DJI Pocket 2 (Magic At Hand) - Production Story - 2 of 3

I’m really stoked to present the DJI Pocket 2 launch video. In this blog, I’ll break down the ways this piece was challenging for me, and what we had to overcome to accomplish it. 

Talent

This piece contained the most talent I have ever worked with on a single production. 25 people appear in this 2-minute piece. This creative was led by the director, Jeremiah Davis, who saw great opportunity to celebrate his network and utilize their styles and perspectives. Action and diversity really come across in this film. 

Working with a lot of talent can be challenging for a few reasons. First, it’s just a lot of people to communicate with. I send a breakdown of creative, workflow, schedule, budget, and usage to everyone we use as talent. Multiply that by 25 and it becomes a lot to manage. Second, while people acting as talent in your commercial pieces are the ones who bring everything to life on screen, they’re usually the least connected people to the project. Directors, producers, brand managers and copywriters have been planning a spot for months. Talent simply shows up for a day. Generating excitement and buy-in from everyone on-screen is tough. Especially when there are 25 people.

What made this video so special was that virtually everyone we worked with is also a creator. People who create and publish work of their own understand the process, and are much more collaborative and forgiving.

Locations + Insurance

This video takes place in 16 different locations around Joshua Tree, Big Bear, Hawaii, and Los Angeles. 

On the surface level, simply traveling and sending creators to all these locations is a job. And it was. But beyond that, all of these recognizable locations are permitted. Pulling permits is expensive and time consuming. Generally speaking, the people who run permit offices are either too swamped to reply quickly, or see requests come through too rarely to respond quickly. Either way, it’s definitely the kind of thing where you have to call and email multiple times per day to break through the noise. 

Once we broke through to the permit offices, the next challenge arose. Getting Certificates of Insurance. We work with an insurance company who supplies these, but again–we had to call multiple times per day to get those to come through. The permit offices have specific language they need on the COIs, and the insurance company has specific language they aren’t allowed to put on the COIs. Sometimes that language is the same. I never thought of myself as someone who asks to speak with the manager, but you gotta do what you gotta do. 

Schedule 

The final challenge I’ll outline for you is the schedule we had to work with. With so many talent and locations, pre-production took a while. We obviously wanted to have everything locked in before we started shooting, so it took about 12 days to sort out everything. 

We shot the bulk of this commercial on 6 different days, within the span of 9. We had 3 days off. On Monday, we filmed with Jules for the “City Woman” scenes. On Tuesday, we worked with Evan and Randall for the “City Friends” shots. We took a break Wednesday to prep for our road trip. On Thursday and Friday we shot in Joshua Tree and Big Bear with Curt and Daniel for the “Outdoor Friends” scenes. On Sunday, we filmed with the McIntrye family for the “Outdoor Family” portion. On Monday we got back to LA, and on Tuesday we filmed influencer cameos with Charly, Deezy, Matias, and Jeremiah. 

Needless to say, this was a grueling schedule. I wrote a few blogs during this time period about managing stress and increasing productivity. They were definitely inspired by my experiences. 

The reason I love working in production is that there is a storyline to every shoot. There’s the initial excitement, the big dreams at the beginning, the sacrifices, the difficult moments. I always find that the stress melts away once I see the final product. It’s very rewarding work. 

Back tomorrow with more on the team who made this happen.