Back in May I was commissioned to shoot a video spot for Nokia featuring their brand new Lumia 930 and the wireless charging plate the phone ships with. The brief was simple, but technically rather challenging. We had to film the phone and charging plate in up to 30 different locations, but all the while making sure the phone didn’t change position.
Hit the jump to see the finished film and how it was done…
Client: Nokia
Agency: Wunderman, London
Creative Director: Evan Jones
Production Supervisors: Tom Redican & Adeola Adedeji
Assistant: Wayne Lennon
Editing: Adam Swords
Initially I considered the idea of using green screen and then comping in plates (background images) that we could shoot separately. But that posed problems such as ensuring the focal length and camera angle was right between shots, compensating for changing lighting conditions, making the phone look as though it was sat on the surfaces correctly…the list goes on. It was going to be more effective to do things the old fashioned way and get our shots all in camera.
I set about building a lightweight rig (we only had two days to shoot this) which could be set up and broken down quickly and transported easily between locations. The important factors which had to remain consistent were the distance between the phone and the camera, the angle of the surface the phone was sat on and the focal length of the lens to ensure the perspective of the phone remained identical between frames. It also had to be able to go totally flat to the floor to get some of the shots on the list.
As per the technical diagram above, I ended up with my trusty Manfrotto 190XPROB tripod with a stills ball head. To the centre post of the tripod I mounted a Manfrotto 143N Magic Arm with a Super Clamp, at the other end of the arm was the camera plate which would act as the positioning device for the phone. By articulating the tripod so that the centre post was horizontal and flipping the ball head upright, I could shoot from any height whilst maintaining the correct ‘angle of dangle’. See the rig in action below at the beach (or a children’s play park in central London).
Using the rig allowed me to place the phone accurately each time by aligning it with the camera plate at the end of magic arm. The height, angle and distance from the camera all remained the same and only minor adjustments were necessary each time to get the phone in exactly the same position. Functionality doesn’t need to be beautiful!
(Yes, that’s a blue cock on my head).
Once I’d worked out how to get the phone to play ball and land in the same spot each time, all that was left to do was find our locations and capture a couple of seconds of each scene to be cut in to the final film. The idea behind the Nokia Lumia 930′s wireless charging plate is that it can be taken with you anywhere, so we were shooting in parks, tube stations, taxis, skateparks, barber shops, gyms and coffee houses across London and the Midlands.
Having such a lightweight set up also meant that we could fly under the radar most of the time and not draw attention to ourselves even in busy public places.
The rig worked perfectly and survived two days of hard shooting. The shots were tweaked in post to deal with some reflections on the screen and to ensure the display was visible in the final version. The film was then cut in to three versions: one for Vine, one for Instagram / Facebook and the final one for YouTube.
