Wimbledon has a fantastic social footprint with over 200 million video views and interest across the board. The All England Club had us create a submission video for the 2018 BT Sports Industry awards under the “Best Digital Community” category. We have won categories in 2016 when we had previously submitted videos in other categories. We’ll have to see how it goes! Judging is in progress as of this writing.
“CEO Eugene Alletto says he’s thrilled to have part of his Bedgear operations in Rock Hill. Each year, he leads a “Day of Impact” to give back to the community. Alletto, who founded the maker of “performance” pillows, bedding and mattresses in 2009, joined 80 of his employees at Bedgear’s Rock Hill site on Langston Street to assemble 100 care packages in backpacks to donate to Pilgrims’ Inn shelter.
The shelter primarily helps homeless and low-income women and young children get back on their feet. It offers support services such as housing, education and job placement assistance, food pantries and child care.” – Rock Hill Herald
The above video summarizes the above charitable works in addition to Bedgear annual meeting at their production facility in Rock Hill.
This corporate overview of PlaySight’s tennis products and operation is a recent capstone to our extensive work for this client spanning three years. Many high-profile interviews, shot in multiple states and outside the US are featured as is our best broll and motion graphics. PlaySight is a sports technology company that sells hardware, software, cloud storage and live streaming all in the service of better data and analytics. This helps coaches and players from amateur hobbyists to the elite professional levels.
Explaining what the company is and what it does for the sport of tennis tightly while using existing interviews was quite a challenge. VP of Marketing Jeff Angus and Eric Berman, head of their external agency, worked directly with me to determine the direction we headed.
Everyone of importance in tennis is aware of the PlaySight brand at this point. This video is more for media to pickup and embed with any PlaySight related press releases. It could also be used to reach out to new investors, as the company is still in the late start-up phase.
This piece required some editing on location with PlaySight employees mentioned above in Los Angeles. The finishing post-production work was completed remotely. Our talented motion graphics contractor, Andrew Dicharry of Wasabi provided the excellent Adobe After Effects work.
It’s three minutes but hopefully feels like it moves along at a good clip. It’s always a balancing act making something that’s punchy and watchable while including everything required for the message.
From PlaySight, “PlaySight’s SmartCourt is the only all-in-one video and analytics solution for tennis. The SmartCourt system uses internet-connected high-performance cameras and an on-court kiosk to provide shot tracking, line calling, multi-angle video, detailed analytics and more. All video is accessible to the user immediately while on court. SmartCourts are automated and intuitive: no operator required!
Hear from some of the game’s best coaches and players (Novak Djokovic, Tommy Haas, Darren Cahill, Paul Annacone, Peter Smith,) on how they use PlaySight to play and coach smarter.”
To learn more visit us at: https://www.playsight.com
Astronaut is a full-service creative agency run by Stephen Lockwood in Winston-Salem, NC. Previously we had worked together on a shoot for a Southern Living planned community and a video about Hayward’s pool pumps. T&T operates as the production arm of the ad agency.
The video above was created on behalf of Dewey’s Bakery. The founder and owner of Astronaut, Stephen Lockwood, acted as the director and conducted all client relations. Dewey’s has been a longstanding client of Astronaut. See this link for their work. We were thankful to be brought on to help service this video need.
Dewey’s is famed for their Moravian cookies and bakes private label cookies and crackers for stores like Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s. They also have a handful of storefronts selling Dewey’s labeled goods in the Winston-Salem area. They were to be exhibiting at the Summer Fancy Foods Show at the Javits Center in NYC and needed a video loop showing their clean and efficient facility. The booth was designed to look like the interior of one of the traditional old Dewey’s Bakery locations, but with a tv framed up in the center back wall.
We spent one day shooting at four locations to gather broll depicting the process of crackers and two different types of cookies being made and packaged. A lot of gimbal work was used as well as a drone indoors. We did whatever was necessary to get the shots. We supplemented with additional lighting, filmed in slow motion, put the camera in the oven at one point and let a GoPro ride the conveyor with cookies about to be baked.
This was a great field trip to a well-known and beloved North Carolina institution. Our hope is that the video served Dewey’s well at the exhibition and helped them to land additional contracts with supermarket chains etc.
UPDATE:
The Javits Center convention was a success. The factories are backlogged with cookie production orders.
We ended up returning to Dewey’s in late 2017 to update the video to show some packaging, displays and to shoot more footage of different parts of the factory. The new piece was used at an internal convention and on social media.
This Is Why We Play.
