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Best of 2018

Filming in 2018 brought us to seven countries and eighteen states on behalf of universities, non-profits, startups, Fortune 500 companies, and professional tennis tournaments.

Super Blue Blood Moon

On February 1, 2018 a blue supermoon and a blood moon occurred in tandem. We positioned ourselves using a moonrise iPhone app to capture the lunar path passing behind the Bank of America Corporate Center in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina. Using a 400mm lens and shooting in 4k ultra high definition, we put the clip on Instagram. Overnight we were contacted by ABC News, CNN.com, The Washington Post, HLN, Reuters and other smaller outlets for publication. Combined, the clip reached millions of people resulting in a lot of earned media exposure for T&T through television, news websites YouTube embeds, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Hammock Coast
Sometimes we get the opportunity to work locally in the Carolinas. We completed a seven ad CVB series of short web videos that promote South Carolina coastal community tourism. Shrimp, fishing, egrets, gators, kayaking, Spanish moss, golf, old plantation homes. It was a great project to be tasked with.

Return to China
Coming back to Sias International University was unexpected impossible to turn down. Sias is where we first started dabbling in video production. One of our earliest uploads to YouTube was a minor viral hit in 2008. It was exciting to be flown back to Zhengzhou, China to film a piece promoting the 20th anniversary celebration of the university. It was a whirlwind two weeks. But the freedom to fly our Inspire2 above the unique architecture of the “East meets West” campus and thousands of marching students is a memory we will not soon forget.

Camp Greystone
Our involvement with Greystone dates back to 2014 when we filmed our first high-energy summer camp video. Since that year, other elite summer camps have continued to be part of our June-August workload. In 2018 however, we were tasked with creating a Greystone mini-doc in preparation for their centennial year. It’s an absolutely amazing camp. Excellent staff, facilities, programs and location. Interviewing campers, their moms and grandmothers throughout the summer was a pleasure. It’s not often we are provided the opportunity to film eight+ hours of interviews and really take the time to craft a narrative. The archival 8mm clips and photos worked well when match-cut against the 2018 camp activity footage. This piece took the most time to film and edit of any of our work over the past year, and we hope it shows. In addition to this 5min video, we completed another highlight and a piece on camp being a safe place for teens to detox from phones and social media.

The Institute for Speech and Debate
The nation’s best speech and debate summer camp program needed a 30sec commercial and two new social media videos promoting their offerings. The pieces were filmed at UNC Chapel Hill entirely in 4k using a Canon C200 and 1Dxii. The interviews are probably our favorite from 2018 because of our lighting choices pairing window light with an Arri Skypanel S30c and large softbox. The videos were successful and we returned to the ISD camps later in the summer of 2018 to capture broll and more interviews for 2019 ads.

Shot Clock
Each year at Yale for The Connecticut Open we try to outdo our previous all-access attempts at a funny viral video. This is a tennis tournament that provides a great deal of freedom with regard to what we are able to do with the players. This piece is a significant win because we again wrote a script, filmed and edited a piece that was not only popular with players and tennis journalists but became the most-viewed video ever released by the tournament. It helped to double the number of Facebook followers and did even better numbers on Twitter. Alongside PR guru, Katie Spellman, we executed what could safely be called the most successful tennis all-access video from any smaller tournament (WTA or ATP) in 2018.

Indian Wells

Despite working sixteen hour days in the California desert, The BNP Paribas Open somehow always feels like the best of vacations. I guess that’s why it’s called “tennis paradise.” We increased our presence this year adding the ever intrepid Ian Davidson to our ranks. This enabled us to double our video output to 26 videos in 13 days. Additional work was created to be viewed on video boards throughout the site. The below three-minute piece hopefully ended up being one of the most valuable videos we completed for Indian Wells. (Footage from T&T, ATP Media, 312Media with production assistance from HolderMedia Inc.) The video is now used as a tool by the IWTG to help land potential new sponsors for 2019 and beyond.

