One of my more recent “high-threshold” productions and perhaps my most ambitious. This shoot had, unlike many of my projects, an extremely detailed production plan and a very tight schedule. This was because our goal was to produce an ad that could compete with the biggest fitness-brands, but with no budget, which involved filming complex shots with cheap, consumer-grade gear.

All the actors were members of the gym, eager to participate. We did one continuous 12-hour shoot through the night. The opening sequence was filmed in the gym’s office, which we remodeled to look like an old, worn-down gym, with some help from AI-assisted set extension. The dolly-zoom was mostly achieved in camera, with an extensive amount of retouching in post to stitch together the images. There were approximately zero filmed shots not included in the final product, which tells you how razor-thin the margin of error was.

The clients were thrilled with the end-product and it was received very well. There were actually two other commercial gym chains who practically stole scenes from the ad and put them in their own advertising material, which was quite flattering.