Nike Spec Commercial

 Nike Spec Commercial

This project was born out of the idea that we wanted to do more branded commercial work. What best than to do an ad for a very recognisable brand. We chose Nike over all the other sports brands because it had a strong social media presence and branding message that we connected with the most. The Nike mission statement was “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world”. We based our tag line around this.

Be Your Inspiration

Pre-Production

The 4 sports we settled on came from a larger list that included swimming, pole dancing, ballet, football etc… Ideally we’d have as many sports as possible in the ad to give us production value but for our budget level, we had to settle on 4-5 sports. Our vision was to create a cinematic ad that got people to inspire themselves to be an athlete, to be motivated and keep trying. Before we drew up the storyboards we scouted each location at least once so that we knew what we had to work with. There was at least 60 shots planned over the 4 sports. We also planned to shoot a 1 minute video focused solely on each sport, this meant we would have 5 videos coming out of the 1 idea. Keep scrolling down to watch the rest of the videos.

The Runner

The biggest challenge for this sport was how to keep pace with the athlete while they were running. We tested a few solutions - Roller Blades, Electric skateboard and an electric bicycle. Roller blading with a gimbal didn’t allow me to get up and keep on pace with the sprinter, the footage was still as unstable as if you were running normally and the friction of the track meant you slowed down after just 10m. An electric skateboard felt cool but it wasn’t very safe at the speeds I had to be travelling at especially if I couldn’t look forward or had to look away and pull focus on the camera at the same time. The electric bicycle then was the ideal choice as I could focus on just stabilising the gimbal, focusing and framing. Vee, our producer would ride the bike and keep us on pace.

If anyone were to use this technique, our advice is to start riding the bicycle 20 meters behind the athlete and let them catch up to your speed because sprinters have a tremendous burst of power at the start. We found it hard to catch up to them within our 100m confines if they started first. It’s alot easier for the athlete to catch up to you than the bicycle to the athlete.

Even though we were on a running track, had an electrical bicycle and using a gimbal - you would be surprised how unstable the footage was. We still had to stabilise the footage in post to remove the bumps and the sways. You have to actively relax and move your arms in motion with the bike to keep the framing correct. Be sure to give your athlete plenty of rest as sprinting 100m multiple times in a short time frame isn’t easy.

We had to film at 3 different running tracks because of restrictions and public safety. The first night we filmed, there were over 30 people on the track and field. We couldn’t safely ride the bike or risk filming the public. The 2nd location had more security that didn’t allow us to bring a bicycle onto the track, we needed council permission. Alas, the last final location was empty when we got there but after 30 minutes 2 groups of school children in their PE lesson arrived which meant that we had to finish up and leave anyways. The roadblocks we encountered were just part of the challenge and the footage that we got out of it was definitely worth it.

Figure Skating

The call time for this shoot was at 4am. We only had 2.5 hours to get everything we needed at the location when previously we had easily spent at least 5 hours with all the other athletes. To make it more challenging, none of us on the team had a strong skating background. 2 weeks before the shoot I went with another camera operator for the shoot, Vanessa to practice and see if we needed a gimbal or if we could even skate backwards to get a specific shot planned. In the end, we needed a gimbal and we couldn’t reliably skate backwards.

Similar to the runner, the issue we potentially had was how to keep up with a sport so dynamic and also get interesting shots. I made the decision to have 1 camera on a gimbal at all times on the ice, a handheld camera on the ice for quick set-ups and to have one camera on a tripod with a long zoom lens on the side as a safety to follow the athlete. This helped us cover all the movements even if one of the cameras on the ice were to get out of focus and was unusable.

We went for a dramatic look by switching off all the lights in the venue and spotting our athlete with only a single Aputure 300D II. A crew member was on the side of it at all times to manually follow them so that they wouldn’t be lost in the darkness if they skated out of the light. To try and create an even more dramatic effect we had a smoke machine on the side but due to time constraints we couldn’t fill the rink but only a portion of it before it dispersed. We tried to limit our angles and frames towards the smoke to keep the background interesting.

Choosing to include ice skating in our commercial would hopefully help it stand out as it is not typically seen in sport commercials. There weren’t many cinematic examples to draw from so it gave us a good challenge. The simplest technique to creating an effective image such as the one below, was to use just a single source to side or backlight the subject with the background falling into shadow. Their silhouette and figure will create the most compelling visual.

Boxing

When we think of sport montages or motivational sport I think I can safely say most videos would consist of boxing in some form. The raw power in seeing someone punching a bag and looking fit has to be the easiest way to get someone to feel like they should get up and do something. We had to include it in our ad for that very purpose.

To me this was the key sport that would help tie the whole ad together. It was the easiest sport to film good visuals for especially if we included some haze in the background.
One thing we didn’t have control over was the skylights in the roof. They were part of the location and we couldn’t get high enough to black them out. In hindsight, it allowed us a base level of exposure to work from and then we could use our lights to create the hard shadows and strong contrast that we needed.

For this day we also had the use of 3 Blackmagic cameras, 2 pocket 4K’s and 1 Ursa Mini Pro. For lighting, we used the Aputure 300D II mainly as a backlight and tried not to use any fill since we had alot of sunlight spilling in. A Vaperiza V1000 smoke machine was used to try and keep the same atmospheric level throughout the day.

The image I took as reference for this shot was from a boxing commercial on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHfGWSKsUM. I loved the low key look and the boxer almost being in silhouette which we tried to emulate. We were actually aiming for a true silhouette but because of the skylights above us we couldn’t stop all the lights from hitting her but it still gave us a powerful image. Our backlight consisted of 2 Aputure 300D II at maximum power, hidden behind her and pointed straight at her back. The white boxing bag on the left, wasn’t merely for decoration but it hid the light stands and the lights that were reflected in the mirror. We only filled the area between the boxer and lights with smoke so that we could keep her more contrasted against a lighter background. The amount of smoke could initially seem excessive but it served very well for dramatic purpose.

When it came time to colour grade, I decided on a blue and teal look that was more commonly associated to action movies. I tried to give the skin abit more saturation to pop them out from the background and make it the warmest part of the shots. There was a little green introduced into the whole image to give it a more grungy feel.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Being the first sport we filmed, we had to experiment with the amount of contrast and the positions of the lights to find the look we needed. With the space being quite small we were limited with the placements of the lights and had to concede the fact that the lights would actually have to appear in frame to give us the best angles. The sport itself consisted primarily of holds and submissions which we realised was actually very static for the most part but there were moments that had bursts of movement and energy which we wanted to capture. It was the only sport that required us to ask the athletes to choreograph certain actions to be repeated over and over again.

To get the contrasty and low key look we filled the area with haze and used 2 Aputure 300D’s to act as backlights. All top-lights were shut off and no fill lights were used. It was important to also angle the Aputure lights away from the ceiling so there was less bounce from the top. The floor mats were dark in colour so it helped absorb alot of the light and give us a nice dramatic look. We got our athletes to simply wear contrasting coloured uniforms so that it would be easy to follow their actions during the quick cuts and multiple angles in the commercial.

Lessons Learned

Our original timeline to complete this ad was 3 months from inception to delivery. A real project would need to be delivered in probably less than a third of that time. We wanted to schedule multiple athletes on the same day spending 6 hours each for a 12 hour day but this never happened. It was very exhausting keeping up with the action and making sure we didn’t compromise the quality. Each athlete was filmed on a different day spread over 2 weeks. With a small crew, time is the largest limitation when trying to work well. Location scouting and equipment testing remains crucial to the pre-production phase and without that you won’t be able to do your best work. On the smallest day, we had a team of 2 and on the largest there was up to 5.