Conferences

MSD’s Better Together convention took place at the storied Miami Fountainebleau luxury hotel. We were invited to film for 309 Productions, another multimedia production company, from Boston, MA. Editing on the below piece was completed by T&T friend and owner of 309, Lauren Foley.

The TEAMS Conference and Expo is an annual four-day convention for the sports event industry. We have now served this event five times. 2018 showcased Louisville, Kentucky as the host city. It is an exciting day to go from a green screen shoot to filming racehorses at Churchill Downs to filming world-class BMX cyclists, to Olympian Shawn White and then a bourbon distillery. TEAMS really packs in the activity in addition to educational sessions and networking. This video was filmed by Drew Carlisle and edited by Javier Mosquera.

Tootsie’s Fashion Show
The River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas hosted a “Spring Is Served” themed fashion show this past April. Everything about this piece ended up going well. Note our use of real prisms waved in front of the camera lenses to refract light and create transition points for the edited footage.

UNCC
We often work for and collaborate with advertising agencies to provide video production capabilities. Little Red Bird out of Charlotte, NC has been tapping us for projects since 2013. This was a particularly complex one to tackle. We had actors read University of North Carolina at Charlotte degree requirements from a teleprompter against a white seamless backdrop at that UNCC campus. That coupled with some drone footage and stock broll of campus then turned into an exercise in motion graphics to best present the information. Kudos to Tim Paulson of LRB for his vision and our own Ian Davidson for the motion graphics execution. This series ended up producing 12 unique program videos for UNCC.

The Nest
Another example of a local commercial is this 30sec ad that ran in the Columbia, SC television market. On behalf of Sting Creative we produced a next-day-edit piece for The Nest, a plumbing fixture and electrical appliance showroom for Cregger Company.

Clawguard
Here’s a startup in the pet industry with door guards and tape in their product lineup. We were taking product photography in a dark fulfillment center warehouse and on the fly decided to shoot an explainer video with the CEO introducing their new furniture shields. It turned out okay for being a one-take/no planning piece.


Laver Cup
One of the great thrills of 2018 was our involvement with The Laver Cup and the strong support staff at Tennis Australia. The Team Europe versus Team World event was an incredible competition held at the United Center in Chicago this past September. But first, in March, we filmed a promo video of epic proportions. It was logistically challenging with players arriving on separate planes, separate cars, celebrity guests, amazing Windy City locations all filmed in five hours with all editing completed two days later. Thanks to everyone from MVTPR, and TA for helping make this video possible.

JP Morgan hosted another Midtown Manhattan promo in August, the week prior to the US Open. Here’s our 2018 promo featuring Novak Djokovic, John McEnroe and Rod Laver.

As one would expect, the Navy Pier gala the week of the event was very classy. This piece involved four cameras, interviews, a stage presentation and had completion deadline of that next morning. I share this one because we wrapped and then stayed up all night cutting the footage.

Cliffs of Moher

This place often tops many lists of the most beautiful places in the world. We were not sure how DJI’s little Mavic Air would fair against the North Atlantic winds. It acquitted itself nicely and captured many views unseen by the 1.5 million annual visitors.

Roland-Garros

Here’s a preview of some of our French Open work. For the second year we returned to Paris in the spring. Unlike at Indian Wells or Wimbledon, we are not part of the same-day-edit social/digital team. Instead we are hired, alongside two other contracted production companies, to provide carefully crafted tennis match action videos. This time we were assigned to cover the younger up-and-coming next-gen players. After culling through the sixteen hours of footage, ten 30-60second videos were completed in November of 2018. They will be released and used by the FFT later in 2019 to excite fans prior to and during the clay court season.

Wimbledon

The Championships is the highest profile video job we are tasked with annually. We are honored and thankful for the opportunity to continue serving the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. This year we began creating mini-docs (scripted by the brilliant Leigh Walsh) using archival footage. Between April and the end of the tournament in July, we shot and edited over 40 videos for The Championships.

