How to Bring Your Work Home (and Capture it on Video)

Probably the best thing about working at MarketPlace is that most of my passions converge in my office. I get to design websites, study analytics, stay current on social media and video marketing technology, to name a few. When I leave the office, I take those passions with me and head home, where I get to be with my number one passion, my family. And that’s where things get tricky, as my wife doesn’t want to be analyzed, much less Google-analyzed, and my kids don’t give a hoot about suites. I’d always wanted to bring my passions home without bringing my work home, but I struggled to know how to do that.

One day, that changed.

The kids and I were in the car in a Costco parking lot waiting for Mommy. After a few minutes of staring out the windows, we turned on our respective gadgets: Andrew with a DSi XL, Gracie with the hand-me-down DS, and I with my iPhone. I pulled up one of my favorite DIY filmmaking channels and began watching a tutorial on how to achieve the visual effect of running through walls. This piqued my son’s interest, and whatever he’s into, little sister is automatically into. So there we were, huddled in a car, watching a video tutorial, when it hit me. I’d found my convergence.

I asked my kids, “Kids, do you want to run through walls?”

You know the answer.

Food, beverages, and ingredients are easy. We recently produced some videos (from concept to post-production) about the use of innovative oils in culinary applications for our partner Bunge North America (see the bottom of the page for a teaser video). Cutting boards and oils are one thing, but, as videographers often warn, working with animals and kids is another. At MarketPlace, animals are in our wheelhouse; we’ve worked with animals for several clients to great success. For example, here’s a photoshoot we did for a campaign for FURminator, and here’s a teaser for a video we produced for the St. Louis District Dairy Council.

Animals or kids, the path to success can be boiled down to a few things: know your tools, know your subjects, and know how to tell a story. For me, this meant a few specific things:

• Providing a story to justify running through walls. I know my subjects (my kids), and I knew that hide and seek would be the perfect context.
• Teaching my kids about blocking, basic acting, and patience (they just wanted to run through walls—let’s be honest).
• Analyzing the locations, testing lighting, and setting the scene to support the mood of the story.

Because I’m a dad before a director, we started with the fun part, running through the wall. We then did all the “boring” story building. It took about an hour to wrap, and I paid the actors in ice cream.

Partly to stay connected to one of the communities I’m passionate about, and partly because I want some new software, I entered the video in a Facebook contest, which rewards the winner with an amazing software package. If you’d like to see my incredibly talented (but non-SAG) children run through a wall, check out the video below, and if you’d like to see other entries and vote.

I’d love the prize, as it would enable me to further my passion for videography, but the best thing about this short video is that it gave me a way (and ideas for more ways) to bring together my passions, and for that, I’m a grateful man.