THE project
I was contacted by a producer working for Milk through the Gale Partners ad agency (remember the "Got Milk?" ads, yeah that one) who wanted to put together a female media team to support their sponsoring of female runners at the Colfax Marathon. I don't normally get to work on media teams that have even one other woman working, let alone an exclusively woman-led operation! So this was very exciting for me. This branded video production project would be highlighting the events of the entire Colfax Marathon weekend.
The job looked like this:
Day 1: Film the expo and capture stories of the Team Milk women as they came to get their racing bibs and supporters could grab some swag.
Day 2: Film the 5k event for Girls On The Run, the charity that Milk was supporting, which encourages young girls to get into running sports.
Day 3: Cover the actual Colfax Marathon, highlighting the Team Milk cheer squad and the Post-Race Space.
After each of those days, we had to run around town trying to find and capture the ads that Milk had bought around Denver. The billboards were easy enough to find, but we literally had to chase down buses and trains that had ad wraps on them too. (See Day 2 below)
The GEAR
The objective was to stay agile, small, mobile. There was so much action going on especially the last 2 days that I needed to be able to run somewhere and capture a shot with just what I could carry on one shoulder.
Sony FX6 camera
24-70mm GM lens
85mm lens
70-200 lens
Audio kit (x1 lavalier mic and a shotgun mic)
Shoulder mount
1 small LED panel light as a fill light in interviews
Drone: DJI Mavic Air 2
LOTS of batteries
The shoot
DAY 1
We got very lucky with the weather and our schedule. Day 1 was entirely indoors at the beautiful expo space while the outside was both rainy and hazy from huge Canadian forest fire smoke sweeping in (#gross). The job was to film smiling faces of runners and their families getting excited for the big race day. There were cowbells, t-shirts, headbands, and kids making signs which was video gold!
DAY 2
Ads can be boring to shoot if you aren't creative. A lot of money went into creating these, so I wanted to make sure they were showcased in different angles and made to look as epic as possible! Even though the client did not request it, I brought my drone to see if we could see the billboards from the sky and see them in context with the Denver downtown landscape. They loved it! When possible, I always try to overdeliver on jobs to make sure the client gets more than they bargained for.
At one point, we were in a full-blown car chase with a bus that had our ad on it. No matter what, we weren't going to miss our chance. I ended up hanging out the window on Speer blvd. in a moving car just to get the shot. ⬇️👇 SUCCESS!
The rest of the Girls On The Run shoot went very smoothly and we were overwhelmed by the amount of adorable footage that we captured. Kids are pretty bad at faking a good time, and they sure were not faking it.
DAY 3
Capturing the Cheer Squad was VERY important to Milk and their marketing objectives, and we were in luck because this crowd was unstoppable! I scouted this location a couple days before the race to check for lighting and best angles and decided that ~10:00am was the perfect chance to get that coveted natural hair light glow behind the supporters (sample below).
We only had an hour before we had to get back to the Post-Race Space so efficiency was the name of the game. I had made a very detailed shot list a few days before which ensured that nothing was forgotten, no stone left unturned.
results
The brand name True Medusa Pictures is rooted in support for women and their telling the stories that you know, in ways that you have not heard before. I loved getting to work with a brand that was putting that same objective front and center.
Overall, the client was delighted with the amount of footage (about 650GB total) and the quality and diversity of it all. I normally edit all my own footage that I shoot, but this one was a hand-off only project to be edited in house for them. The footage will ultimately be featured on the Gonna Need Milk socials, in ads to promote more races in the future, and hopefully many more destinations! 🥛🥛🥛
