Spencer Balliet
DIRECTION, CINEMATOGRAPHY, STYLING, CAMERA, EDITING, GRAPHICS, COLOR
Kelsey Ale
PLANNING, DIRECTION, SCRIPT, ON-SCREEN TALENT
Eddie Coleman
CINEMATOGRAPHY, STYLING, CAMERA, ADDITIONAL EDITING
Paleohacks was continually developing an evergreen 21 day challenge product for the Keto Diet centered around Kelsey Ale. As the product graduated out of initial tests, we started increasing the amount of included content. Kelsey had recorded a few simple videos at home on her iPhone explaining the basic workings of the challenge, but we felt it was time to expand and improve them.
I met with Kelsey as well as Zoe, the product lead for the challenge, to talk about the goals for the project.
We wanted a more calming and approachable tone than our marketing material presented, as well as scripts that were more refined than Kelsey’s improvised original iPhone versions. However, we also knew it was important to retain her conversational feel.
After weighing our options, Kelsey and I settled on using paired down cue cards from the approved content that I would then adapt for the prompter.
The day before the shoot, Eddie Coleman and I set up the location, cameras, and pre-lit the space. The primary set was centered around presenting in the kitchen, but we wanted something more informal and homey to help connect the audience to Kelsey in a comfortable way. We used the length of the location to separate Kelsey on the sofa from the background and shot with an 85mm lens at f/2 for the compression and to flatter her face. We set a second camera on a motorized panning slider at a wider angle to capture a more interesting shot that highlighted the depth and shape of the scene.
We tackled eight videos in a one day shoot with Kelsey, running a few takes of each before she and I both felt comfortable that everything was covered and the performance was what we wanted. We had a second setup for three of the videos where Kelsey was sitting at a kitchen table with a laptop to her side to help walk the viewers through some necessary calculations, as well.
Editing involved choosing and combining takes, making necessary audio edits and removals, and managing the multi-cam footage. I created a custom graphic style and intro to match the look of the companion PDF materials that customers would receive and the videos were exported for delivery.