The challenge with many corporate videos is to take detailed technical information and explain it quickly, visually and in a fun and unique way. Our job is to educate and entertain. And why not? Learning something cool about a company you may want to do business with doesn’t have to be boring. Anybody can be boring. We don’t like boring.
So, when CeRam-Kote™ came to us to create a video describing their family of high performance industrial coating products we saw a tremendous opportunity. We wanted to emphasize all of the stellar traits of CeRam-Kote™ without getting buried by numbers and statistics. The creative team included producer, Matt Joyce, co-director Zane Rutledge and myself (Jeff Stolhand.) Zane and I co-direct on many of our projects and this one was no different.
The first task was to learn in great detail what CeRam-Kote™ does. We met with the owners of the company, asked lots of questions and absorbed data. Lots of data. Next we sat in one of our usual Austin favorite coffee shops and spent time translating this data into story elements. Next those story elements are translated into a script and then it’s on to creating a visual style. As Zane says, “We wanted to create a functional video that is stylishly slick, yet confidently honest… rugged but hi-tech. Oilfield brawn meets geeky smart. We visualized a hybrid between those two concepts — strong and visually powerful. Essentially, it’s a stylized treatment of rugged imagery, bold fonts, and strong metaphors but also with a human component emphasizing the all-important fact that the CeRam-Kote principals are the experts in Ceramic Resin Coatings. That they are The Authority in this field, and if you want it done right, they are the ones to call.”
Here’s more from my partner Zane’s blog.
Utilizing our in-house greenscreen studio, we were able to transport a handful of talented actors (including local talent David Blackwell, below) into a “pop-up book”-style West Texas landscape, stylishly rendered in black-and-white (and red). Classic diners, pump-jacks, oilfield filth and muck make for a rugged spot. After all, “they don’t call ‘em roughnecks for nothing.”
Green screen shoots are always fun. As long as you can recreate the desired effect in post then you can let your imagination run wild. In this case our imaginations allowed us to rough it with the roughnecks. At the end of the day we were all pleased with the results. Check out the final video below.