Client: Oregon College Savings Plan
Agency: Cappelli Miles
Role: Creative, Direction, Production
Date: Summer 2019
THE PITCH
Just like the OregonSaves spots, Oregon College Savings Plan is a unique offering from the Oregon State Treasury that allows parents to save for their kids’ college with a 529 tax-advantaged college savings plan that the state itself offers, meaning you just need to be an Oregon resident to qualify. I thought long and hard about how to make something like saving for your kids’ college be a standout campaign, and one of the ideas that came to me is “ XXX is hard… but saving for your kids’ college education is easy.” Thus, the Hard Things spots were born.
I wanted to do a live-action shoot featuring small vignettes of ‘hard things’ that people could do, and contrast it with happy couples who were saving for their kids’ education. From learning Icelanding to teaching your daughter how to drive, the Hard Things spots became a standout piece.
The original scripts I wrote for the campaign
The shooting script breakdown I made for the production company
PRODUCTION
There were 8 vignettes per spot, and two total spots ordered, so I needed to scale up the production team. Working with local production company AO Films, we got to work. Over the course of a two day shooting period, we filmed the entire spot with a cast of 24 people and a crew of 6. I used my background in Hollywood to provide onset direction and cues, and work with Ryan Welch, the DP from AO Films and his crew to achieve the desired vision. We had a lot of fun, and shot in a lot of interesting locations!
The second version of our storyboard animatic changed a few characers’ predicaments from the original script.
Filming on-location in a variety of setups was technically challenging but terrifically rewarding.
There was some light post-production work I did in Resolve & After Effects to generate the daughter’s text and the ending titlecard graphics. We even used my old Chromebook with the broken “S” key as the hero laptop in Spot 1. Classic!
MUSIC
I’m a huge fan of commissioning original music for the projects I direct whenever possible. My goto composer is the ridiculously talented Dave Dexter. He and I worked through a custom score for Hard Things based on some gypsy jazz. He composed the original score and then recorded the guitar parts and vocals himself, creating a perfectly memorable music bed for this unique spot.
FINAL RESULT
The final two :30s spots that aired on national TV.
The 1:1 vignettes I edited together for social media, timed at 6s with ending titlecards and a few bloopers.