Part of the joy of working Wimbledon is that we are asked to do a little of everything. Each day is different. From filming the 2018 jewelry collection, to a proper British afternoon tea, to celebrity tours and of course match action on Centre Court. It’s the best tennis venue, the cleanest visuals, and a fantastic place to work. The Wimbledon Social/Digital team and IBM expertly and consistently stay on top of trends providing fans with the best experience possible.

Many of our videos achieved 1 to 5 million views on different platforms. The below piece is a themed video we have repeated annually since 2015. “Finishing Touches” is always completed right when tennis fans start to turn their attention to Wimbledon, but there are not yet matches on television. That, plus shares from ESPN, the BBC etc probably helped bump the numbers up on social.

This year we experimented with longer form cinematic storytelling on IGTV featuring the best match action paired with press conference post-match soundbites. Timing-wise it worked out well that we were able to cover the Nadal/Delpo match because with many dramatic dives by both players, it was one of the most exciting matches in 2018. The Women’s Final was a rematch of 2016 and was also a treat to film. Both of the below pieces filled a programming hole that fans seem to appreciate and is not otherwise provided by commentary and live coverage.

For this one note Gwri Pennar’s very-helpful overhead shots from the Centre Court crow’s nest.

Jodi Benson (The Voice of Ariel, The Little Mermaid)

Let us end this post with our most successful video ever. We also own and operate a wedding cinematography business filming 30-40 events annually. Seldom does the wedding work end up on Tried & True, but this piece was special. The video below is now our most-viewed content ever with 17+ million views and counting. We were filming a Jersey Shore wedding reception and the father-of-the-bride surprised his daughter with The REAL Little Mermaid. She sang “Part of Your World” in addition to other Disney standards. It was Jodi Benson’s first time singing at the wedding of someone who was not in her family. The fact that it was a surprise, that the bride’s reaction was perfect, that Jodi Benson performed flawlessly and that the recording was solid made us suspect that the piece had some potential to go viral. Never did we imagine 17 million views though! It ended up snowballing through Facebook and later aired on a number of TV news shows, was embedded with articles throughout the web and so on. It was a great privilege to be there in that moment to film something that Disney fans all over the world have now seen.

Additional work was completed in 2018 for Thornwell Home for Children, Monarch Medical Technologies, Pierce’s Project, PlaySight Technologies, The Western and Southern Open, US Men’s Clay Court Championship, The International Tennis Hall of Fame, Häagen-Dazs, The NFL, Porsche and Fila Sportswear. Thank you very much to our all of our clients, collaborators, contractors and connections in the creative and corporate worlds for making last year our best year ever.

Here’s to 2019!

Hype & Recap Videos

Hype videos are meant to built interest, suspense and generally get an audience excited. ESPN is great at this. They mine hours of material and use footage of players bellowing, ripping their shirts, throwing their rackets etc. This hype video was built out of the two semi-finals matches I filmed before the final. We lit the player interviews with one ice light as a key and used room ambience for the fill. The harsh light worked well and the catch looks good in their eyes.

A tricky part about this hype piece is that it’s objectively difficult to tell which player you are watching in the supporting broll. Both men are late 20s, bearded, caucasian, American men wearing the same kit from Asics. They have a similar vocal tamber too which prompted me to flip their interviews in post so that there’s an additional visual clue as to whom is speaking.

The music for this piece came from a number of sfx I have purchased over the years. Instead of picking a track, I layered soundbeds to match the broll. The drone footage is from our new Mavic Air. We were working alongside the NFL photographer, Aaron Sprecher. I showed him how to fly, let him fly and he bought a drone the same day.

The Championship Point and subsequent “pool jump” were must-haves. It was tricky finding an unobstructed view from the stadium that would definitely capture Steve Johnson’s win over Tennys Sandgren. Thankfully I anticipated the right location, managed to get some unique backlit footage of the trophy and ran to the pool to place three GoPros preset to shoot 4k 60fps, 1080p 240fps and 2.7k 120fps. Additionally I ran a wide 5dmk4 at 60fps and the 1dxii at 120fps from the platform directly across from the jump. It was quite a rushed job. Thankfully the exposure, the focus, the framing on everything turned out better than expected. Not pictured here is a looping GIF-like video of Stevie J jumping in and out, shooting out of the water in reverse etc. It performed very well on Twitter. It’s always a little frustrating when the simple, goofy videos perform better than the ones that take more time. Aaron and I finished the day with a private photo/video shoot with Steve Johnson with the champion’s chalice. It was cool to be able to congratulate him on his then upcoming wedding and winning the tournament.

