Nike Football -
“My regular DP and friend Zachary Grullón (@zgrullon) had just completed a commercial for Under Armor and wanted to continue working on content that offered a lot of choice in unique camera movement that would allow him to make interesting on-set choices. I was always intrigued by creating a piece of branded content that featured a more storied structure rather than montage or product shots. So we decided to hire our friends who still played to be our talent and we pulled together a modest budget to bring in crew and rent some gear. I really enjoyed the restrictions of working within a narrative structure with only a few resources while being completely free to experiment with our action shots.”
“Our biggest hurdle was having only a little time with each location and company pushes to 5 different locations in one afternoon/evening. It was also quite cold since this was still in January. Coordinating the crew, talent and equipment transport was pretty taxing even though we were only moving up and down the west Brooklyn waterfront. Luckily my 1st AD Michael Gonzalez (@mikey_motionpictures) did a great job of juggling all this and allowed me to keep better focus.”
“Visually, I’ve always wanted to produce something that captured the same sort of energy and quirk that is seen in the film - City of God.”
“The cinematography in City of God was a big inspiration. And I’ve always enjoyed using a pretty even mixture of handheld camera techniques with slicker movements from a steadicam or dolly/slider. The backdrop of Brooklyn was also very important. In the spot you can see how varied and colorful the neighborhoods of Gowanus, Caroll Gardens and Sunset Park are while setting the location for a familiar, but stylish New York story.”
“We experimented a good bit with the steadicam in low mode to get coverage of the players feet running, passing and shooting the ball. This caused the shots to be recorded upside down and originally I intended to flip the images in post, but I liked the final composition and how it influenced the rest of the edit so much that I decided to keep them like that. I also think we used the right amount of slow-motion, not trying to show off.”
“We shot on the Arri Alexa Mini to reduce our footprint and have a lighter package since we were constantly pushing to new locations. We also brought on a steadicam operator, Brendan Poutier (@brendanpoutier) for the all the on field shots of the players. Zach also talked me into shooting on Lomo anamorphic lenses to add some character and a wider field of view to the project. I edited the project myself. Color grading was done by the Mill NYC and post-sound design was done by Nicole A. Watlington (@wvlington). Original music was provided by Alec Gaston (@alecgaston).”
I very much enjoyed this project! I got to employ a lot of ideas for camera movement I’ve come up with over time and got to shoot with anamorphic lenses for the first time. I also really enjoyed creating what I believe is a very unique piece of content for a very popular brand.”
