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.
Oh, Telluride great mountain – not too crowded, interesting visuals, good park.
Love the feel of both; they are very different. As stated in another comment above, the first feels more refined, but the second has a cleaner edit.
I’m curious – What lens did you use on the D3s? I often ride with my camera. I’ve found that wide-angle lenses are far easier, but require you to ride closer to the subject.
In the sport you cut your teeth in, and in a place you know like the back of your hand, I expect quite a bit more. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, and assume that you were given strict limitations by the client, which stifled your creativity.
I know you hate to hear this, but it was really lacking authenticity. You’ve set the bar pretty high, let’s keep it there, huh
core audience is not the audience here chris. thanks for the kind words on authenticity – i think you’re referring to core audience for that authenticity . we did aim for AN authenticity, but the authenticity of a more aspirational, not intimidating, rather inclusive audience.
i wanted her 12 feet out of the pipe in my heart, but we had to keep it approachable. (which was a fun, different challenge i might add!)
thx for your thoughts.
I think it is funny when someone has to defend work like this. Most of the time it either works or did not. This character was boring and had no emotion to connect too. Regardless of the poor riding these spots were a fail on many levels, primarily very stale. From a director standpoint there is no connectable story. So you did not want to be “core”, well then why film weak riding in a shot sequence that felt like it was from the core. The shaky to slow mo contrast thing did not work either. It probably sounded sophisticated in your pitches, but simply does not work. The first spot is marginally better. When shooting commercials remember that every frame counts. You have very little time. These spots wasted a lot of that time with unneeded films. I can’t imagine these spots worked very well. I would not be stoked to have to sit through this pre roll. I hate to be so harsh, but you want feedback. These were extremely uninspiring spots. She does not seem approachable( bad filming, riding, editing and concept do not make someone approachable.) at the end of the day remember you can’t travel through the computer and defend these spots. You need to step it up if you truly want to be more than a still guy shooting video.
It’s not about how big she went, and I completely understand your target market on this one. When I walk in to an REI, I’m inspired to do all this great outdoor stuff. I’m no rock climber, but for some reason I want to buy all that stuff when I’m in the store. I guess that’s the feeling that I wanted from your work.
I hope I wasnt too harsh before. You are an inspiration on a daily basis, thank you.
I really liked the hand rail commercial and felt that you were pushing your creativity. I can´t say the same for the half pipe footage. The two stlyes of shooting didn´t really mix well, Follow cam to shaky and slo mo stuff too slick. I would say go all lo fi or all slick smooth camera movement etc.
interesting thought. we very intentionally mixed handheld POV footage with a different “slick” angle as a contrast….
Loved the slo-mo action on the first on a lot. Is the still shot used on the REI ad pulled from a frame? I’ve been curious what frame shots look like from the Red. I’ve only seen a few.
For some snowboard promo videos, great. As far as commercials, meh. Not sure what REI was looking for but both videos were too long and very little focus on what REI sells. It is certainly more than snowboard stuff. It’s like ‘Shot of snowboarder snowboarding, mild trick, freeze and display catchphrase and REI logo (I did like the art of these), more snowboarding, more snowboarding, cut to images of things REI sells, end’. These just seemed very dull for an outdoor adventure company commercial. Especially the second video.