Help is at hand.
Explainer videos for Shell Energy.
“A big thank-you to Adrian and the highly accomplished team at MPC. The whole shoot was both meticulously prepared and superbly executed with creativity, precision and style.
The end result was truly excellent and exceeded client expectations on almost every level. Looking forward to working on another project with you.”
James Ravenhall
Creative Director, We ARE Spectacular
Energy use today is about efficiency, minimising waste wherever possible and making the most of any resource. This was the exact approach we took working on a series of short ‘Help’ films for Shell Energy.
In collaboration with cousins at WE ARE Spectacular our job was to bring their creative vision to life. This was green lit just before Christmas and we needed to work quickly to get everything in place for early January filming.
Here’s a list of requests we needed to assist with. (our responses in Italics….)
Cast as many ‘regular’ people as possible with a kinda Midlands or neutral accent in 48hours. ‘OK….’
Find multiple ‘normal’ homely locations, free to be filmed early January. ‘Sure…’
Make it look like a summer or bright day whatever the weather. ‘Love to…..’
Deliver within the budget on time. ‘Of course, this goes without saying……..’
Work with the smallest crew possible. ‘Yep…..’
Work to a super ambitious schedule regarding the number of shots required each day. ‘Lunch is so over rated…….’
Supply rushes for us to edit.. ‘Happy To : )’
After an action packed 2x days of casting and a few days of pre-production, we were ready to film in January.
The schedule was heavy to say the least, each day had a lot of scripted material to get through, with every line delivered in a different part of the locations, the camera was constantly moving. Working in conjunction with Director James Ravenhall we were able to plan each day to the minute, ensuring we ploughed through the ambitious shot list. This detailed planning enabled all of the first edits to go through the approval process without any significant changes, a great example of measure twice and cut once.
This is just the start, thanks to clever planning the rushes were cut into a wide variety of different videos, each covering a different subject area. This created a visual cohesion across the films, in addition to excellent value, thanks to planned efficiency. We shall post more edits here as they become public.
Casting.
Using the offices of First Utility (now Shell Energy) we had a two day casting session. Each actor was asked to read a line, which we filmed and then uploaded for client review. It was impressive how many people turned up with such short notice, maybe we just got lucky.
Admittedly it was a broad casting, after two long days we had a great mix of people to choose from. We have some more filming coming up with Shell Energy and we can go back to our original casting to find different people.
