The Challenge

There were a number of challenges on the project including coordinating 10+ actors, a number of children and a dog in a video without any cuts or mistakes. And we needed to shoot the video at dusk so that it looked like dinner time when the guests arrived at the end - which provided little room for error. At the same time as the video shoot, we were also shooting stop motion video in the basement of a rented house location!

The Execution

We created both videos over the course of 3 days. We used the first day to begin propping out the house in holiday swag. The second day we began lighting the entire house. We brought the camera into each room to make sure that lighting was consistent. We then began blocking out the scene with our Ronin gimbal camera setup. The third day, we worked with the actors in the morning so that they understood their marks. In the afternoon we began real walkthroughs of the scene until everyone had their marks down. Finally, we were ready to shoot the video at dusk. Again, all the while, we were shooting a number of stop motion scenes.

The Impact

Walgreens posted the videos to social media including Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, racking up nearly 1 million views.

Behind the Scenes

It was a challenge working with a dog even if it was a trained one. We did 18 walkthroughs of the video and by the last one, the dog said it had enough. That helped us decide we had what we needed and call it a wrap.

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