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Westcoast pow

With the close of a fantastic year, I went on my annual pilgrimage to the mountains in BC. Swimming through waste deep lines, getting powder shots to the face, yes, the snow was five meters deep. The only thing that approaches the beauty of the white alpine world is the cold pint that is the Après. There is no more inspiring way to ring in the new year than to soak up some time in the mountains. I have a feeling 2013 is going to be a good year.

BTS: Nissan SickKids

What do you do when you have three days notice to pull off a location car shoot? Well, after sheer panic and some frantic scheduling, the adrenalin kicks in and there's no more time to waste. The call came in from the folks at TBWA and the self proclaimed, ultra laid back team of Dan Bache and Matt Williamson. Seemed like a bit of a misnomer considering the lightning pace of this project. This particular shot was highlighting Nissan's sponsorship of SickKids hospital in Toronto. The concept involved a young patient holding her hand out the window of a moving car, playing with the wind on her way home from the hospital. A simple visual that pretty much anyone who's been in a car can identify with.

First and foremost, we made the decision to shoot on location. Sounds like a no brainer, but often times cars will be shot in studio, then dropped into a location background in post. By shooting everything on location, right away we have a more realistic feel to the shot, showing subtle environmental reflections throughout the body panels of the car.

I had pitched the agency on shooting into the sun, to create a warm and positive feeling. As luck would have it, with our shoot only days away, the forecast was looking terrible. With two of our three pre-production days spent location scouting, lo and behold on the day before the shoot there were blue skies. We jumped at the opportunity to head out and shoot a few sunny backgrounds. Consider it an insurance policy in case the weather didn't cooperate on the shoot day.

An outtake from our background shots the day before the shoot. I always think these blurred road shots have an interesting artistic sensibility just on their own.

In order to make the car appear moving, we needed to have a background that shows motion blur. While it's possible to blur a shot in post, there's no substitute for the real thing. So we hop in the car with yours truly hanging out the trunk shooting long, blurred shots of an empty road. Nothing like an exhilarating shot out the back of a car to add some excitement to the madness of our three day pre-production.

“There we were, in the pouring rain, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day.”

Sure enough, when we show up on our shoot day, the rain is pouring down. Given we were on a very tight budget, we had a small crew, and very little provisions to deal with rain. While it was great to have the sunny backgrounds to fall back on, we had one major hurdle to deal with: rain drops on the car. A tarp over the car was out of the question due to reflections and colour casts. We decided to fly a large sheet of clear plastic to protect the vehicle from the rain, while still giving us a realistic sky reflection in the car. Well, not only is a large sheet of plastic good for blocking rain, it's even better at picking up wind and almost blowing over our entire set. It was all hands on deck from that point forward.

There we were, in the pouring rain, with a battery light acting as our sun, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day. It was an endless task wiping down stray raindrops from the car. Dan sent a snapshot of our soggy production to Creative Director Allen Oke. It's all part of the act, I reassured Dan.

Coffee toting Art Director Dan Bache snapped this picture of our drenched hero car.

After getting our shot with the talent, there appeared to be a break in the clouds. Could it be? If we removed the plastic rain cover, there was no time to reset it, not to mention we had no more dry towels left to wipe up any more rain. A few moments of quick contemplation, and we decided to strike the plastic. With the crew moving in hyper speed, we banged off all the frames we needed, giving us some clean body shots to build our final image. The gamble paid off.

With just one day to work on post, we needed to move fast. After some serious screen time, a session of revisions with Dan at the pub, and one very late night, we had our final image. All in all, not too shabby for having shot in the pouring rain.

Thanks to Dan Bache and Matt Williamson for another great project. And to the hardworking, soaking wet crew of Aaron Hoskins, Nick Wong and Daniel Garcia, we couldn't have pulled it off without you guys.

The final ad for Nissan’s sponsorship of SickKids.

Big Sur

After a jam-packed run from January to August, I took the plunge and escaped out west for a few weeks. Spent some time to reset in Big Sur on the coast of California. One of the most beautiful places I've ever been, and exactly what I needed. Far from the restrictions of studios, lights or layouts, I had a chance to follow my eye and shoot what inspires me. Here are a few snaps from the trip.

This guy biked 150 miles from San Fran to Big Sur with this parrot on his shoulder.

On Location: Montreal Side Show

The car lurches suddenly to the left. Again. We're speeding down the highway to Montreal with 1200 pounds of gear and people packed into the vehicle. While this is a normal amount of gear for this size of production, it just happens to be in, and on, my tiny Honda Fit hatch back. You see, this is a creative shoot, and saving a bit of cash on a rental van seemed like a good idea at the time. So with grip and props strapped precariously to the roof, and a retaining wall of lighting, wardrobe and luggage stacked carefully around the passengers, we trundle forwards. By this time tomorrow, we'll be shooting Cirque du Soleil acrobats.

Sipping the last few gulps of road trip coffee, we pull up to our hotel. Jumping out of the car into the chilly mid-march evening air, we pause to discuss how to deal with all the gear. A raindrop splashes beside me, no big deal, but somehow it seems too cold to be raining. Then another splash, followed by stifled laughter from above. Yes, we are being spit bombed by a bunch of giggling jackasses a few floors up. Welcome to March break in Montreal, where 18 year olds come from far and wide to try some legal drinking on for size.

