On location
Four days, six locations, one darkroom
A commercial about a photographer's life needs his home, his work and his big night. We filmed all of it in six places across southern Ontario, in four days:
Monday in Kitchener. The family home: the kitchen, the backyard, and homework at the table with his son.
Tuesday in Toronto. A darkroom, the city streets and the advisor's office 35 floors up. The darkroom was the hardest find of the whole shoot.
Wednesday in Fort Erie. The Point Abino lighthouse, in a private gated community looking across the water toward Buffalo. We picked it because it could pass for the East Coast.
Thursday in Cambridge. The gallery reveal, staged in the Slit Barn at rare Charitable Research Reserve, with a room full of background actors.
The lighthouse is also where the film's sunrise happens, and we shot it at dusk. Our editing team built the sun in post, then graded the whole film toward the brightness and soft flares SLGI asked for in its storyboard notes. Up above, we used a higher-end camera for our drone to get higher-quality aerials of the point.
Behind the scenes
The gallery didn’t exist until we hung every print from the barn ceiling, so the show floats in the room.
