Commercial and Video Production

The commercial was primarily for a series of advertisements to complete the Gibson Legacy and This is My Gibson campaigns. An idea for a creative strategy could be The Gibson Legacy; a marketing campaign focusing on the generations for Gibson guitars throughout the entertainment industry. The Gibson Legacy and This is My Gibson could hit many generations in an emotional way and invite the audience to try something new but considered classic.

I don't believe the Legacy concept has been used for marketing purposes this way. Gibson has relied on its legacy and brand loyalty for decades by offering remakes of "legendary" designs. However, the side by side comparison of the Gibson experience has never been exploited to the fullest. This strategy could be a great way to build emotional relationships with target audiences ranging from the young to the old.

For the video Shoot I decided to go with a man in his early 20s and show off his collection of Gibson guitars. I decided to use the Canon 7D DSLR camera with a 35 mm lens, and a softbox lighting kit. We went into the photography studio and pulled down a gray background; the talent brought his equipment and played live for the B-Roll takes. With the help of the director of photography we decided to go with a dramatic lighting to convey the guitar in a soft yet legendary way. Once everything was set up the talent delivered his lines as related to him as possible.

In post-production the video was edited down to a minute commercial for web advertising, and then a 30 second commercial for all kinds of media. The audio was edited in Pro Tools where the talent's voice was brought up with EQ and compression and the guitar was edited with EQ so that the voice of the talent count come up through the mix.

Mariachi Monaco

 

This was the project where I had the most fun. I met the kids from the Mariachi at a school concert and I immediately knew they had talent beyond their years. I then booked them for the studio the very next week. There were 19 performers from which 3 were trumpets, 2 guitars, 2 guitarron, 2 vihuela, 2 harps and 8 violins.

Stage Plot

 

For the equipment I closed miced the Shure Beta 52A for one Guitarron and the ElectroVoice RE20 for the other one. Two MD421s for the trumpets as an ORTF setup. Two Rhode NT2As for the Guitars as an MS setup. Two NT5s for the Vihuelas as an ORTF setup. Two KSM 141s for the Violins as an spaced pair set up. Two SM57s for the low end of the Harps as well as a Royer R122 bidirectional microphone for the high end right in between the Harps. I also used the Neumann U87 for vocals setting it up in between the Guitars and Vihuelas or the Violins depending on the song and the lead vocals for that piece. 

This was the very first time the kids recorded in an studio setting so we strayed from the click track and just captured their performance. Their professors gave them their cues as needed and the performance went smooth. We recorded 4 songs in 2 hours that we had them available. We took 2 hours to set up the studio and the monitor room, setting up absorption panels and blankets in the live room to separate the instruments. Inside the monitor room we set up the Pro Tools session and patched it to the SSL Duality Console with no external gear included, only with the board's EQ and soft compression.