It is amazing how different every job can be. The intricacies and minutia of every shoot always provide an interesting set of challenges and yet always yield an amazing result.
For this job we were shooting a TV spot for Loncar Associates, personal inquiry lawyers. Loncar tasked us with shooting their first TV spot with their new “Strong Man” concept. This “Strong Man” was going to be the new spokesman for their company. For their “Strong Man”, they hired Tony Casillas, ex Cowboys defensive tackle.
Krause, the advertising agency that was working on the project, came up with the concept of Tony walking and talking into camera in the Loncar offices. We had three scripts we needed to shoot in three different locations throughout their offices. We decided to rent a Fisher 11 dolly so we could do smooth dolly and small jib moves at the same time. Also we needed to have a teleprompter mounted to camera so being on the fisher dolly provided us with the greatest amount of mobility. Mounting the teleprompter ended up being more difficult than usual. Because of the camera and lens system we were using, we could not get the prompter close enough to the front of the lens. After some tweaking and some creative thinking from our Key Grip Tim Harkins, we were able to manage a solution.
Nothing in film ever goes the way as planned but working out the solution is half the fun.
