Our client contacted us with the idea of surprising the winner of an all-inclusive trip to the Super Bowl instead of just telling him. We thought this was a great idea and we were keen to work with them. They had some ideas of where the subject could encounter certain American themed hints but since our client was from Ireland they trusted us with all the planning work.
The Process
Logistics was a big consideration for this video so we had to plan it very carefully. There were technical issues such as camera selection and placement of hidden radio microphones that we had to research thoroughly to ensure we got the desired result on the day.
We did several site visits to ensure that we could work out our route for them to walk along. The camera team worked really hard to overcome these challenges we learned a lot from the day.
The girlfriend was on board so we were able to choose a route that was familiar for them and wouldn’t raise suspicion for our subject. We planned where we would hide our three camera people at each stage of the route. This included hiding people in the line of sight of our subjects but hidden behind trees and bushes. As long as the cameraperson didn’t move we knew they wouldn’t be seen.
We set up the BBQ in their front yard, knowing that he lived in a shared house, and it was one of his housemates’ birthday so it wouldn’t be totally suspicious that there were a bunch of revelers outside of his house.
We moved on to the park and our intrepid camera people got in position, suddenly the cheerleaders burst out into the park and our bemused subject watched openmouthed as they performed impromptu routine. It took great concentration on behalf of our camera team not to burst out laughing when one of the more acrobatic cheerleaders lost her footing. We then moved on to the café, where a group of young lads dressed as American footballers enjoyed a rowdy celebration at a demure coffee shop.
Our subject very quickly rationalized this occurrence as a stag do starting early. After a nice cup of coffee our subject turned to go home however, along the route he was accosted by the rowdy group of American footballers and held aloft all the way home. His girlfriend revealed the fact that he had been set up from the word go and his morning constitutional had been filmed in secret.
Upon interviewing him we were amazed to learn that he hadn’t clocked on to the fact lots of American themed peculiar antics had been unfolding around him. We then rushed the footage back through London traffic to get it to the edit suite and start editing down the mountains of footage we had captured that day.
As we worked on a really tight deadline of only two days we benefitted hugely from the fact that we have an in-house postproduction team that is used to working to such tight deadlines. It enabled us to schedule the postproduction effectively and ensure that all client deadlines were met.
The Result
Because the client was in Ireland they relied heavily on us to plan and set up the whole stunt. They were delighted with the result and we are very proud of the fact that the day went smoothly and the video achieved over a 140.000 views in two days.
If you need your own corporate video we would love to talk to you.
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