Advertising: Same Product, Different Approach

We just sent off another I'm A Mormon spot this morning and I'm supposed to be on a plane in a few hours to film with Rogue Fitness, and I have yet to pack.  But seeing as how it has been weeks since my last transmission I figure I should write something.

I've been writing commercials for Rogue's 2012 CrossFit Games Campaign on ESPN (thanks for the help Tim).  And let me just say there are a lot of way to advertise the same product.  And my perfect example of that are the stark differences in some Subaru campaigns.  Enjoy the videos.  And I think Canada wins.  Cast your vote in the comments

SUBARU OF AMERICA




CANADA SUBARU

Drop The Gun! Or I Shoot The Car.

Didn't have anything to do with this one but a great commercial.  Really funny.  I was waiting for the thief to ditch his loot and pick up car and take the car but I was wrong.

Had I directed this one it would have been more...epic (for lack of a better word).  Police cars of all makes, Dodge, Chrysler, Acura, BMW.  arriving to a high value robbery, bank, fine art and when the cars arrive the drives all pull weapons as a girl rolls up, parks and gets out in the middle of the looming firefight.  Then the phrase, "drop the guns! or i shoot the car." and give more emphasis on the respect for the superior car.

...but that's just me.  Its still a fun little spot with a nice kicker at the end.

Rogue Fitness Commercial Shoot - Columbus, Ohio

I've brought Tim Irwin with me on a commercial shoot for Rogue Fitness this week and while making our way here we stopped off in an airport and while changing planes we encountered this.  Pop quiz… What is this and where is it?

Day 2 here the beautiful capitol city of Ohio -- Columbus -- if you haven't freshened up on your geography lately.  The last time I was here was during The Arnold Classic a few months back and the weather is pretty much the same, cold, windy and wet.  Although it is now 40 degrees and not 19 so there is green on the trees.

We're shooting with two Panasonic AF100s and a mix of Lumix, Nikon, Sigma and Pentax lenses.  We also have a small slider dolly that has been fun to use a bit too.  Mostly, however, we're sticking to our guns -- handheld and sticks.  Today consisted of welding, drilling, cutting, scraping, grinding, pressing...a lot of 'ings.  The commercials are gonna be great and the concepts are pretty solid but quite simple, just the way we like it.  I've been going overboard lately and complicating a lot of things when in the end we need a solid storyline and stellar footage.  Luckily we have five more day of just that!

We have a 4 card SDHC offloading solution for now (this post talks about the problem).  It works well -- we just offloaded 4 16GB shot cards to redundant drives at once (see the picture below) and had no problems.  It just isn't as clean as the cube with four slots.  It consists of a Belkin USB four port hub, two Lexar Professional compactflash/SD card readers, a SanDisk reader and the MacBook Pro SDXC card slot.  To offload the footage we're using the trusty ShotPut Pro application.  Love, love love it!  And checking all offloaded footage in Final Cut Pro (soon to be Final Cut Pro X -- AND we'll be able to edit in the native codec rather than transcode everything)!