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In Sunny San Diego, Mth Degree, a local ad agency, was working with Razor, a laptop manufacturer who strives for function, looks, and personality. Mth Degree was familiar with San Diego photographer Rob Andrew’s lifestyle work and knew that his style would be a perfect match for the Razor brand. They quickly contacted him for an upcoming shoot for Razor’s website.
The agency needed to shoot 3 short story concepts, both photo and video, for the client’s website. Rob would handle the stills while working with Helium Films USA, a video team that Rob knew personally and had referred to Mth Degree for past projects he could not take on himself. The idea for the campaign was to show young professionals on the go—a student photographer using the laptop to process images via light room, a young professional designing a quad copter for a client, and finally, a graphic design student making promo materials for her friend’s band, Sumo Rocket.
We wanted to show how the laptop represented the opposite of “business as usual,” by focusing on its mobility and versatility, while highlighting some of its key design features like the “chroma keyboard,” a colorful backlit keyboard.
During production planning, Rob and the videographer met with Mth Degree to discuss props, concepts, and to refine their shot list. They also had a location walk-through of the city college and shared office space where they planned to shoot. This helped make sure that the teams had what they needed to properly light the scene for the time of day assigned to each location. The video shots would take longer than the stills, so the team wanted to make sure they could follow their production schedule as closely as possible.
I brought a small crew, an assistant and digital tech, which seemed to be just the right combo for this type of work. Helium Films provided makeup, wardrobe, talent and catering for the two days.
The main challenge Rob faced was having his team work in tandem with the video crew. They wanted to take advantage of the 2 day shoot time without getting in each other’s way. They also wanted to share as many setups as possible.
The big advantage we had is that we knew the video crew at Helium personally and had worked with them in the past, so we were confident we would all get along great and there would be camaraderie and cooperation.
Normally, Rob likes to shoot video and stills separately; however, the advantage of combining the two is achieving a very consistent look across both media. As it turns out, Rob’s favorite part of the project was working alongside the video crew. Lighting for film and stills is very different so he enjoyed learning different lighting approaches and tricks.
The models were also a joy for his team to work with, and for the most part they shot the models with relatively simple lighting set ups. This allowed Rob to coach the models, stay mobile and have fun with the shots. As a result, they agreed it was a very complete yet nimble production.
So far both teams have received great feedback from the agency, client, and the public. Rob’s future plans include trying to utilize as many of the images as possible. He delivered 21 client selects, with many left over for possible portfolio use, with some retouching as needed for his own enjoyment.
To see more photography from Rob, vist robandrewphoto.com.