14 Nov Vlog #27: Doritos Part I

Steve Herron talks about his experience on his first set with Moth to Flame for some Crash the Superbowl Doritos specs that the team filmed this past weekend.

I’m a new member to the Moth to Flame family and I’ve been invited to blog about some of the new work we’re doing. This past weekend, Christine kindly allowed me to help out as a group of MBA students and local actors made a series of Doritos commercials. Before coming to grad school I worked in politics and my background is closer to the production side of film-making so it was a welcome chance to get exposure to the technical side. Anyone who follows Christine’s work knows how good she is at making professional-quality products, but what you might not realize is how much pre-planning and post-production work is involved. For this project, the post-production has just begun but I can report even 15-30 second commercial spots require an insane amount of planning.

When I was in high school I watched a TV series called Project Greenlight, which was about a director/screenwriter winning a competition to have his movie made. One of the producers said that the most important part of the process is actually pre-production—something that seemed ridiculous to me since it came across as just a bunch of meetings. After spending Friday and Saturday on set, I now see the wisdom of those words. Fortunately, Christine already knew that it was so important and had put in plenty of prep time for all the shoots. It was so easy to see how bad things would have gone if she hadn’t put that extra time in. Christine used a Canon T2i and a Zoom H4n, both of which I have never worked with before.

For some fun and interesting moments from the shoot check out the video-blog I posted.

-Written by: Steve Herron (JD/MBA McCombs student)