A few matrix-like spit dodging maneuvers and we're checking in at the front desk. With our awkward French salutations out of the way, the front desk lady is explaining in broken English how they have made a mistake with our reservation. There's only room for two, and we are three, including myself and the crew. Chalk up another point for March break in Montreal. All part of the adventure though, so I leave my crew to stay at the hotel, and I head off with the hope of staying with the cast at the Cirque du Soleil residence.

“It’s our first look at the wardrobe in context, and it’s clear that tomorrow’s shoot is going to look amazing.”

A few phone calls later, and I'm good to go with a place to sleep and some unexpected time to spend with the cast before the shoot. After a warm welcome, a few drinks, and a broken conversation confirming call times with the Russian contortionists, it's not long before the performers are breaking out the wardrobe for a few late night tests. We head down to the main room in the residence where Kelsey jumps up on Preston's shoulders, standing two high - they're trying on the long coat for the giant man character in the shot. It's our first look at the wardrobe in context, and right away, it's clear that tomorrow's shoot is going to look amazing.

The morning of the shoot arrives, and we repack the car and squeeze off to location. We're shooting in an amazing old bar in the Plateau district of Montreal. Arriving early, we stage all our gear at the main entrance, ready to go as soon as the door opens. With 17 cast and crew soon arriving, we can only hope that the bar owner comes through on his promise to have his manager arrive at 10am on a Sunday morning to let us in. A few nervous minutes go by, needlessly rearranging stacks of props and gear, and the manager shows. We're in.

What follows is one of the biggest, most complicated, and most rewarding shoots I've ever done. We push the cast and crew to the limits. Not a person in the room is being paid. Everyone is here on good faith and to be a part of an amazing creative collaboration. The day screams past in a blur, everyone is excited to see our creation come to life. With post shoot buzz running high after we wrap, we head off to celebrate over late night dinner and drinks.

Now if only we can figure out how we packed all that gear in the car for our return trip!

Check back for a behind the scenes look at how we got the shot. Thanks to the spit dodging crew of Nick Wong and Dan Tobias for, among other things, dodging spit.

BTS: Hunting + fishing lodges for Canadian Tire

It's not every day that someone comes asking you to shoot moose urine, taxidermy fish, and a life-size coyote decoy. Frankly, I didn't even know moose urine was a product you could buy in stores, but that's beside the point. So when Kathryn Brown over at TAXI called me up to shoot this project, I jumped at the chance. The campaign was promoting Canadian Tire's new hunting and fishing section, and consisted of eight ads. Our task was to shoot rustic lodges, and show the new CT products alongside some classic cabin knickknacks and decor. The idea was to tell the whole story showing only what you would see on the wall of each lodge. With the talented Michael Seigers art directing, it was hard to go wrong.

“We made the choice to shoot the entire production from the top down.”

Having a typically short and frantic timeline, we had to design our production quickly. The first major decision was to shoot in studio, as the prospect of finding eight suitable locations was not within our budget. Next, we made the choice to shoot the entire production from the top down. This meant laying out everything on the floor and building the walls in a horizontal world. We did this in order to allow maximum flexibility and speed when fixing our props on the wall, especially some of the bigger taxidermy items.

One of our eight wall sets, built on the ground with the camera directly above.

It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns however, as there were other challenges involved in shooting top down. Getting a realistic arrangement of items sitting on a shelf with gravity working against you is no small task, as our prop stylist will attest to. Beyond that, with the camera rigged directly above our set, we were locked into our framing and could not look through the camera once we started laying props on the set. Thanks to a trusty iPad app, we were able to wirelessly see each frame, allowing minor tweaks and adjustments without having to move back and forth to the computer monitor repeatedly.

Working against gravity to arrange certain props was a constant challenge.

“The clients needed the ability to reposition and resize all of the products and props in post.”

A project like this really lives and dies with the props, and it was important that we didn't come up short in this department. Enter Christina Yan, prop stylist extraordinaire. As always, she went far over and above, and sourced an endless variety of supporting props to build and dress the sets. After some creepy trips to taxidermists' basements, many drawn out conversations with chatty antique dealers, and endless runs to suppliers all over the city, we managed to get all our props sourced and our backgrounds ready.

A second frame was shot of all props against blue to use when building masks in post.

What made this shoot particularly challenging, was the fact that the clients needed the ability to reposition and/or resize all of the products and props in post. When considering our options for how to accomplish this, it was clear we wanted to avoid shooting all the products separately and assembling the entire shot in post, as this will often look digital and fake. So, in order to create the most realistic looking final image, we decided to shoot all the products and props in place on the hero wooden backgrounds. We then carefully slid chroma-key blue paper in behind each item, giving us a second frame to use when building the masks in post.

When we wrapped our first of three shoot days, we clocked in at 17 hours. Without the tireless efforts of our great crew, Nick Wong, Aaron Hoskins, and Abe Roberto, we'd probably still be stuck in the studio. All in all, a complex production to put together, but we still managed to have a little fun while doing it! After many hours assembling the final images in post, the campaign came out looking great, with a lot of positive feedback from the good folks at Canadian Tire.