On Location: 19 Crimes Wine

The opera music echoes around the wood paneled walls of the billiard room. Over by the fireplace someone is tweaking the position of a century old rolling ashtray. I regain focus and return to our current task of lighting the suit of armour in the corner. Minutes away from our first shot, I leave the set and stroll past the bowling alley and down the hall of the largest mansion I’ve ever set foot in. I find our hero talent in the servant’s kitchen –er… holding area. We’re ready to shoot.

“What started out as a three shot campaign has somehow ballooned into seven shots and seven different setups.”

We scream through our shots in the billiard room, and move on to the dining room. Followed by the grand stairway. Then the sun room. And on, and on. What started out as a three shot campaign has somehow ballooned into seven shots and seven different setups. To top it all off, we have to delicately dance around all the priceless artifacts and décor in the hundred year old mansion that is our location.

15 long hours later, the last of our gear is packed into the truck. A minor emergency ensues when we realize the wheel of cheese prop has been locked inside the mansion. I am not leaving without the cheese. The crew surrounds the house, tracks down the security guard, and the cheese is recovered. Crisis averted.

Projects this good don’t come along very often: a shoot day in a fantastic location, a great concept, a crew and creative team that push the limit to make every shot the best it can be, and above all a client that is open to such a unique campaign. My only regret is not banging out a tune on the built-in pipe organ.

Thanks to Dan Bache, Geoff Morgan and the crew at Giants & Gentlemen for such a great project. A huge thanks to our crew for making this happen: Stephen Connor at Pinpoint Locations for finding the perfect location, Anita Cane and Kirsten Reader for making the guys look their best, and to the tireless assistants Abe Roberto, Ian Patterson, Mike MacMurchy, and Spencer Robertson for all their hard work.

Oh, and I highly recommend getting your hands on a bottle of the fine wine that is 19 Crimes.

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.