Microsoft wanted to increase awareness, share of voice and positive sentiment for its cloud storage product, OneDrive, by shifting from feature-focused messaging to emotive storytelling.
Partnering with industry-best directors and specialist studios, we produced a long-running video series for social as part of our “Save Yourself” campaign, which was integral to its success. For each of the videos, we brought in actors with improvisational backgrounds to create ensemble-like casts, a la Saturday Night Live. This casting approach allowed us to create a unique level of rapport on set, experiment with scripts and capture more quality takes.
As the lead producer, it was my job to oversee and manage (from pre-production through post-production) my internal creative team, source and hire third-party production teams, and keep clear and constant communication lines with clients—all while managing a year’s budget and shifting timelines.
Shoot 1: virtual production
Clients needed a handful of videos to launch their new “human-first” messaging on social, quickly. I tapped a local production team with a state-of-the-art LED sound stage where we could easily create a broad variety of scenes on one stage. This allowed us to shoot a total of 6 videos, ranging from 0:10 - 0:20, in a single production day.
DIRECTOR | Josiah Savage
CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Colin Ayres
AGENCY PRODUCER | Cara Morici
PRODUCTION COMPANY | Vossler Studios
Shoot 2: Onedrive for the holidays
Clients wanted to continue the momentum we’d started with the first 6 videos by producing another set of “Save Yourself” videos—this time with a holiday theme in mind. We needed to shoot and edit 3 videos within about 6 weeks, which meant we needed to move fast. We didn’t quite have the budget needed for another virtual production, so we leveraged a team that could help us create the same production value but with a green screen instead.
DIRECTOR | Megan Brotherton
CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Colin Ayres
AGENCY PRODUCER | Cara Morici
PRODUCTION COMPANY | Kontent Partners
Shoot 3: On-location
Content produced from the first two shoots was performing extremely well on social, so clients were interested to see what another approach to filming—on-location—could do. I led the process of selecting a production team in Los Angeles, where we could tap an even larger talent pool, have access to some of the best up and coming Directors, and shoot a total of 3 videos on properties that offered a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces.
DIRECTOR | Christopher Guerrero
CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Colin Ayres
AGENCY PRODUCER | Cara Morici
PRODUCTION COMPANY | Kaboom Productions