DJI Pocket 2 (Magic At Hand) - Production Story - 3 of 3
Over the past 2 days, I’ve been breaking down how we created the DJI Pocket 2 Digital Spot. This series would not be compete without sharing more about the team who helped make this happen.
Talent Team
We worked with a stacked group of talent to bring this piece to life. Since we’re so closely connected to the social space, getting other creators involved was a natural decision. We felt most comfortable working with our network, and since the talent list was comprised of creators, they felt comfortable working with a camera product.
I’ll break down the talent group one by one, and link them here if you want to see their work.
Jules Aroura - Jules is a singer and model based out of LA, who I connected with on a booking network. She’s one of the few people involved who I hadn’t worked with before, but she crushed this shoot and was awesome to work with. Come to find out, she had been feature on The Voice! Big plus for the spot.
Chantéa McIntyre - Chantéa was found by my assistant Alyssa, and she was the other creator I hadn’t met before we worked together on this one. Chantéa and her beautiful family are based out of Fresno, CA, which is my hometown. There aren’t many creators from Fresno, so I was really excited to get them involved. I will admit, I was pretty nervous working with a family of 6 on a commercial shoot, but the day we filmed together turned out to be my favorite day of all–full credit to their kindness and amazing kids.
Randall Hsieh - Randall and I went to college together, and became good friends Freshman year. As college progressed, we both joined different circles, and didn’t see each other as often. About 4 years after we stopped spending time together, we reconnected by accident in Bali. Jeremiah Davis and I were doing some scouting for our international workshops that we run with Jacob, and Randall was in Bali too. He showed us a few places and helped Jeremiah film a few things. Since then, I’ve tried to get him on as many projects as I can, because he’s such a great guy to have around.
Evan Paterakis - Evan is a talented creator who is good friends with Jeremiah. We’ve worked with Evan on a few editing projects, and he has a great social editing style. We paired him up with Randall as the other “City Friend” since we knew he would look very natural using a camera in lifestyle environments.
Curt Pittman - One day, when Jeremiah and I used to live together in Venice, we walked outside our apartment to grab some coffee. Immediately, we heard someone say, “Hey, it’s Jeremiah!” We looked over out shoulder to see someone we’ve never met before. He introduced himself as Curt, a local video editor who had been following Jeremiah’s work for some time. Within 3 weeks, we had Curt on to support an editing project. Within 3 months, he was great friend. Curt has worked on countless projects for us now, supporting in editing and filming.
Daniel Young - Daniel Young is an adventure buddy of Jeremiah’s. Daniel creates amazing travel and adventure content, and has recently cultivated an audience of over 2 million on Tok Tok, showing his tiny home van build process.
Additional Talent - We also worked with Alyssa Lynch, Whitney Fransway, Vanessa Dawson, Laura Tice, Marian Nutley, Leo Grigg, Daniella Perez, Nolan Omura, Deezy Bike Life, Charly Jordan, Roland Pollard, Matias De Rada, and of course, we had a cameo with Jeremiah Davis.
Creative Team
Working on a commercial spot of this size isn’t possible without help. Here are a few of the creators who helped us get this project over the line.
Hudson Hopper - Hudson is my cousin, and a few years ago we gave him an internship to create Jeremiah’s How We Made It YouTube series. Since then, he’s assistant edited on our projects for Corona Extra, Gashi, and our Full-Time Creator Class. He’s a well-rounded creator who has been making content since grade school, and he helped map out the original edits and lay out first versions for everything.
Jordan Walsh - Jordan is my favorite freelancer to hire because he brings such confidence and peace to everything he does. Jordan and I went to college together, and I used to hire him for $50 to shoot and edit 100 photos for school rally events. Now, he makes me pay him a lot more. I do it happily, because every time he’s on a project, I know it’s getting done right with no stress. Jordan helped with fine-tuning elements, and social cut-downs for this project.
Curt Pittman - Curt was talent, yes, but he also aided with some green screen elements in the video. We had to place clips we hadn’t shot yet on the AI Editor scene at the fire pit, so Curt just used a green screen image on the phone, and placed it on easily.
Jess Tonti - Jess was our stylist, and we got connected through another producer friend of mine at Mane Co. Jess has some solid commercial experience to her name. She came in clutch with sorting props for scenes, lay-downs, and creating style mood boards for every character.
Matas Gayauskas - Matas is my go-to PA. He was on set for almost all of the This Is MVMT campaign, and has worked on most of The Chainsmokers’ music videos that I produced. Love this guy. Matas was a PA for one day of this shoot, sorting rental pickups and gear set ups.
Orion Yorke - Orion helped us snag the pickup shots with Jeremiah’s cameos. We work with him on our projects for Red Bull, and a few other clients too.
Internal Team
Jeremiah Davis - Jeremiah is the director. He spearheaded this vision from start to finish. I have so much respect for Jeremiah, because as the creative developed, we realized we’d have to spend a majority of our budget on creators, talent, music, and travel. He was fine with that, and shot virtually every single shot in the entire video himself. Seeing Jeremiah in his element has been one of the great joys of working with him the past 3.5 years. When he’s in the zone, it’s a work of art in itself.
Cody Skene - Cody is the DJI Marketing Director in the US, and he was with us on every main shoot day. This video would have been tricky without him because there were a lot of product features. He explained everything to us, and was on set troubleshooting the prototype cameras we shot with. He interpreted our creative, made sure it fit the brand, helped us make creative decisions. What makes Cody so great to work with is that he trusts us. We have a not-totally traditional process, and he was fine with that. Cody for president.
Alyssa Douglas - Alyssa is my business and production assistant, and she helped with a ton of the pre-production work. She sorted all of our permits, she tracked down talent options, and she created multiple iterations of pitch decks and storyboards. I honestly couldn’t have done this without her. She also helped out on set as a PA for about half of the shoot days.
Reese Hopper - That’s me! I produced this and wrote some blogs about it. Hope you enjoyed them!
