Meats Were Grilled & Memories Were Made In These Brand-Focused Lifestyle Spots | Char-Griller
Grilling out is maybe one of the most quintessential summer traditions alive today, and for good reason. Just hearing the phrase "grilling out" raises imagery of sunny poolside days, nighttime fireworks, and being with the people you care about most. In these spots, we aimed to capture all of that and more. Our client set out to showcase not only the lifestyle they wanted to espouse, but also the delicate engineering and desire to provide high-quality grilling experiences they bring to the table.
We set these videos alight from script to screen, shooting them in conjunction with 12 product videos for Char-Griller as well! We're efficient like that. DP Trey Gregory shot on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K, along with the Sony C200, with Angenieux EZ1 and EZ2 glass.
Good Food & Family
Writer/Director Jordan Nowlin centered this piece on three stories: a family with young kids, a high school graduation, and a group of friends with a little romance thrown in. These narratives fulfilled our clients desire to see many different people enjoying grilling with their products. For Char-Griller, making their grills affordable and accessible to everyone is a major point of pride, and they wanted their lifestyle branding to reflect that.
In the scene of the two friends falling for each other at dinner, we shot at dawn to accommodate the rest of our schedule. Trey and Gaffer Collin Ingram used a "china ball" paper lantern light above the table and made use of practical string lights to set the mood.
Why Charcoal?
We're always looking for ways to save time on set. What better way to capture some extreme closeup coal footage than at 5:30am, while your talent is getting ready for their big scene? That's just what Trey did: got a charcoal chimney and laid out some coals. He blocked all other light, and got the shots that would be the focus of this installment of the brand trilogy.
Char-Griller started making only charcoal grills, and they still make up most of the catalog. It's important to justify the added difficulty of using charcoal over gas. Luckily, charcoal is better for flavor, so Jordan had a compelling argument. All we needed from there was the footage to support it, and the team delivered.
Innovation
The third installment of this sear-ies (we have to get our grilling puns in somewhere) focused on Char-Griller's continuing efforts to innovate. Charcoal grilling may be an old style of cooking, but that doesn't mean there's nothing left to learn!
Throughout this process, we gained a ton of knowledge about what our clients really did, and saw how much work really went into making each product. Being a script-to-screen company, we've got the rare opportunity to dig in deep to the meat of each project and understand it; it's a fun part of what we do that makes the results all the more juicy!
Maximizing Brand Awareness
Creating great brand videos is about showing the effort that went into creating a product, the high functionality of that product, and maybe most importantly, what the consumer can get out of it. These videos are great examples of all three. When you walk away from these videos, you can't help but think of the good times Char-Griller helps facilitate through performance, affordability, and innovation. And that's a sign we did our jobs right!
