14 Hands Wine wanted an innovative way to showcase their vineyards leading up to a key media moment: The Kentucky Derby.
Since members of the press couldn’t be physically transported to 14 Hands’ vineyards in Eastern Washington, we needed to bring the experience to them. Cue: a virtual reality film.
My responsibilities |
Scoping
Creative strategy
Video production (pre, post)
Site scouting
Project management
Client management
Vendor management
VR equipment sourcing and training
I had a stellar in-house creative team to work with on strategy and general approach, but we needed an expert in the virtual reality production department. I selected an award-winning third-party VR studio based in London, and worked with them from concepting and storyboarding, to filming on-site in Eastern Washington and post-production.
My role | I led all initial scoping and timeline development and interviewed potential VR groups that my Creative Director and I ultimately chose from. I built the schedule for the 3-day shoot, and my job on-site was to ensure each day was moving along according to schedule and budget. I managed all client communication leading up to, through, and until the final video was delivered (when I drove to my client’s house to deliver the VR headsets).
Biggest challenge | Tight timeline? Small budget? Poor weather and environmental conditions? Check, check, and check. The challenges in this project came in every size, but that didn't stop us from creating a final product that clients were ultimately over-the-moon with.
Results | The video was used during a media tour on the East Coast to demonstrate how the beauty of Washington's little-known wine country translates into a top-quality product for 14 Hands wine. This led to a number of news articles and increased awareness of the beautiful landscape that contributes to each bottle of 14 Hands wine.
The final video
We shot the majority of the film with a 360-camera attached to a drone, to capture the scale of the rolling vineyard hills. And by flying the drone at a certain altitude, we were able to avoid too much detail of the early-season vines that hadn’t grown their fruit yet.