I was scrolling through my social media feed and this Chris guy came up as a “suggested friend” once again. I had heard his name around town because he had opened his digital marketing office around the corner from Real Video. I figured it was a sign so I requested his virtual friendship.
Once we connected, he mentioned that he had a client who had a video concept that was above and beyond his capabilities and was researching production companies in the area that could handle it. He found the Real Video Production Co. website and was actually going to reach out to me later that week.
Isn’t that weird how things like that happen?
So I invited him over to the studio to discuss the project and how he thought we could help. Basically, he was developing an online platform that would network private practice dentists and assist them with their marketing needs. One major goal for the organization was to recruit a certain number of dentists onto the online platform so that they could pool together and release a Super Bowl commercial that would be followed up by a series of mailings for each participant’s specific zip code. But first things first— he needed a recruitment video that coincided with the launch of the website…which was happening in 3 weeks!
His client had an idea that involved a huge cast and some big location needs. We crunched a few numbers and quickly realized that to pull off that idea was going to be way above the proposed budget and next to impossible to pull off within a three week timeframe. So essentially, we had to go back to the drawing board.
As the creative director, I walked out of that meeting and into a quiet room with only my thoughts, a sketchbook and a pencil. I started the painful journey of creative development (I’ll write a separate blog on this in the near future). I ended up walking out of that room with 5 pretty solid concepts. Then I took those concepts to the team to see what it will technically and financially take to pull off these ideas and can they be pulled off in 3 weeks. To my surprise all five ideas passed the gauntlet.
I called Chris back into the studio the next day and pitched the 5 ideas back-to-back. A couple of concepts rose to the top but ultimately it was the client’s final decision. After some short deliberation, the concept was chosen, and we were off to the races.
One thing to note at this point of the story is that the concept that was chosen involved some pretty advanced green screen work. This was something that we had only dabbled in and didn’t have much experience with. So the next day we did a basic version of the concept in our studio and did a test shoot. We reworked the idea as a social media piece for us introducing our new post production manager, Dan. Needless to say, poor Dan hit the ground running when he agreed to join the Real crew. LOL. (view the post here)
The next seven days we were frantically on the phone building the cast, crew, securing equipment rentals, locking in a location and picking up props.
Production day went off without a hitch. Our cast and crew were amazing! The entire production took just under 10 hours. It moved like clockwork.
The next day Dan was head down in the edit bay putting the pieces together. He knocked out a client-facing rough cut in three days. To our surprise, the client had zero revisions. They loved it! Dan dove in, took a day, and did the final color correction and audio pass.
The video was delivered to a happy client on time and on budget. What more could you ask for?
Check out the final video here.