Hey yall. Wanted to share some recent work I did for the awesome outdoor company, REI. Above and below are two videos in a series of 5 that I created for their online holiday campaign. Commercials ran in lots of places… Both vids in this post were shot in the lovely town of Telluride, Colorado last spring. And Both feature a friend of mine, Marni Yamada. She’s a dual sport (snowboard and ski) X-Games veteran athlete, a ripper, and an all-around great person.
Love to get your thoughts on either or both. And we’ll do our best to answer questions in the comments below.
The rail slide above was shot entirely on the RED One camera. The halfpipe sequence below was shot on the RED for the slo-mo stuff (120 fps) and the lo-fi handheld “followcam” look from within the pipe was captured with the Nikon D3s (B&H link for product details…).
Credits, links after the jump
Athlete: Marni Yamada
Director: Chase Jarvis
Client: REI
On the cameras: Chris Bell, Scott Rinckenberger, Erik Hecht
On the edit: Erik Hecht
Music: Mad Rad in the halfpipe. Cameron Patterson on the rail slide.
I love the railslide; feels super professional,. I like the tension you capture in her face before she takes off, the detail shots, and slo mo is effective. it feels like it will encouage a gal to push her skill on a snowboard. targets the REI type of customer – not the extreme athlete. the half pipe does feel very amateurish, but may appeal to a wider, less skilled audience. the first jump is botched; the camera was too low and then there was a quick jerk to fix the angle.
thanks for the opportunity to give feedback! chase jarvis and company rocks!
I think the first ten seconds of the first video could have been cut out or tightened up somehow. Although I liked the contrast of the two different techniques in filming, the shaky/handheld seemed to drag on for too long.
Can you give me a little more detail on how you shot the RED? 2K or 4K and why? It’s been a while since I had my hands one and I can’t remember all the different combinations of fps/resolution. Also, what lens(es) were used with the RED? I’m really curious about if you decided on zoom or prime and why.
As I recall, I think we shot everything at 2K resolution and 120 fps (the RED ONE can only record 120fps at 2K resolution). Christopher Bell (the DP) has a beautiful set of Red Pro Primes (25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 100mm. All T1.8’s), so those were our lenses of choice.
I must say, I am not the biggest fan of this work, the skill of the rider is a bit lost on me. I will try to explain.
As an Art Director who has been snowboarding for 17 years, my biggest concern is it just does not have the look and feel of extreme sports. That may have been the objective, having actually visited the store in Boulder, the (to extents David Carson inspired) extreme sports look may not really fit the bill either. (One time visit when I was buying a new board, quickly moved on to the next store who knew and had passion for what they were talking about, strictly personal observation/feeling).
Another part that does not feel right is the set up of some of the shots, the distances to the subject and the choice of lens. Again, could be a certain choice of the director (to try to make it something else), normally you go with wider lenses and closer to the subject for shooting board sports. For the half pipe the set up of the Red for slow motion does not make the rider justice. A lower angle with wider lens might make it feel more powerful (I watch lots of pro stuff but also lots of amateur footage, and making it feel like the rider flies and gets more airtime is a very important part of a shot).
Third thing I feel the edit is a bit too loose, the set up is a bit too long and the cuts aren’t dramatic enough. Again the right slow motion parts will help the rider look more powerful. 53 and 54 seconds for this is too long for me, and I do not feel the shots, edits and music fits together either.
That rainbow rail and that run in the pipe is great riding, but (to me) wrong choices in both set up, gear choices and edits does not give the rider justice. It doesn’t show the stark contrast between soft snow an scary metal, or the fact that she is high above the ground in the park.
I do not know the background of the team, I’ve just followed and seen some work of the director. And pardon me if I draw the wrong conclusions here, but the apparent lack of an enthusiastic skiing/snowboarding or extreme sport person creatively involved in the process makes this feel like ‘a job someone did for the shop’. The ideas are cool, the gnarlyness of the rail and the one run in the pipe is great, but it just isn’t present in the work to me.
I sound very negative to the work, I am not. I am sure the client is happy with it. This is the things I would have tried to make different.
thx for youre thoughts. Indeed the client wanted something very different from extreme. they wanted approachable, aspirational, inclusive.
Love the concepts of both commercials. Definitely like the second commercial better because even though the first is more polished and probably the favourite of most, the editing in the second is simple and the riding is good. The simple editing makes it easier to connect with the feeling of snowboarding and the good riding is a must for the snowboard community, we will scrutinize everything. I really like that the grabs were in the right places and the girl was going big and having fun with it.
The first commercial however is a different story for me. Mainly because of the riding and editing. neither were bad but a few simple changes would make it much better. First off the riding, its awesome to see a girl ripping a boardslide on something like that but for a commercial you have to think like a judge, it wasnt turned 90 so it will lose points. Im not saying do it better because even some of the best girl pros have a hard time doing a fully 90 boardslide, but chose something (even if its not as hard) that they can do cleanly. after all a cleanly pressed 5-0 will beat a half turned boardslide anyday. showing something done cleanly and the right way will impress the snowboard community and give them the impression that the company actually knows about the sport. Youd be surprised how much this affects the decision of where to shop. It will also have a better effect on the people that go out maybe once a year, even if they dont know what it is or how it should be done, it is easy to see style and what looks good.
Second we have the editing, for most things it is awesome, but for snowboarding and the message you are trying to get across it is to complex. If you want to give the feeling of being on the slopes and its bliss to the viewer go simple on the editing. Showing about three shots of actually hitting the rail, one of the run up and getting on the rail, another of the full rail slide (very important, like showing the take-off and landing for a picture), and a last shot of the landing and reaction. why do this? because if you think back that is exactly how you break it up when you are doing it yourself. sure you can play with it but that is the basic formula. one last thing to bring the effect home would be to muffle/lower the music when she is on the rail with a nice slow mo shot and bring it back up when she is done. You guys forsure know that when you’re so concentrated and doing something like that the world and its noise disappears. Other than that the intro and showing the preparation are awesome, you really captured the focus.
all in all guys great job, both commercials look awesome and were executed with class. Just thought id share my un-adulterated thoughts from when i was watching both commercials because i am part of the market REI was wanting to reach.
if I had my “core” hat on, i’d be in sync with your thoughts. but this is not for that audience. it’s only the core crowd that needs to see the takeoff and landing of a trick (i lived in that world for a decade…). the rei audience is more forgiving – actually more curious. so we gave them a different set of things to oogle.
thanks for your thoughts!
I don’t want to be too harsh on you, but the ‘core audience is a lot bigger than it used to be. It’s also easily offended and you don’t want to do that with your opinion leaders and early adopters. Outside of the ‘core audience, everyone’s seen Shaun White in the halfpipe at the Olympics last year, or the Xgames, and so they know what good snowboarding is supposed to look like. You don’t have to get Shaun White or even go anywhere near that level, but then you should at least make it look like fun and not that this person has been psyching themselves up all year to do a poorly executed boardslide on a short rainbow rail. You can respect the ‘core audience while speaking to the masses.