Houston Tournament Coverage

The US Men’s Clay Court Championship is an annual ATP event that has been played in some form on clay in Texas since 1910. It’s a small, but very upscale event. The Players Party video above showcases the spared no expense food, entertainment and everyone at the country club is required to dress entirely in white.

The River Oaks Report was a daily show I produced with Blair Henley. Blair prepped questions and talking points for Tennis Channel guests. The video above was filmed at the Tennis Channel desk at the tournament and lit with Arri Skypanels. Over the one week tournament, I managed to film and edit 20 videos. Some were creative, some were short, ten were similar to the video above.

Ladies Day. This is my attempt to make an engaging Facebook Cover video out of a 1hr event at the event’s Centre Court. The slowmo toss of the balls is a visual that seems to capture viewer’s attention. Because this tournament was new to video in 2018, I pulled out all the stops to try to make the videos short and sticky in an effort to build an online following and/or buzz.

Sponsor obligations are always part of any tournament video coverage. Above is a cornball piece for on on-grounds shop with lines very capably delivered by the consummate professional, Blair Henley.

The Bryan Bros are always playing and everyone always wants videos of them. It’s tricky because we cannot use their covers of popular songs. So finding music that works is always a challenge. In this case the larger challenge was harsh pink flood lights that washed the band in one tone. The video is black and white to compensate for the pinkness.

Here’s a piece that took multiple trips to film and was a good distance from the posh River Oaks community. A number of the American male tennis players banded together to give back to the community after Hurricane Harvey hit at the end of August/early Sept 2017.

Over multiple days I shot players responding to the question of what they are superstitious about. It was Friday the 13th that week and the video was released that day. I used an 80s knockoff of Thriller to tie it together. The use of the font “Impact” was intended to make the video meme-able. Hopefully somewhere out there are screen caps and looping GIFs from this piece. It probably did end up performing the best out of the videos featured here. It was shared by other tennis outlets with larger online fan bases.

Isner hit his 10000th career ace in Houston during the tournament. (Only the 4th person to accomplish this). I like the cop walking off with the ball in a ziplock bag to preserve for Newport and the Tennis Hall of Fame. 🙂

River Oaks Fashion Show

Instead of letterboxing, selectively we will sometimes make a video much wider than a 16:9 aspect ratio. I think it suits this fashion show piece well. For this piece we shot almost entirely at 4k at 60fps using the Canon 85mm f/1.2 and the 70-200mm. Most of the light leaks used for transition points were done in camera by waving a small prism in front of the lens. The 4k files on the 1Dxii eat through data. We shot 80GB in 1.5hrs of coverage! Also used throughout for the moving shots is the Sony A7sii on a MOVI M5 gimbal by Freefly. It was a privilege to cover one of the most well-run outdoor fashion shows in the south.


 

Laver Cup Chicago Promo


Tennis Australia handles the PR and social media promotion for the Laver Cup regardless of which continent the event is played. We thoroughly enjoyed working for them at a promotional event in Manhattan during the summer of 2017. Thankfully they asked us back and invited us to take part in a stunt, this time in Chicago, to encourage North American ticket sales in 2018.

The piece and the day itself went through numerous revisions in the weeks prior as celebrities and locations were added to the itinerary. The final script called for Tried & True to provide a production crew consisting of five camera operators and two field audio technicians. With enough advance warning, I put together a staff of talented professionals who had all filmed social media videos about Roger at other tournaments. From the Red Sox, Billie Weiss and Lauren Foley were brought on. Direct from Indian Wells, Ian Davidson and myself flew in. Mark Reidy from Tennis Australia, Joe Miller and Dustin Berta rounded out the team.