I made this Parisian Jewels of the Court video for La Coupe des Mousquetaires & La Coupe Suzanne Lenglen because Louis Vuitton produced a new trunk for each trophy to be transported. LV is not a sponsor of the tournament, but like the World Cup and other soccer league trophies, they have given free-of-charge these stylish cases to Roland-Garros. It’s a French brand paired with a French brand. It seems a win-win for both parties.
This video is a quick, simple highlight filming static objects as engagingly as possible.
Above is the first of five videos on the five main stadiums at the French Open. In 2017 I was asked to make mini-movies that were solely composed of broll set to music. Because I do not speak French, including interviews or v/o did not make sense if I was to work autonomously.
As is the case these days, videos for social or website consumption need to be shorter and shorter. Having constraints and being creative within a boundaries is oftentimes helpful. The above video is for Court Philippe-Chatrier, the main stadium for the tennis complex. This is where I was most often because the top players were scheduled for matches in the largest venue. Because I had the most footage from this court it was a challenge to condense my footage to the best of the best. A fast song helps because the cuts can be quicker allowing me to pack more in.
A good and bad thing about the French Open is that there is no overarching brand standard that would keep me from using a dubstep track. At Wimbledon for example, this would be entirely inappropriate. But in Paris, their videos can vacillate from classical and stately to wild and rocking.
Rather than make all five videos with similar music, I switched it up but tied them together through the color grading. I had the work of Neels Castillon to base the colors off. Previously he had completed a branding film in 2015 that still plays on a loop throughout the grounds. I took cues on color and sound editing from this piece.
Because I lacked voiceover or an interview actuality for the videos, I tried to go above and beyond what I might normally do for sound effects. This Philippe-Chatrier video for example has something like 100 layered sfx. Some of it is purchased foley and other sounds were recorded live, edited modified and inserted.
Other teams were present on location working for the FFT to make videos with themes on “emotions” or “sounds” of Roland Garros. My videos were more all-encompassing. “Stadiums.” So I tried to put sounds and emotions in the videos too. Hopefully they turned into something different from the average highlight.
Here’s the video for the second largest court, Suzanne Lenglen. The architecture and look of the place was remarkably different and made me think 1980s synth pop. Again, a lot of attention went into sound effects. The editing on this video took the longest out of my French Open pieces because of all the editing and speed ramping to the beat. Note rackets colliding with balls on downbeats. Watch the patron heads snap together in unison. I also made use of CPS, Canon Professional Services. They were present on location and I with a photographer’s credential could check out gear as needed. Some of the closeups of balls being tossed or bounced were done with an 800mm lens and a 2X teleconverter. This essentially makes the camera a telescope. It can be very hard to track action with such a big lens. But when done right, it gets you so close to the action. If filming in 4K for a 1920X1080p piece, you also have additional room to zoom in while editing in post. Take the ball toss for example. You can see “Roland Garros 2017” printed on the side of it. I could only have achieved this ball toss with a ridiculously smooth TV camera with amazing panning or the way I did it, a monopod in 4k.
These final three videos are intended to be sentimental with a tingle of nostalgia. All three “stadiums” will be demolished over the coming two years as a part of the expansion into the neighboring Botanical Gardens. Court No. 1 is in particular a historic stadium. Fans like it because it’s a perfect round bowl like a bullring or the Colosseum. Court No. 2 is nice because of the cement X’s that are integrated into the architecture. Sun glints through them, they cast pretty shadows on the clay etc.
I used a lot of moving, floating shots done with the MoVi M5 to immerse the viewer in what it feels like to walk through the structures.
By the end of the French Open I had completed all of the videos assigned by the FFT (French Federation of Tennis). For the Men’s and Women’s Finals I shot closeups from the pit very similarly to my role at the US Open. After the match I provided a rush of edited clips to my employers. The above video is a mix of cameras edited by the FFT after the tournament. But it is nice to see that my footage makes up the first 20 seconds, much of the middle and the championship point/trophy raise are all my camera. These clips were shot in 4K and scaled down to 1920X1080p for the highest picture fidelity at standard HD. Color grading was done by the FFT in post.
The title of this entry is La Decima because it was the tenth time Nadal had won Roland Garros. It was very exciting to be present for history being made.
It was time for me to make an end-of-year wrap up video at Indian Wells for 2017. Rather than retrod the same type of highlight that I had done for years previous, I wanted to make a unique statement. We tapped Andrew Krasny, the gravely voiced on-court host at Stadium 1. Andrew is well-known in the sport as a host of Court Report on the Tennis Channel He could successfully anchor the piece with gravitas and some bite. When recording him, I instructed Andrew to read the copy I wrote (that had been edited by our head of PR and approved by our marketing director) with cocky malice. Like Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood without the faux Charleston accent. When Jon Hamm does Mercedes commercial voiceovers he says, “the best or nothing.” Indian Wells strives to be the finest, most elite tennis tournament in the world. In the past the organization has pushed to be categorized as a Super Masters 1000; in a league above all tournaments and just below the grand slams. Indian Wells is exceptional in location, amenities, access to the players and accessibility for patrons. Plus no other tennis tournament boasts both a Nobu and Spago branch.
