The Key to a Prolific Commercial Library Shoot

May 27

How SPLASH shot 23,000 images and 28 hours of footage in three days. A story of a successful library shoot with an enormous shotlist and an astronomical amount of props in the middle of a pandemic.

**li·brar·y shoot**

**NOUN**
1. A large collection of still and/or motion content captured at one time to be used for years to come.

1

AUGMENTED NATURAL LIGHTING

If you’ve ever worked with our partner Robert Holland you know he’s a fan of natural light. As a photographer and director on the shoot he was adamant that strobe be used only when absolutely necessary (spoiler alert— we never used it). Instead of hauling out the lighting equipment we used multiple reflectors and the VERY occasional Joker HMI. This lean and transportable means of lighting meant that we could jump from one shot to the next with minor setup time. Shoutout to our incredible lighting crew for the fast footwork and prop stylists and producer for keeping us two shots ahead. (We are happy to refer our incredible vendors too!)

2

SIMULTANEOUS STILL AND MOTION

SPLASH’s not so secret secret is simultaneous still and motion. We have the photographer and videographer capture the same scene at the same time. In TruGreen’s case we knew that the priority was photography, this allowed our photographer to take the lead with videographer mimicking in motion at the same time. There’s a big warning here— not just any videographer can work this way, the two cameramen must be in sync and effectively communicate. With the right pair of personalities and experience, simultaneous shooting means that the end product is extremely cohesive with extensive opportunities for digital ads, social, emailers, b-roll commercials, website headers, you name it. The budget wins with simultaneous still and motion are incredible too.

3

CREW AND CLIENT COHESION

The agency, The Brownstein Group, hired Robert Holland and SPLASH on behalf of their Client, TruGreen. From the first pre-pro call we could tell that the Brownstein team was fabulous. Being in the middle of a pandemic and across the country from each other, Brownstein and SPLASH connected via Zoom. Their team consisted of a producer, assistant producer, creative director, art director, account executive, and junior account executive (all awesome). SPLASH’s producer, Emily Thorsen, is also an art director when the project calls for it, so she collaborated with the art department of Brownstein flawlessly. Between Robert, Emily, and the Brownstein team, a precise outline with inspiration shots, shotlist, props, etc were created (see our post What’s Inside a Great Production Book to learn more about this). By the time the shoot rolled around everyone was on the same page. Having a producer on the production company side and the agency side is highly recommended for day-of, as the agency producer is more informed about the client’s product.

THAT’S A WRAP

The TruGreen Library Shoot wrapped with 23,000 images and 28 hours of footage. We had 15 crew members, 20 talent, 230 props, 3 days, 92 shots on the client shotlist (with multi-ethnic redundancy), 53 scenes and 5 locations. Shot in Richmond and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Thanks to the great crew from both Virginia and Florida, agency Brownstein from Pennsylvania, and client TruGreen from Tennessee.