Roger Federer’s agency, Team8, with the USTA and TA is a partial owner in The Laver Cup. They are pursuing a marketing strategy using Roger as a primary draw for fans. When we filmed this video, Roger was still the number one player in the world and was still fresh off an 18 match winning streak for 2018.

Using Roger to amplify the video worked very well. For example, The Laver Cup’s Facebook page reached 60,000 views. But Roger posting the video natively to his Facebook profile meant that we achieved the maximum possible audience. Without an ad buy, Roger’s celebrity was a strong enough generator of earned media to achieve nearly 500,000 views on Facebook, over 600,000 views on Instagram and over 200,000 views through Twitter.

Interest was further amplified by the inclusion of 1990s NBA all-star Scottie Pippen and the international superstar soccer player, Bastian Schweinsteiger. Bastian is married to a retired female tennis player, Ana Ivanovic. They live in Chicago and have a strong social media presence. Scottie made for a good representative to lead Roger through The United Center where the Laver Cup will be played. Mike Tirico is notable to American audiences as he is fresh off of anchoring his first Olympics as NBC’s replacement for Bob Costas. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is currently perhaps America’s best-known mayor, having served as a pugnacious congressman from Illinois and later President Obama’s Chief-of-Staff.

We had one day of location scouting and then four hours with Roger, John McEnroe, Rod Laver and Nick Kyrgios. We were fighting Chicago traffic and a tight schedule that allotted ten to fifteen minutes per stop. We shot very run-and-gun. There was no time for rehearsal with the talent. The crew reviewed the script carefully and were prepared to film enough to satisfy the requirements for each scene. We split into two teams with an operator shooting telephoto and others running gimbals. We received a permit from the city to fly a drone above the stunt at the Bean too. Tried & True used GoPro Hero6s in the cars in addition to DSLRs and Westcott Ice Lights to provide even lighting on the faces of multiple generations of tennis players. GoPros were attached to the headrests of the front seats. The ice lights were taped with gaffers tape between those two seats too. Ice lights are a great LED long-running option to provide soft, continuous lighting.

We filmed Roger’s plane landing at Midway Airport and his departure with McEnroe in a Laver Cup branded Mercedes SUV. Lou Malnati’s is a chain of iconic Chicago pizzerias. We captured the four generations of professional tennis players chatting and eating. We stopped by the Chicago Theater with the pretty interior and iconic marquee and swung by the United Center as mentioned above. The Bean stunt went off without a hitch thanks to the efforts of MVT PR. Members of the media were present as were tennis fans, security was in place and the black Laver Court looked perfect in front of the Bean. Kyrgios and Roger definitely had fun with their hit and giggle in front of the crowd. Afterward we proceeded to a rooftop photoshoot and then a press conference.

We covered the press conference with six angles and immediately produced a VNR for international media consisting of the best broll and soundbites. The edit of the social media piece went well. It took one day to organize data from ten camera sources and two audio techs. The next day was spent listening to the material to find the best bites. Prue Ryan of Tennis Australia and Kellie Morgan, the producer on the piece, were instrumental in the scripting and vision for the deliverable. The video production team departed after the shoot. Editing and revisions were completed remotely, but the piece was finished by deadline. Tickets went on sale and hundreds of thousands of tennis fans saw the promo. The Instagram video was completed at a 4:5 ratio, meaning that it is taller than it is wide. As a result, the piece took up more room in an Instagram feed. The fact that this version of the video was optimized for phone consumption is partially why the content overall performed the best on Instagram.

All 3-day ticket bundles under $2500.00 for the three-day Laver Cup event sold out two days after the release of the video. Again, we extend our thanks to Tennis Australia for tapping us to cover another Laver Cup event.

The Mini-Monets

Similarly to our kid press conference video from 2017 that garnered 1.5 million views through Facebook, we hoped to rekindle the magic in 2018. Our team had elementary school students create portraits of Roger Federer for him to critique in person. His interaction with them ended up working as a condensed piece. The video ends with Roger walking the kids down to a professional mural unveiling of him on the side of Stadium One inside the tennis garden.

