The night before the first day of production we were watching the weather closely. By 9:00 pm that night we decided to push the production back a day. We were glad we did because a storm was pushing through and it rained the whole day.

The next day ended up being better but not ideal. The sky was dark most of the day and the wind was strong. We made the decision to shoot as much indoors as possible. We ended up shooting 7of the 22 shots in about 14 hours. We had 3 crew members busting their tails all day. By 8:00 pm we ran out of daylight. We high-fived and hugged to celebrate that day one was in the can. It was bittersweet as we knew we had to shoot 15 more shots the next day. It seemed daunting but we knew the outdoor shots would have less set up and move along quickly.

We started day 2 by running along very wet cow pastures trying to frame up a cow while having the minivan drive past in the background. It’s one of those shots that looked great in your head. When it comes down to making it happen, it doesn’t come easy, but we did it. After drying out our socks on the dash with the defrost on, we hopped in a lift and knocked out the shot of the van peacefully driving up to Fair Oaks Farms. At this time of day the light was perfect. As the sun got high we moved to the house for some last opening indoor shots. At about 2:00 pm we headed back to Fair Oaks to shoot the rest of the outdoor stuff in the afternoon light. As evening set in, we decided to tackle the interior & exterior minivan shots. We knew going into this we would have to experiment with lighting quite a bit. We were really happy with the end result. We closed out our second 14 hour day excited, exhausted, and relieved.

Post-production went really smooth. We knew we shot more than 30 seconds worth of great material so the biggest challenge was deciding what made the cut and what did not. The marketing team at Fair Oaks was a huge help with the decision-making. They also had great suggestions on the soundtrack. In the end we ended up with two rounds of revisions and two separate versions, a one minute version for web and a 30 second version for television. From there we did the coloring. For that we used DaVinci Resolve. For the look, we felt the spot should be feature warmer tones. The farm was naturally deep reds and greens and we wanted to match that color pallet the best we could. We received final approval a full week before deadline. For that we were grateful.

Share this Story