Vitamix | Start Your Adventure

This was one of my favorite projects that I’ve ever directed. Vitamix was seeking a new library of video and stills to accompany a brand refresh that focused on living a life of adventure, sharing experiences with loved ones, and having a sense of experimentation and joy when it came to food. I turned those sentiments into a series of stories that focused on Vitamix’s core customer segments that could also serve to highlight the primary features of the Vitamix Ascent series of products. Through these characters, we not only see all that the machine has to offer, but we come away inspired by their journeys.

PROCESS

Moodboards are an important part of my process. They not only help to clarify my own thoughts on everything from art direction to color grading, wardrobe and lensing, it also helps to give my clients a sense of where I want us to go before we have any other tangible visuals to react to.

Whenever I cast I like to do inspiration pulls. These selections helped the casting director to get a feel for where my head was at in regards to who these characters were and in this case, we also matched product features to each of them as well.

I developed character studies for each of the principles in the story. These served as inspiration for me as well as road maps for my actors. It doesn’t all end up on screen in the end, but I like to think that these little details weave their way into the video through art direction, casting, wardrobe and production design.

Storyboards are essential and I always build animatics out of them before shooting to get a sense of timing and pace. It’s a great way to feel out what is and isn’t working before shooting.

:15 Cutdowns

:60 Cutdowns

Finally, we created a Facebook Story that integrated both narrative-driven content along with e-commerce, recipes and product features.