By Randi Altman
During this pandemic, many brands have found creative ways to keep producing commercials. Some with recurring characters, like Progressive, have had actors shoot from their homes while taking part in a Zoom-like call. The creatives behind sausage brand Eckrich went in a different direction — San Francisco-based production and post company Kaboom used some staff and their families to create the live-action spot, Eckrich Zoom Family Dinner.
While agency Trofia came up with the concepts of the families doing the Zoom dinner Kaboom figured out how to design a workable approach to the idea, developing it to suit the restrictions while still giving a warm and robust feeling. Kaboom’s Joe Stevens and Doug Werby directed and acted as DPs along with Chris Saul. Werby also served as editor. Lauren Schwartz was EP for Kaboom.
The spot features a handful of family members ordering food, including Eckrich sausages, online. When the deliveries come, the viewer watches these families prepare a variety of sausage-based meals on the grill, on the stove and in the oven. When complete, they all turn on their electronics and share their meals with their extended family while social distancing. You can watch the final piece here:
In terms of capture, Werby shot on a Sony Venice in San Francisco, Saul (who is a freelance DP) on an ARRI Alexa Mini in Los Angeles, and Stevens on a Red Dragon in Portland.
Doug Werby (center) and family
Werby cut on Adobe Premiere and the color grade by Swells Studio’s Sean Wells was done remotely using Blackmagic Resolve.
We reached out to Werby to get some details from the unconventional shoot.
This was a great solution for creating new content during the shutdown. How did it start?
We were in the beginning of COVID while quarantined at home and jumped at the chance to do creative work. Our home has been used as a location for several still and film shoots, so we were used to the process, although wearing three hats was a little challenging.
Generally, on set I only direct, but this day I was shooting, directing and acting (if you can even call it that). My plan was to keep the day as simple as possible and only capture what I knew I would need in the edit.
How did you make it work?
We used this great company called PowerRemote to trouble shoot and deliver an interactive video shoot to New England, where our head of production Steven Sills was located. After a half-hour Zoom tutorial a few days before the shoot, a sanitized Sony Venice was delivered to our house with a webcam and an iPad so I could be in constant contact with my remote DP/technical director Petr Stepanek, who was monitoring the camera, the signal and me. In the end, we captured everything we needed at a beautiful time of day.
How did your family get involved and were they prepared for their “15 minutes”?
I live with professional photographer Sylvie Gil. She is an avid cook who has an Instagram cooking presence called Voila bon_appetit, so asking her to be in the spot was a no-brainer.
As for Ulysse, Sylvie’s son, he’s done other video work with me before, and he had just graduated college during the first weeks of COVID, so he was game.
To be honest it was one of the better days during the shelter in place.