Post tournament this video has been used as the Facebook cover photo video for the BNP Paribas Open too.
The Great American Eclipse coincided with the Connecticut Open in August of 2017. While in New Haven providing coverage I was tasked with creating an original all-access piece when we had media time with the top seeded players. Before the tournament I had thought about doing a piece with some players reacting to watching the eclipse. But obviously that video would be finished after the event. It would not benefit from the momentum of the national conversation, hype and excitement about the coast to coast celestial show.
My concept for a PSA was approved and I wrote the script the day before our all-access sessions. Having the benefit of working with these female players in the past, I knew their personalities well enough to write lines that suited their delivery.
It was definitely a blast writing, directing and editing. I really enjoy working the Connecticut Open because the tournament director, Anne Worcester allows for so much latitude to create original content. The team in New Haven scrambled and came up with all of the props needed. Katie Spellman, the new PR director for the tournament, is very well connected having worked for the WTA and also repping players. Her ability to cajole players and worldwide tennis contacts to share and retweet the piece meant that the video reached an audience that dwarfed all of our previous output from the past three years.
I enjoyed doing the voiceover, making the tennis ball eclipse graphics, picking the 1950s light and lively orchestral track. Editing meant that some fun jokey parts were left on the cutting room floor. But I think the piece ended up being tighter and more watchable as a result. This video and the Connecticut Open Debate video from 2016 rank as two of my favorite pieces we have created recently. Obviously there is limited interest and fans of European tennis players is niche audience, but making something from scratch that people respond well to and enjoy is one of the most rewarding parts of the job.
Over 350 retweets.
Vital message re TODAY’s #eclipse from #CTOpenTennis astronomers* @Petra_Kvitova @ARadwanska, @KikiMladenovic @Cibulkova
*not astronomers pic.twitter.com/HGJiAoTWjU— Connecticut Open (@connecticutopen) August 21, 2017
When measuring views as metric for determining success, this video was 500% more successful than our all-access piece from 2016.
For the fourth year running I returned to The TEAMS Conference & Expo, the world’s leading convention for the sports event industry. After two stints in Vegas and last year in Atlantic City we all met up in Orlando, Florida.
I was again part of the former Schneider Publishing team, now all NorthStar employees. I worked alongside good friends, Javier Mosquera and Jared Wickerham. Octavian Cantilli was added to the mix this year as a local photographer. Highlights were a golf tournament at the Ritz. TEAMS rented out the Harry Potter Hogsmeade section of Universal on Halloween. We filmed at Hogwarts and also rode some rides! Also of note, I met and interviewed the world record holder for the 100 meter dash for centenarian women. She had some spunk!
TEAMS is fun because we make daily recaps that are immediately seen by a room full of dining convention attendees before special speakers present. The below videos are mostly my footage. The first one I edited of the golf tournament and the others were cut by the NorthStar full time videographer/editor, Javier.
Backflipping American treasure Scott Hamilton, the gold medal winning figure skater, had good news to share about his most recent brain tumor. Scott keeps a vigorous speaking schedule and appeared multiple times at Premier Inc events in 2016. At one conference last August, he announced publicly for the first time that he had received news of the tumor. Scott is famously a cancer survivor having recovered from testicular cancer in the 90s and two additional brain tumors in the 00s. He is also the author of many best selling books, including a new one coming out next February to coincide with the Winter Olympics.
It was encouraging to see Scott in good spirits and and to spend time with him at his Nashville home. For Premier we filmed this piece entirely in 4k ultra high definition. It played at an internal convention in August of 2017. The piece above was the first cut. The final deliverable ended up including footage of Scott’s family, home and doctors that cannot be shared publicly. The final cut wound up being about six minutes in duration and featured much more broll than seen above.
Here are some phone pics to show how the video was used. It was an interesting assignment to design a video that fit a super wide aspect ratio, showed different angles of Scott simultaneously and remained visually cohesive, fitting naturally in the space and on the high definition screens.
This past Veteran’s Day we had the privilege of filming a piece for the retirement community, Plantation Village. A luncheon was hosted on the deck of the USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC. Marines from nearby Camp Lejeune were on hand to meet, greet and honor veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