The second piece featured here is a kid press conference starring Novak Djokovic. Novak, who is currently experiencing a slump while recovering from an elbow injury, requested to star in a kid press conference similarly to Roger’s 2017 rendition. Novak has long been the villain to both Roger and Rafa. I have seen him booed at Indian Wells and the US Open. Novak is booed, not for his character, but because he’s often been the one stopping Roger from capturing more titles. From 2013-2016 Novak was incredibly dominant. But that dominance did not come with a Nadal or Federer-like adoration from a global fanbase. Maybe only now that he is struggling, fans will get behind him as an underdog to champion. It seemed like he used this press conference as an opportunity to espouse his personal moral philosophy, rather than as a time to relax and cut loose. That sincerity and seriousness ended up making the piece somewhat difficult to edit. It is interesting comparing the two press conference videos from 2017 and 2018. The first became our most viral hit of all time. The second earned a paltry 6.5k views on Facebook before Novak lost in the second round of the tournament. One cannot help but feel for Novak. He may have made over 110 million in prize earnings and inked a new sponsorship deal with Lacoste, but he’s not Roger. Roger seems to singlehandedly carry the sport of men’s tennis. For most fans, even the third-winningest active male tennis player in a video with cute kids is not enough of a draw.

 

Baccarat Trophy

I enjoy shooting the trophies for tennis tournaments. I like trying different moves, shots and editing techniques that keep the pieces fresh and watchable for the viewers/fans. This year I tried three new things. In addition to using a MoVi M5 gimbal to capture a pushing in shot, we tried in-camera light leaks using a prism. I would wave the prism in front of an 85mm f/1.2 lens. This creating transition points and ideally a classy bit of visual interest. To get the mountains to move behind the trophy, we used a 70-200mm lens on a 42″ Rhino Slider with the Rhino Arc. This combination allows an operator to program a specific move so that the subject (the trophy) always remains in the same position in the frame, but the background spins. This is called a parallax effect. To further compound the amount of movement in a shot of an object that is typically static, I brought a motorized weight-bearing turntable. The turntable spun the trophy in place while the camera slid along the track turning to create parallax.

I love the view of the San Jacinto Mountains from the tennis garden. The colors and the light change throughout the day. That view has such great depth. The supporting non-trophy broll in this piece was shot using the Inspire 2 drone paired with a 45mm lens. The X5s camera is a crop sensor, there’s a 4k crop too and then when you push into a 4k ultra high definition image for a 1920X1080p timeline, it means you’re essentially flying smooth shots with a 200mm lens. It’s one of the most effective and versatile ways to get telephoto aerials. Indian Wells is one of the best places to fly.

The western showdown music is also a track that I licensed and have held onto for years in the hopes of using it at Indian Wells eventually.

The Williams Sisters

Indian Wells marked Serena’s first return to the tour since giving birth in 2017. Serena Williams is often discussed as the greatest female tennis player of all time. She was eight weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open last year. She holds 23 Grand Slam titles. Her playing the BNP Paribas Open was big news in tennis. Serena ended up facing her sister, Venus in the 3rd round and lost. She definitely looked slower on court than in the past. But it was still a very exciting match. It’s always fun to watch the Williams sisters slug it out.

Here are three pieces T&T produced. The first two were filmed and edited by Ian Davidson. The third by Drew Carlisle. Because the WTA, ATP, Tennis Channel and ESPN were all giving the sisters a lot of coverage, I cut the third piece in black and white to make it stand out. We also began experimenting with a 4:5 aspect ratio for Instagram and Facebook. When a video is taller than it is wide, it takes up a lot more real estate on an iPhone newsfeed. Below are the original 16:9 versions of these pieces.




