared to be a break in the clouds. Could it be? If we removed the plastic rain cover, there was no time to reset it, not to mention we had no more dry towels left to wipe up any more rain. A few moments of quick contemplation, and we decided to strike the plastic. With the crew moving in hyper speed, we banged off all the frames we needed, giving us some clean body shots to build our final image. The gamble paid off.

With just one day to work on post, we needed to move fast. After some serious screen time, a session of revisions with Dan at the pub, and one very late night, we had our final image. All in all, not too shabby for having shot in the pouring rain.

Thanks to Dan Bache and Matt Williamson for another great project. And to the hardworking, soaking wet crew of Aaron Hoskins, Nick Wong and Daniel Garcia, we couldn't have pulled it off without you guys.

The final ad for Nissan’s sponsorship of SickKids.

BTS: Hunting + fishing lodges for Canadian Tire

It's not every day that someone comes asking you to shoot moose urine, taxidermy fish, and a life-size coyote decoy. Frankly, I didn't even know moose urine was a product you could buy in stores, but that's beside the point. So when Kathryn Brown over at TAXI called me up to shoot this project, I jumped at the chance. The campaign was promoting Canadian Tire's new hunting and fishing section, and consisted of eight ads. Our task was to shoot rustic lodges, and show the new CT products alongside some classic cabin knickknacks and decor. The idea was to tell the whole story showing only what you would see on the wall of each lodge. With the talented Michael Seigers art directing, it was hard to go wrong.

“We made the choice to shoot the entire production from the top down.”

Having a typically short and frantic timeline, we had to design our production quickly. The first major decision was to shoot in studio, as the prospect of finding eight suitable locations was not within our budget. Next, we made the choice to shoot the entire production from the top down. This meant laying out everything on the floor and building the walls in a horizontal world. We did this in order to allow maximum flexibility and speed when fixing our props on the wall, especially some of the bigger taxidermy items.

One of our eight wall sets, built on the ground with the camera directly above.

It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns however, as there were other challenges involved in shooting top down. Getting a realistic arrangement of items sitting on a shelf with gravity working against you is no small task, as our prop stylist will attest to. Beyond that, with the camera rigged directly above our set, we were locked into our framing and could not look through the camera once we started laying props on the set. Thanks to a trusty iPad app, we were able to wirelessly see each frame, allowing minor tweaks and adjustments without having to move back and forth to the computer monitor repeatedly.

Working against gravity to arrange certain props was a constant challenge.

“The clients needed the ability to reposition and resize all of the products and props in post.”

A project like this really lives and dies with the props, and it was important that we didn't come up short in this department. Enter Christina Yan, prop stylist extraordinaire. As always, she went far over and above, and sourced an endless variety of supporting props to build and dress the sets. After some creepy trips to taxidermists' basements, many drawn out conversations with chatty antique dealers, and endless runs to suppliers all over the city, we managed to get all our props sourced and our backgrounds ready.

A second frame was shot of all props against blue to use when building masks in post.

What made this shoot particularly challenging, was the fact that the clients needed the ability to reposition and/or resize all of the products and props in post. When considering our options for how to accomplish this, it was clear we wanted to avoid shooting all the products separately and assembling the entire shot in post, as this will often look digital and fake. So, in order to create the most realistic looking final image, we decided to shoot all the products and props in place on the hero wooden backgrounds. We then carefully slid chroma-key blue paper in behind each item, giving us a second frame to use when building the masks in post.

When we wrapped our first of three shoot days, we clocked in at 17 hours. Without the tireless efforts of our great crew, Nick Wong, Aaron Hoskins, and Abe Roberto, we'd probably still be stuck in the studio. All in all, a complex production to put together, but we still managed to have a little fun while doing it! After many hours assembling the final images in post, the campaign came out looking great, with a lot of positive feedback from the good folks at Canadian Tire.

One of the final ads in the campaign.

Aaron Hoskins man handles the moose!

Ninja colour chart.