Overview

Levi's Canada trusted me to create a paid ad they used across social media as well as images for their website, in-store displays, and digital platforms. My friend, a tailor for Levi's, was asked to pitch an idea for their series highlighting their tailor shops across Canada. With no experience fulfilling the production side of the pitch, he called on me to help bring the idea to life. Over a week we ideated, shot and edited the video and photos.

The Process

Step 1: Ideation

We wanted to bring our "high school visions" to life. The key words included Creativity, Adventure, Excitement, and Passion. Throughout high school we made videos that followed these principals, and we believe Levi's also shares those principals.

We had a few ideas, but with a tight time schedule and roughly 8 hours to shoot the entire ad exploring those options would have to wait for another day. We settled on creating a "continuous" video with every camera move being used as a transition. This hit our creativity and excitement principals, and the adventure and passion principals would be shown in the video.

Storyboard as seen in the video was: Choose a piece of Levi's clothing --> bring it to the tailor shop --> plan the piece --> make the piece --> wear it on an adventure

Step 2: Shooting

I knew I wanted to highly key activities of the tailor shop including but not limited to sewing, patches, and buttons. I would take all the shots needed by the storyboard and additional shots for safety.

What worked:

I had rented a lighting setup, but because of the awesome attention to detail by the Levi's store design team it wasn't needed. The light directly over the tailor area worked as a massive, fantastic soft box.

What didn't work:

I wanted to highlight the stitching in a unique way, so for the first time ever I rented a probe lens! A probe lens shoots objects up close, close enough to see the tip of a needle on a sewing in full frame! While very interesting in theory, because the garment shakes so much during stitching, the shots were also shaky, no matter how smooth the lens operation was.

Step 3: Editing

Editing was the easiest and fastest part. Because of my preparation in the preproduction phase, I knew what clips was looking for and what the video should feel like.

I used stock music and sfx from my agency stock music account, meaning Levi's could even show the ad on TV if they wanted to.

Finally, adding a colour grade, lens flairs and other little details to build back the world around the clips was the cherry on top.

Taking a similar approach to the photos, a lot didn't work! I am not a photographer at heart and with a much heavier focus on video creation I hadn't had as much practice behind the lens as I should. Regardless, I found photos I knew Levi's would be impressed with.