Last year, National Logistics Services (NLS) contacted me with an idea for a music video to show at their end-of-year company-wide staff party. I was pretty excited to see what I could come up with, so I jumped on the idea. I knew filming was going to be a lot of work and most likely very chaotic, but at the same time good fun! This company has 7 different locations so I quickly got an idea of just how many people I would be directing over the two-day shoot.
I was given addresses, shooting times, and the song they wanted to use. They also assigned sections of the song to each department so I knew what to expect going into each location. I printed out the song lyrics, gathered my gear and a bluetooth mp3 player and went on my way to direct and film hundreds of people whom I never met before. As overwhelming as it sounded, I’m happy to say it went really well! I shot all the footage over 2 days where I was the camera operator, director, and just an overall motivator to get the staff hyped-up before they delivered their lines. Thankfully, I made some family music videos for fun in the past, so I knew what I needed to capture in order to bring the final video together.
Each locations brought their own set of challenges. When I arrived at certain locations, some of the staff were unfamiliar with the song so I had to help them get the tempo down and understand what we were trying to achieve while keeping it fun at the same time. It was also a bit tricky at the start to round up the troops and get everyone in the right mind set to deliver some lines. I had to keep in mind that it was a regular work day and everyone had something to do. However, after 3-5 minutes of me playing the song and making a complete fool of myself demonstrating different approaches to delivering the lines, everyone warmed up to what I was trying to achieve and got in the holiday spirit.
Despite some of the challenges, we had some staff bring their A-game and were prepared with props and everything. Some had an elaborate plan that they had been practicing before my arrival perfecting it to a tee. The only issue with some of these situations is that sometimes you might have a well thought-out plan, but figuring out how to film it is the difficulty. I had to sort out how to incorporate their ideas and shoot it in the best way possible basically on the spot. Everything came down to the given ideas, the lyrics, how many people I had in front of me and what the space I was working with looked like.
I have to say that it was a really cool experience working on such a challenging project. I really had to put myself out there in terms of raising the energy of the groups that needed a little push. Over the two days of shooting I would say 30% of my energy went into videography, 30% directing, and the remaining 40% went into being a motivator and problem-solver.
After going through all the footage, I realized I had more than enough bloopers to put together a blooper reel which you can see below. Enjoy 🙂
