The Ad

Hamil Bros Studios had been tasked with writing and executing two television commercials for MTCU in Midland, TX. The first ad we had written was for their Card Valet services (click to read and watch here). The second ad we shot while we were there was for MTCU’s KASASA checking accounts.

The Idea

With a KASASA rewards account, you can get cash back and free ATM use. It’s a happier concept than losing your debit card and we really wanted to go with a much peppier idea than the card valet TV spot.

My idea was to have some visual reference to show how our girl makes money while using her debit card. The concept we ended up going with were little dollar signs that followed her around and were added to every time she used her card.

 

The Shoot

The shoot was fairly uneventful, meaning that most everything went fairly smoothly. However, the more I think about it, the more trouble I remember having. This was humorous, more than anything.

The first scene we pulled off was our ATM shoot. Now, our sources told us that the ATM was never that busy and, especially at that point in the day, we SHOULD be all clear. As it turns out, that was the busiest that ATM has ever been. It was mildly frustrating at the time, but, the more people started coming through, the funnier it got.

Our second location was going to be a retail storefront. Due to some miscommunication, the location fell through, so, an augmentation was made and we ended up shooting in front of Samuel L. Majors. They graciously allowed us a venue to shoot in and it ended up much better than originally planned.

The last piece to get, was shooting at a food truck. The Curb Side Bistro, from Odessa, TX, obliged. Needless to say, they were more than accommodating. (Funny side story: Jacob and I were both wearing our Danny’s Asphalt hats and Chef Alejandro Barrientos asked to grab a photo with us after hearing that we had produced the Danny’s Back Tattoo video.)

For more information in regards to The Curb Side Bistro you can reach them at (432) 614-6032, find them on Facebook, or on Instagram (chef_alejandro87)

 

Post Production

Unlike the Card Valet commercial, this video was going to take a special level of visual effects because of the flying dollar signs.

One thing we always aim to do, at Hamil Bros Studios, is doing something we’ve never done before. We will gladly take on a challenge. We know we CAN do it, we just don’t often know HOW we will get the results we want.

To get the effects of the floating dollar signs, we wanted them to be working in a 3D environment which mean that we would need to do 3D motion tracking. This is a fairly simple process in most instances, but, we were not only needing to track the motion of the camera, but the motion of our subject in the frame. Since she moves independently of all of the static objects in the frame, a simple camera track wouldn’t work. What I ended up doing, was taking a camera track and calculating the trajectory of her movement and simulating that to have the dollar signs follow. Now, the only reason I’m even mentioning that is because it makes me feel cool and possibly smart to say it out loud 😀

 

Once all of that was done, we colored the ad, and added the appropriate audio. The icing on the cake was the wonderful voice talent of Andrea Hadhazy. We’ve worked with Andrea before and she has done a bang-up job on them all.