29 Nov Commercial Shoot with Edel Golf – Putting Around the Set
Edel Golf is a company that prides itself on providing its clients with a personal customized club, whether it’s for a seasoned pro that’s played in tournaments or a young kid starting out. At Edel Golf they believe in fitting the club to the player, not the player to the club. We recently were asked to provide them with a video training series that will be shown at major retailers such as Golfsmith. Through our training videos we hope to capture Edel Golf founder David Edel’s passion for providing his clients with the best possible club to improve their game. Here is a little bit about how the commercial shoot went for Moth to Flame.
Our first day of production focused primarily on capturing the core of what Edel Golf is all about. We also explored some of the more detailed aspects of what it takes to create a custom fit putter. David Edel discussed some of the misconceptions that the golf industry tends to gloss over and how Edel Golf aims to correct these issues.
We started the day bright and early in Liberty Hill, Texas where the Edel Golf workshop is located. First thing we did was load in equipment we’d be using for the duration of the shoot. After that we tried to determine where exactly we would be shooting, which resulted in the need to move all the equipment out of the room it had been loaded into. Once that was all settled the cameras and audio were placed. The shoot was highly entertaining because it involved a lot of banter between the guys of Edel Golf between takes and flubs. Plenty of jokes about all the things the sound guy overhears, though to be honest I didn’t hear any since I take my headphones off as often as possible.
Once we got through the interview portion of the shoot, we moved on to some close up inserts to help explain the process, tools, and parts involved in a putter fitting. This took awhile to get through since it involved a couple of variations to make sure we got enough footage to work with for editing purposes. Halfway through this setup the DP, Alex Walker. decided he should get a camera affixed to the Movi, a hand-held camera stabilizer, and test it out. Unfortunately the Movi just wasn’t working quite right. The horizontal axis was stabilizing, but the vertical just didn’t seem to be responding and would just let the camera flip up toward the ceiling. Not very good when you’re trying to follow someone.
After the inserts were all shot, we went about trying to figure out what equipment we could wrap for the day, and setting up for the next couple of shots. These shots were mostly b-roll, aka shots that look pretty, of the shiny club heads on and off the clubs. During this time Alex continued to work on trying to get the Movi in working order, or at least in usable order. In video production you learn quickly that problems are more common than you’d probably like, and being creative usually fixes some problems. The Movi however wasn’t something that was going to be fixed with creativity. We set up what was going to be the last shot in the workshop area, mostly just placing lights and getting a fog machine set up. Alex was convinced we could get it shot and so was everyone else. So we got set up for the first shot, the idea was to film David Edel as he made his way through the workshop showing off the many tools they use to make clubs from scratch. In the cut this would be made to look like one continuous shot, but to shoot it we would need to shoot it in several segments. We did a couple takes of the first portion which seemed to go well. The second portion was a little less than stellar, and by the third Alex came to realize that the footage was just too shaky without the vertical stabilization. So on a bit of a sour note we packed up what we would need for the next day’s shoot and headed home.
Day two found us out on an actual golf course for the day. I usually try to remember to get sunscreen on if we’re going to be outside for a shoot, this day however I neglected to do so and ended up sun-burnt. If you ever find yourself on an outdoor shoot I’d urge you to always wear sunscreen. Enough about skincare, the day would be spent filming David Edel doing a fitting. The thing about shooting on a golf course is that you have to get your equipment onto the golf course. First we set about figuring out what exactly we needed and what could be left behind for the shoot. Then we got to work stuffing golf carts full of gear to cart out to the part of the course we’d be filming on. Once we got out there, and started setting up we began to realized that our attempt at gear reduction hadn’t been as successful as we thought it was. Luckily we had some interns helping out who would be tasked with fetching this or that to get the set up ready to shoot. Once we had all the equipment we needed we started the shoot. You’d think being at a golf course would mean decent sound, but at least this day it was less than ideal. Plenty of planes were flying over and it seemed like motorcyclists were enjoying their Sunday. Pretty good sound if you want a noisy environment, but not if you want to get nice clean dialog. I didn’t exactly get off on the best foot this day either since I initially mixed up the sound packs for the lav mics. I was getting audio, but it was accompanied by a strange whistling sound. If you ever run sound and hear a whistle this might be just the problem. This day’s sound was rather annoying compared to the first.
While running sound didn’t go too well, the shots seemed to be getting done quite nicely. Most of the reasons why we had to re-shoot portions were due to those pesky planes flying above or random golfers talking loudly. We did eventually get through all of the shooting that involved talking, and moved on to inserts that illustrate the steps involved in fitting someone for a putter. This took a bit longer because the sun did what it wanted to do. The light kept casting shadows where there weren’t shadows before during the talking portion. Once we got that done though it was a wrap for the golf course location. Now we had to move all the equipment, including the extra items we brought out there after the first load, back to our vehicles. It took almost everyone driving a golf cart loaded with equipment to get everything back to the parking lot. This was something I sure was hoping to avoid. Everyone seemed to be more than happy to drive around in them, but not me. I couldn’t even get the thing to go at first. Turned out I wasn’t stepping hard enough on the pedal, which had to be just about pressed to the floor to get it to move. I’m not sure what the ideal height for golf cart operation is, but I don’t think I reach it. It would have been one thing if I was just riding in an empty one by myself, but this one had all the sound gear in an open box sitting next to me. After the whole pedal debacle it seemed to be going alright, that is till I started to get closer to the parking lot. There was a bit of a dip which I almost flipped the cart and struggled to get the sound box from falling out. It seemed like a never ending struggle to get to the parking lot after that. I did though, without losing the sound box.
After getting packed up we took a break for lunch, then went off to the workshop to finish up the shot from the day before. The Movi was behaving itself so we just had to get that set up and shoot the last shot of the day. It went quite well with the Movi not acting up on us. Most of the sections took two takes, one to get an idea of the movement then the other to get the final take. Be nice if every shoot went that smoothly. All we had left to do was get everything packed up that wouldn’t be needed for the next day. During this time we found out one of our cameras was in fact unaccounted for. I’m not sure why but for some reason I thought maybe it was in the audio box, so I went and dug through it and sure enough someone had shoved it in there at some point when we were on the golf course. Alex said he was missing some HDMI cables which happened to also be in the audio box. If you’ve never been on a set, it can be quite a bit chaotic so getting stuff put back in the right place is quite important. If you don’t know where something goes, someone else probably does and will most likely be more than happy to tell you.
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