We did a job recently with the ad agency Noble for their client Reckitt who makes Frank’s Red Hot, French’s Mustard and Cattleman’s BBQ sauce. It was quite the challenge on a number of levels. The main reason for the challenge was timing. As happens so often in this business we did not get approval on the job until 4 days before we had to shoot and yet we needed to shoot 12 images that required multiple locations and dozens of models. Oh, and they had a very limited budget...Oh, and we were shooting 2 other jobs before this one. Under any normal circumstance this would not have been possible due to not enough time to scout or cast that many people and locations. The only reason it worked was because of the databases we have been building of models and locations and my eight year on-going relationship with Noble who trusted I could pull it off with the resources I had on hand… because I said I could.

For the last year we have been asked on numerous occasions to get models at a price most professional models wouldn’t even consider. It is happening, unfortunately, more often than it should, and while we always try to get the best possible price for all our models sometimes we are forced to go another route. This job had no where near the budget for 12 models which was what we needed so in addition to using the same models for more than one shot we had to find “real talent” models who were starting out or simply enjoyed doing it as a second job. We have now done this a number of times and in the process built a database of all these people that we can email to a client immediately. In fact, we had done some of this casting for another job with Noble on Sam’s Club so they knew some of the people we were considering.

The next hurdle was locations. I have been shooting in restaurants in the Boston area now for nine years and along the way shot many of them for a location database as well as developing some great relationships with the owners and Chefs of these places. The trick was to find places that worked for more than one shot and/or be close to each other since we would have to move a very large crew from one to the next. Again, Noble trusted that I could pull it off.

The final challenge ended up being lighting since I ended up needing to make one of the locations look more like there were lots of TV’s lighting it. We gelled a number of strobes with blue for the TV light on my main subject Victor and then had 4 others around the bar in different areas with warming gels to give the bar an overall lighting effect and then one final light with no gel and a tight grid spot on the wing in Victors hand to light the food which was most important. The image was supposed to be over the top for Frank’s. Victor who I worked with on Sam’s Club (October 2008 blog) was, of course, up to the task.

Here is another final ad they did for Franks – also supposed to be “over the top” (in more ways than one….)

So there wasn’t much pressure on this job…four days, five locations, 12 models and 12 shots, it made for a busy pre-production! The pressure, by the way, I put on myself, mostly because if I say I can do something, I make damn sure I can do it well, otherwise I won’t take the job.

That said there were moments, when with numerous changes from the client side and no time to be wasted, that the art director Rob and I felt a little stress while waiting for them to make up their minds about this or that. Hey, it happens all the time on shoots, but then when it did on this one , Rob and I decided to have some fun and take a shot of the two us and the account executive Darcy and send it back to his bosses (and my friends) Dan Stewart and Steve Popp at Noble.

For those of you who are squeamish or your humor tends to lean towards the lighter side– stop here! For everyone else I hope you have relationships with your art directors as trusting as the one Rob and I have.

Don’t worry no art directors or account executives were harmed in the filming of this production…at least not physically.