Absolute - Downtime in New York City
14 / 04 / 2015

Downtime on New York Video Shoot

Author

Chris Hodgen

Category

News

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Over the next few weeks you will start to see a lot more video content produced by the talented team at Absolute. As part of completing our integrated offering, we took the decision to invest and develop our own in house video production and photographic facilities, by building a purpose built studio alongside our current chapel studio. The new expanded facility, will be headed up by Mark Holland, who joined Absolute in February from a leading Manchester based agency.

Our new facility not only houses 2 purpose built studios that can be used for either video or photography, but also includes a green screen room, voice over production studio as well as a well appointed editing suite.

We made this decision for a number of reasons, the first of which was the importance rich media is now playing in engaging brands with consumers, and in telling our customers unique stories. It also completed our integrated approach, and gave us the freedom to create our own projects.

We have won some great video projects over the last few months, and will soon be showcasing the first production from our new facility, when we launch an event marketing campaign for global chemical manufacturer, Incorez.

Recently we were asked to undertake a video project for one of our US based clients Lippe Taylor. Myself and Mark made the trip over to New York to film a number of scenarios in the Lippe Taylor head office that will ultimately be used on the new Lippe Taylor website which Absolute are currently working on. Not only did we have to transport a great deal of kit over the Atlantic, but we also had to arrange the shoot from the UK. This meant getting in contact with the Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting to arrange a permit which we needed to film throughout the streets of New York.

We had a specific shot list and schedule prior to leaving, and we knew it was going to be tough to get everything shot in to the 2 days of official filming. On arrival in Newark Airport in New Jersey we headed over to central Manhattan in a cab to meet with our client straight from the plane. We made a slight detour as the weather was so good, we decided to get some footage from the top of the Empire State Building while the skies were clear and blue.

On this (once only!) occasion jet lag was going to be useful, as we had to get up at 4.30am to leave the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, to get the first commuter ferry over to Hoboken in New Jersey to film a time lapse of New York waking up. Sunrise that day was 7.13 so we needed to get the 6.10am ferry to make sure we were set up in time for sunrise. On a previous trip to New York, I had singled out a location for the shoot, which was just off the ferry terminal on a derelict jetty overlooking the Hudson River and the Empire State Building. You can plan, arrange and do everything possible to make sure that the shoot is a success, but you cant control the weather. On this occasion we struck lucky, as the weather couldn’t have been better if we had tried another 1,000 times.

Once the sunrise was over, we packed up and walked back to the ferry terminal to join the other commuters getting back over to Manhattan. With the backdrop of the Empire State and Chelsea Piers it was great way to start a Friday at work! New York has a great public transport network and as soon as our ferry arrived in to Pier 79 at midtown, a line of buses was waiting for us (included in your ferry ticket of $9 per person each way). We jumped on the downtown bus as this ran across West 23rd and then dropped down on Broadway and ultimately Park Avenue South. Within 20 minutes of landing on Manhattan we were getting off the bus outside Lippe Taylors office – a great service.

Our day at Lippe was planned with military precision, including filming planned meetings, interviews with key staff and general filming around the office to try and capture the culture within the 20 year old business. As expected, we had to re plan the timings throughout the day as people were pulled into impromptu meetings with clients or were called away from the office. But in general it went pretty well. We managed to finish filming at 7pm after interviewing Maureen Lippe, Founder and CEO of the agency, so another long day. The adrenalin must have been keeping us going as we had only 4 hours sleep in the last 2 days.

To celebrate the end of the official shoot we went off to grab some food at a new burger joint – Bareburger. We had heard good things about the place, so wanted to check it out. What makes Bareburger so special is not just the fact they make great burgers, but they are also organic!

We decided to stay on over the weekend to really sample what New York has to offer. While I went over to Soho to catch the England v’s Scotland Six Nations game with an old friend, Mark did what he does best and managed to catch some great footage on Brooklyn Bridge and also Times Square. Our flight home was not until 7.30pm so we had all day Sunday to get more footage for a New York video of our trip. We headed off from our hotel bright and early on the Sunday and had planned to pop into the iconic Macys for a bit of shopping but instead ended up going to see the famous large piano in FAO Swartz, made famous in the film BIG, and then of course, the obligatory stop into The Apple Store! As we walked out, it was nice to see Take That’s Gary Barlow walking in with his Mum on Mothers Day.

Hopefully our video production expansion will see a number of exciting trips around the globe, working for more global brands. As we get closer to the official launch of the new facility, I will dedicate my next blog to the processes that go into developing a great essence video, from research and planning to concept generation and storyboard development to production and post production.