Credits
Prod Co: Krehbiel Creative
Director: Eric Krehbiel
Writer: Dan Sorgen
Producer/1st AD: Joshua Collins
DP: Stephen Lemieux
Color: Kyle Messina
Gaffer: Sophia Williams
Key Grip: Carter Bailey
Sound Designer: Noah Kankanala
Sound Mixer/Boom Op: Jayden Santos
Production Designer: Jesse Malings
HMU & Wardrobe Supervisor: Amy Hendrix
Editor: Joshua Collins, Eric Krehbiel
1st AC: Caleb Williams
2nd AC: Erin Scannell
Art PA: Yuma Kobayashi
Set PA: Chandler Blancaflor
VFX AD: Erin Scannell
VFX Grip: Polly Ketcham
Photographer: Soren Olsen
Cast:
Sky Rebeor
Dries Raets
Tyler Gene
Amir Bradsher
Caleb Barreto
How much did production cost?
We spent about $12,000 in total on this project. Everyone involved on the crew side took less than industry-standard rates since many were on the less experienced side and just looking for a portfolio piece or credits or the experience itself. As the director I worked for free, as did my DP, Stephen, which saved us a few thousand dollars. He also supplied Camera, Grip, and Lighting at no cost to the production, which saved us an additional several thousand. Without Stephen's eagerness to jump in and generosity with his time and equipment we could not afford to reach the level of quality we were aiming for. As a close friend with his own full-time gig working on video games, my sound designer, Noah, also jumped in for a very humble rate just to dip his toes into a different type of media. If everything had been priced at what it normally would be in the commercial market, this spot probably would have cost about $35k to pull off.
Why this script/concept? How does it reflect your vision as a commercial director?
I chose the Blindfolded script because I thought it was well suited for the type of commercials I want to be working on. It had a clear, focused narrative element with the main character competing against a group of antagonists. The scene had a simple set up, dramatic stakes, and a lot of room to play in terms of how it could be captured. It was also a single-location commercial, which made it more feasible with our limited resources. I was specifically looking for a non-comedy storytelling script that allowed for two things: 1) plenty of working with actors (so no tabletop/food/etc.) and 2) a dynamic sequence of shots.
What was the casting process like?
It took some time to simply find people who would be available for 10-12 hours overnight on a Saturday. I knew we wanted actual basketball players since we wanted them to be able to bring a dose of realism to the movements they would perform. We thought we had some players from a college basketball team locked in until a scheduling conflict cropped up about a week before production. Luckily, we were able to find a new cast of actual players quickly through word of mouth within a few days and proceeded as planned. It was a lot of reaching out to friends and online casting calls.
How did you search for/lock a location?
Originally, I intended for this spot to be shot on an outdoor court at night in order to get a deep level of contrast with background falling into blacks. Unfortunately, we were locked into shooting in January, which made overnight temperatures too cold to put a team through for a full shoot day, so we decided to look for an indoor court instead. We were able to find a community rec center close to most crew members that closed for 12 hours overnight on Saturdays. We rented it out at a slightly discounted rate for the full 12 hours and ended up wrapping out with 1 hour to spare.
How did you select your DP, crew?
Stephen was the first person I approached about the project. We had worked in Camera Dept together on a short film a few months before and I enjoyed his energy on set. He had told me he was looking for opportunities to build his portfolio as a DP, so I mentioned I was going to be making 2 spec spots and would he want to jump in. He was eager to get the chance and offered to work and supply a generous amount of gear for free (which he already owned). I figured that would be a win-win arrangement and we both ended up being very proud of the work we did together. I realized quickly into planning that I would need help pulling all the elements together and brought in Josh, my Producer and 1st AD, to help with logistics in order to let me focus more on the creative. The rest of the crew came together over the course of a few weeks through my personal network of local crew.
How did shooting go? Any challenges?
Shooting was quite smooth. We had done extensive prep with detailed storyboards beforehand and all dept heads knew exactly what we were trying to capture days in advance. There was a hard stop at 12 hours which caused us a bit of stress going into the shoot. We had to shuffle our shot list and change one section of the sequence early on to ensure we didn't lose time, but since we were in one room for the entire shoot it was a minor set of changes.
Tell us about editing and finishing.
Editing was a challenging process for me as a director. Facing the time constraint of packing the entire story into 30 seconds, with time left over for a logo card, was something I hadn't dealt with before and I'm glad to have been forced to figure it out. You start to understand which frames are really communicating something worthwhile when you must condense down to that level. In storyboarding, we added an entire angle with a plot-twist where the 4 villains disappear, and it was all in the protagonist's mind. The rough cut where we tried to keep this felt cluttered, and in being economical we had apparently made the ending confusing, per feedback from other creatives. For the final cut I decided to cut out that angle entirely and let the editing focus more on emphasizing movement and action, which I think ended up being a much more powerful use of a 30 second runtime. Finding the soundscape mostly revolved around balancing the deeper layers of texture and foley with a top layer of music. We knew once we locked the cut that the audio was going to be what carried the energy of the scene. The mix we ended up with was something that had to be fine-tuned to be able to carry narrative momentum all on its own.
In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently?
I wish I had built the sequence with a smaller number of shots when we were storyboarding. We captured 31 shots on set and ended up using about 26. Even in the final cut I felt the editing was a bit cluttered, so if I were to do another 30 second spot in this style, I would aim for a shot count closer to 23 or so. I did not appreciate the impact of a cut within such a short window.
Any other thoughts.
I'd like to say that Spec Bank was a super valuable resource for the project. Without this caliber of a script to work off, there is no way the project would have been what it is. That sort of embodies the whole approach to getting this spot made. We had to take advantage of a lot of resources that were readily available and turn them around into the highest quality product possible. I'm continually impressed with what each department was able to pull off to get what we have with the finished cut.
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