So I can finally talk about one of those “secret” projects I referred to in a previous post!

Myself and a very talented cast and crew came together to film an entry for the “Doritos Crash the Superbowl” contest. And our spot is now LIVE for you to check out!

This was all thrown together very quickly, so naturally it was a lot of fun. Jim Cloney – who I co-produced the spot with – came up with the original concept, which I then took and polished into our script. I then threw together an animatic (animated storyboard) just to get a feel for how it could be edited together. Time being limited, I only drew a handful of sketches, so the animation is very basic and not quite exactly what I was visualizing. It was just to give us a sense of how the spot might play.

From this, I then created an actual storyboard that we could have on set to help guide us through the filming.

Casting-wise, I knew from the get-go who I wanted involved. I am blessed to have a stable of very gifted actors that I regularly work with, so casting this thing was a breeze. Funny side note: if you look to the left of our opening shot you’ll see Jim making a cameo. I too was supposed to be in that shot, but the house we filmed in (Jim’s) had dogs, and I am allergic to dogs, so my face was not quite camera ready by any means that night (neither was my breathing. Thank you, Asthma!). Hugh’s lovely wife Alida – who originally was just my stand-in while I set up the shot – ended up making her commercial debut in my place. And she rocked it!

Hugh is the bearded fellow reacting to the off-camera fight, along with Doug. Hopefully you recognize these two from my comedy group, Troupe Dynamic. They were the faces I saw in my brain from the get-go. Its not hard to see why; their reactions to the fight speak for themselves!

Brett is a long-time friend who I have worked with off and on throughout the years, and he was perfect as our Doritos guy. His brother Jake is our muscle man, who also blew this sucker up (and totally Hulked it out). Jason rounds out our cast, and is a face Jim brought to the spot. He did just fine getting the Hell outta harm’s way, yes?

The spot itself looks so awesome thanks to the crew at Heroic Age Studios. We filmed this sucker on the Red One digital camera, which, for those of you who have read my articles on “The Informant!” is the same camera Steven Soderbergh used on that film. I can’t tell you  - as the spot’s director – how great working with this crew was, and how sincerely hopeful I am that we get the opportunity to work together again at some point!

Tim Lynn, our Director of Photography, additionally came and helped import the HUGE files into our editing software and tweaked all the colors after our edit so they looked their best.

Jim and I co-edited this puppy, along with some helpful feedback from Hugh, and I additionally had the pleasure of working on the sound mix. Mixing the fight alone was a blast! Jim engineered the whole thing and, after some last minute tweaking I felt was needed to bring it all home, submitted it. As of this writing there are only 4000 and some entries…!

So without further ado, check the spot out!

Hugh is working on putting together a breezy “Behind the Scenes” look at the filming of this thing. Hopefully I’ll get that posted soon for you to check out, too!

The only other thing I can think of saying right now is: WHOO HOO!