Behind the scenes of a Buy 4 Less commercial
Todd Fraser and I loaded up the gear and met the always cheerful Sean and Cathy Cummings at Buy 4 Less at 3501 NW Expressway this morning.
Along with OPUBCO account execs Alan Hicks and Chris Carpenter, we were there to shoot four, two minute advertorials. Buy 4 Less sponsors the Gourmet Grille bi-weekly segments with Sean and Cathy. In two minutes, they prepare quick and easy dishes, often using nothing more than a George Foreman grill. And some Italian dressing.
The commercials are produced for NewsOK’s food page and for the Buy 4 Less web site.
Cathy is owner of Vito’s Ristorante, a great Italian restaurant at 7521 N May. If nothing else, enjoy a glass of wine and try the house bread. It’s amazing. She also claims to have invented the panini, along with her brother while growing up.
Like Cathy, Sean has many ventures in progress. Last month, he opened Sean Cummings’ Irish Restaurant and Pub just up the street at 9610 N May. I haven’t been there yet, nor did I ever visit Boca Boca, the restaurant it replaced. Sean says last weekend the place was packed, which is good news to me. I’m all for the locally owned establishments. Nothing against the chains, I spend my share of coin there too. But the local places have a certain charm and often feature tremendous items on their menus.
So, for this shoot, we used two cameras, basically side by side. The shot is set up in the food court area of Buy 4 Less. We used an elevated table to showcase the ingredients and the actual mixing or grilling, depending on the segment. Sean and Cathy have the ingredients prepared ahead of time and in convenient little dishes for the tapings. It’s your basic three light set: two light boxes from either side with a key light for back fill. One camera remains static on the two-shot as Sean and Cathy explain what ingredients they are using and why.
Todd used the other camera to get cutaway shots of the ingredients in use. For example, a close up of the vegetables being mixed into the egg sandwich.
We shot four commercials in 90 minutes this morning, including set up and tear down. The editing process now begins, with the videos online beginning next week. Since the video editing format has been templated from our earlier shoots, edit time for each of the new commercials will be reduced.
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