Kiss FM commercial shoots and posts in CineAlta HD

In the first of our three part look at the making of a new commercial for British radio station Kiss FM, using CineAlta HD camera and the new Excellence Periscope lens from OpTex, the creative directors on the project, Yan Elliott and Luke Williamson, explain the shooting and post production issues they were faced with. The commercial was their first directing job and Elliott and Williamson wanted the flexibility of HD to capture all the footage they would need.

The Kiss FM commercial is about escaping the rat race. The idea is that if you listen to Kiss FM in the morning you will escape the rat race as much as possible because it is the least Breakfast showy of all the breakfast shows. In fact, it has so much energy that it feels more like an evening show than a morning show. The idea was to shoot a three minute promo for the track and then cut the ads out of what had been shot.

Rat-Cam
Elliott says: “HD was chosen as a format so we could keeping shooting. We needed as much footage as possible as it was our first job we needed coverage. We also weren’t sure when the Rats would perform so being economical with film wasn’t an option. The OpTex lens was great and we used it so we could get as far into the set as possible, we would have liked to have got flat, on the ground, to get the rats’ point of view better but the bulkiness of the camera was restrictive.”

The HDCAM rushes made it easy to move to post production. “We did quite a lot of post at Golden Square Post production,” Elliott says. “This was because if the rats didn't perform we would have to shoot a plate and then map on the action later. There were no real effects added as we try to get most things in camera. We added more rats to the high street just before two rats disappear down the alley.”

Elliott concludes: “HD is great and has a huge future in commercials. I don’t think you think it looks any worse than film so it’s a cheaper option.”