Georgia Lottery — Commercial

I don’t often PM, but when my dear friend and fellow Producer Emily Weinstein called, I happily accepted. As a Producer, watching a peer working at the top of her game is always exciting, as I often don’t get the chance to be a fly-on-the-wall. This project required a world built entirely from greenscreen, which was a first for both Emily and me. Though I had previously worked with greenscreens, I had never had to rely so heavily on one for a project. The storyline of the spot highlighted our hero character playing a game on his phone when suddenly transported into a wondrous world of gold and jewels—jumping through a portal from a coffee shop into a whole new land (created entirely from greenscreen). After encountering various fantastical environments, our hero would return to his original chair. The only practical scene filmed was the coffee shop, while everything else was CGI. The idea was wild and elaborate but nothing out of the ordinary for Director Liam Chapple and the Carbon VFX team.

The first step was hiring the best crew we could for the job. Pulling from our collective Rolodexes, we brought in many of our usual hires. However, there was one individual I had wanted to work with for a very long time, and this project finally allowed for it to happen. That was our DP, Bjorn Amundsen. I had followed his work for years, and we had talked on various occasions about potential projects, but it had never worked out. Having Bjorn at the helm put me at ease. Tim Borntrager, a long-time collaborator and owner of Midwest Camera Car, rigged our Alexa Mini LF camera package on their Technocrane. The crane allowed us to create movement in our shots while never slowing our day down. One of the reasons I love working with their Techno, in particular, is that its base has such a small footprint, allowing it to fit anywhere and still extend up to 27ft.

For this project, we set up shop at BT Wildman, a spacious warehouse and event space in Chicago. And, although beautiful, the location did not have a cyc wall. The room was a blank canvas. After discussing options with our Key Grip TJ Clounie, I called up my friend Bob Lockley at Stage Right, who had his team bring us a semi-truck of genie crank towers and lots of truss which allowed us to build our grid of lights and greenscreen set. It was an ambitious load-in and pre-light day, but thanks to our G&E team, it turned out beautifully. 

I am sure that we could not have created that wondrous world without our tip-tier team. First, our Production Coordinator, Katie Kranz, managed an enormous stack of production paperwork and kept track of every detail. Next, Stephen Wester and his team at Atlas Lighting worked tirelessly to shape the light of each frame. And finally, our fearless leader Emily ran the entire show while managing a remote client via Zoom.  

Throughout this project, I remembered an adage I’ve long lived by, “Never be so foolish as not to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you” -Andrew Carnegie.