 

Wheel of Fortune & Wolfgang Puck

I’m grouping two different videos together in this entry because they fall under what I think of as more general around-the-ground news reporting at a tennis tournament. Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant, Spago, has a location inside Stadium One that is only open during the tournament. He was in town watching some tennis, checking on his chefs, his recipes, doing media to promote his restaurant etc. We covered him as the tournament and the piece played on some social media channels but was primarily meant to be played on the large video boards inside Stadium One and Two (jumbotrons).

Likewise when Vanna White and Pat Sajak were on location filming bits for “Tennis Week” on Wheel of Fortune, we produced a piece for social media. But it was more so intended for in-stadium viewing for the 440,000 fans in attendance during the two weeks.

Indian Wells Memories

Similarly to what I have done for Wimbledon, this year we had players watch iPad video of themselves during a pivotal time at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.

Roger had an epic rally with Lleyton in the early 2000s. Isner became the #1 American at IW. Jack Sock won the doubles title in 2015. Petra thoughtfully recalled being injured, missing the tournament and the large poster fans signed wishing her a successful recovery. Lastly, Elena Vesnina remembered when she was in the press conference after winning the single’s title in 2017. A man came up and took the trophy. This was Matt Van Tuinen, the director of media for the tournament. The men’s final was going quickly and they needed the only trophy back on court for the ceremony. We had Matt return to take the iPad from her during the filming of this memory. Elena got the meta joke and took it really well. She ended up posting the memory video to her personal Instagram profile where it reached 22,000 views.

This series was moderately successful. The epic point with Roger and Lleyton is genuinely amazing tennis archival footage. Roger provided some solid play by play for us. The other memories were released sporadically but remain on the tournament website as a bingeable series.

Also of note is that we shot this series in an interview room filming in 4k ultra high definition using the 1DXii. We lit the subjects using Arri Skypanel S30-c LEDs. The hedges with the flowers were brought in by the onsite florist to fit the full bloom theme.

The Nest

This is a local television commercial running in the Columbia, SC market. The Nest is a home appliance store owned and operated by Cregger Company. We filmed and edited this video as the video production arm of Sting Creative. Cregger has been a longtime client of Hendrik and Erin van Vuuren, the owners of Sting. Located in downtown Columbia, our objective was to show the general public that The Nest sells the highest end appliances, plumbing fixtures and lighting. We had 30 seconds to cover as much of the store as possible. Our motorized, programmable Rhino Slider and Arc really came in handy to get smooth panning shots of the rooms. We also made ample use of the MoVi M5 to capture our actors moving throughout the showroom. This was a one day shoot and a single day edit.

 

Miami Healthcare Conference

Lauren Foley is the owner of 309 Productions located in Boston, Massachusetts. We have been friends and our companies have partnered for professional sports events and convention coverage since 2014. In this case 309’s client, MSD, was hosting a healthcare innovation and technology conference. 309 brought on T&T to provide comprehensive coverage throughout the week at the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel.

Their theme for 2018 was “Better Together.” we were tasked with interviewing and compiling positive reflections from MSD employees, vendors and customers in attendance. Pharmaceutical and medical device sales were taking place on the expo floor. There were quality educational sessionezs from the likes of, Dr Javeed Siddiqui the CMO of TeleMed2U. Dr Ezekiel Emanuel who helped draft the Afordable Care Act. Kevin Harrington from ABC’s Shark Tank and Mike Eruzione, the Captain of the 1980 Miracle on Ice olympic hockey team, also took part.

Tried & True’s new Canon C200 worked flawlessly documenting and recording every session. We loved using the built in XLR inputs to get crystal clear audio from each speaker. 309’s new Mavic Pro was the best way to capture aerials in the most unobtrusive way possible on Miami Beach. Of course moving shots were provided by our MoVi M5 rigged with both the Sony A7sii and Canon 5Dmk4 depending on the situation. The above teaser was a quick convention recap we cut together in Adobe Premiere. A longer highlight is forthcoming from 309 later this winter.

Not only does T&T work well with ad agencies and PR firms that need a video production arm. But we enjoy partnering with other production companies to provide thorough and exciting high-quality event coverage.