Ok! Now that the initial rant is over, let us dive into this piece and i’ll tell you a bit about how it was made. We shot it in a small lovely studio up on 28th street that shares a space with a 3d/holographics/motion company, so while I oggled their work and a few neon signs for more time that I want to admit, they set up a simple stage on the full white seamless/soundstage.

The main scene was set up:

So while I did mention being on set my real roll on this was to edit, if and when possible when we are doing small commercial shoots I have always believed it is extremely beneficial for the editor to be there. On one had you save on surprises, I know what format the video is coming in, I can suggest frame rates and dimensions, take/scene structures and on an on. And two you get to watch the subject live, hear why or if something was reshot for a specific reason, so on and so forth.

For this particular spot we played around with a 120 fps shot that the arri alexa camera we were shooting on could still output at atleast 2k.

Our biggest way to play with the footage and give the spot some depth was to control the speed, there are two super slow-mo moments (a few more where shot that didn’t make it into the end) and some closeups that just engage you with the subject a bit more (yes i am well aware we are talking about toilette paper this whole time but hey, this is advertising right?).

The end spot was a 30 and we also cut 15’s and shorter for preroll, but as previously stated, none of this ever got to see the light of day other than this small shrine to it.

Last but not least while we went through various options for the endframe we even bounced around ideas of using an actual package shot. So being the small agency that we are we took over a conference room, set up a seamless AND SHOT PLASTIC PACKAGING. I cannot emphasize that point enough because there was so much work put into muting glare and reflections that this project although a total wash, was a fun one.