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“Get That 6/49 Feeling Photoshoot” with DDB Canada and BCLC

 

 

BCLC Lotto 6/49 Photoshoot

“Get that 6/49 Feeling!”

There was a lot of planning that had to happen fast with this shoot as we only had 5 days from being awarded the shoot to executing the job for the client. The team started lining up some of the parts before confirmation that we had the job because the deadline was so short. The first was bringing a producer on to the shoot as there were alot of moving parts to coordinate. The shoot required two female and one male talent. So we had to cast 5 options with the producer for each demographic to send to DDB and then the agency selected the chosen talent with the Lotto 6/49 clients. To save time we had the talent submit videos of themselves acting as if they had just checked their lotto ticket and running through the emotions from disbelief to  joy, happiness, and excitement (Watching the videos was pretty entertaining in of itself). I think that our biggest challenge was finding the talent in such a short time period as this was a union job and we first had to cast union talent before non-union talent or prove we had exhausted all the union options before we could use non-union talent.  

For the shooting part, the client needed to have options for different emotional states and was considering high resolution video and then pulling frames from that, however we convinced them that we could achieve something similar by shooting at 11 fps and have lots of moments to choose from. To be certain this was achievable we went to Beau Photo, the local rental house here in Vancouver and setup my camera (Nikon D850) with the Profoto Pro 10 packs and did some testing. They were more than capable of keeping up with this frame rate at a power level of around 6 on the dial. This was not shooting in HSS mode, we did test that way but it would have needed a lower power and the color temperature really shifted when doing so. This could have been corrected on the RAW NEF file had we needed to shoot HSS.

Concept

The single minded thought of this shoot was to capture the joy of playing the lottery. The concept here was to unlock the positive emotions that are strongly connected to winning and to capture authentic reactions of what people would look like after finding out that they’ve won. We attempted to communicate the genuine excitement and joy of playing the lottery. We wanted to convey the authenticity and realistic impression that you too could experience the joy of playing/winning one day.

Shoot Day 

My assistant and I set up and tested the lighting the day before and were all ready. We assumed all would be smooth sailing on the morning of the shoot because of our extensive preparations, however I received a phone call from the producer at 5:30 am with horrible news that one of the Women talent had been in a bad car accident at 1 am and was in the hospital with a back injury. We stayed in touch with her husband to keep up to date with her condition as we were very concerned for her. Immediately we started reaching out to the agents of the other top females we casted in hopes that they would get back in time and be available for our 8 am start. Luckily we confirmed another female talent and we were able to move the schedule around with one of the other actors we were shooting to make it all work out. Thankfully the original talent’s injuries were not life threatening and she was out of the hospital and home later that same day to recover. Her accident even made the morning news as her car even caught on fire,  just nuts.

For capturing the images I used my Nikon D850 with the additional battery grip as we needed to be able to shoot fast and capture images in 11 frame/sec bursts as the talent was playing out their action of winning the lottery. (These could also be used later to make GIF videos)

I chose the Profoto Pro 10 packs on this particular shoot as they were able to keep up with the 11 fps of the camera, which we needed to capture the full range of emotions for the ad campaign. The Power setting was at 6 on the packs which gave us an aperture of F11 on the camera needed to get the depth of field I wanted.

For the key light I used the Mola Setti beauty dish with diffusion which gave a slightly softened hard light on the subject’s face and we had a 3x4ft soft box in front on the ground as a fill light. We also had one strip light as a kicker on camera right and one Profoto pro-head with a reflector directly behind the talent to light  the background.

Here is a full list of the gear we used:

– Nikon D850 with MB-D18 grip to achieve 11 FPS

– Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art lens

-Tethertools TetherPro USB 3.0 to Female Active Extension

– (2) Profoto Pro 10 Pack

– (4) Profoto Pro-heads

– Profoto Reflector

– Mola Setti Beauty Dish with Sock

– 3×4 ft softbox

– Medium strip box

– Reel FX Fan + Hair dryer

– 15 inch MacBook Pro Touch Bar with 27-inch LG UltraFine 5K Display

This was a fairly big budget project so shooting tethered was a must as we had the clients working closely with us confirming the talent was giving the range of emotions required in the brief. The client was able to quickly see the images coming onto the screens and work with the digital tech to go through and confirm that we got the shot or ask us to shoot more of a particular emotion. Tethering also helped to make sure the lighting was keeping up with the camera at 11 fps and that the images were sharp. We had about 1.5 hours of shooting per actor and shot 1400 images of each actor in that time, I know crazy right? I couldn’t believe we shot that much. Thank you Profoto and Nikon for making some amazingly fast and reliable gear. Thankfully it was the agency who had to go through and narrow down the selects to present to the client.

Post processing was relatively straight forward. Steve Pinter the retoucher had to lightly edit the skin so they would look as natural as possible. Hair that obscured the talents face or didn’t flow right had to be digitally moved. Replacing the background was more challenging since the hair had to work on both light and dark backgrounds.



 

To be honest I was also a little nervous as this shoot was slightly out of my comfort zone because I was working with a bigger agency on the shoot. I was confident I could achieve the images required but I hadn’t worked with so many people from the agency on set in a long time, there is always some added pressure when there are that many eyes on you. To overcome this, I pulled from many years of experience as well as built a competent team of professionals that I knew would be able to exceed all expectations. In the end it all worked out amazing and the clients were thrilled. The ads are currently running and I am now ready for the next big job to come my way.

 

 

 

Photography Team

Photographer: Erich Saide
Photo Assistant: Vicente Ferreira

Producer: Rick Etkin
Digital Tech: Richard Aimes
HMU: Talysia Ayala
Post Production: Steve Pinter
Craft Services/Catering: Lucie Lareau

DDB/Client Team

Account Coordinator: Lindsay Tobias
Junior Art Director: Anjuli Macasinag
Copywriter: Ella Dalling
Senior Business Manager DDB: Roger Nairn

 

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