Food & Beverage Winners Announced

Thank you all for participating and contributing your hard work to submit and be part of the Spexster Food & Beverage Challenge! We received over 30 submissions and truly a lot of creativity and amazing effort went into these spots. We judged from a number of perspectives such as visual quality, story-telling, product shots, commercial usage potential, ability to adapt, and more. The beauty of whether you placed or not is that these spots are still YOUR work that YOU own and can use to be sold on your Spexster profile, or to help showcase your portfolio and build your reel from clients. Hopefully our incentive was motivation to keep creating. With that said, thank you again to all who participated and here are the winners...

THE WINNERS

1st Place $3,500 B&H Gift Card

& RHINO ROV PRO MOTORIZED SLIDER

Vlas Igor: CASTEL MIMI "WINE"

As a inspiration was a friend and exceptional florist , and he told me that he really wants to decorate a boat full of flowers on lake . And from there the idea came from , and yes why to not try to make something more original , that including actions , actors and of course a moment of love .

It was difficult for us to film with the horse , because was running very fast and we needed a car to place the camera and all the accessories. Filming by boat on the water , again so complicated because it was necessary to stabilize . Really so hard work but we hope that we did it the best .

About of what I learn every time from such a videos is : you have to give free rein to creativity fro an impeccable result. And never be afraid to experiment.

On the working process we have lot of comic moments : the fish in the lake jumped alone in the boat where our model was , the drone just close to fall In the lake , the horse was not in mood to run .:) it was funny but also so interesting.

2nd Place $1,000 B&H Gift Card

& RHINO ROV PRO MOTORIZED SLIDER

Robert Anthony: ORGAIN "FEEL THE POWER"

The idea is kinda silly... she makes a smoothie in order to make a sandwich haha but out of all of our ideas, this one seemed most feasible with what we had access to. Sammy, the talent, is absolutely wonderful. We've been quarantined together. This concept relied pretty heavily on her ability to make it look like she was really struggling to open the jar but turns out it actually was difficult haha. 

We shot quite a few things backwards. For instance, if we needed something to be perfectly on a mark, we'd set it and do the action backwards and then reverse the footage in post. I feel like that is a fairly common practice especially with food and bev haha most of this was pretty straightforward. I think the most challenging thing was competing with the sun because we don't have a lot of gear to control it. I can't help but see it in the piece but I was constantly trying to keep things looking at least kind of consistent.

Lighting a glass jar is really tough haha so.. many... reflections. I basically had to build a big ol tent of duvetyne. Also tape-balls have many uses. Just roll up a piece of gaff tape and you can prop stuff up with or put it behind something like a cabinet door or picture frame to change the angle of it and get rid of unwanted reflections or bounced light.

The shot where she drools was totally real and totally gross haha. Sammy went a lil overboard on a few takes and almost passed out. She's very dedicated.

3rd Place $500 B&H Gift Card

& RHINO ROV PRO MOTORIZED SLIDER

Robert Eder of Runimation Studios: THE ALPINIST "SWISS PREMIUM DRY GIN"

I was searching for a liquor, especially gin brand that fitted the style of toe spec I wanted to do. The Alpinist is an amazing gin and the brand was a perfect fit for my ideas and regionality, as I live in the Alps.

I used a Shotover F1 helicopter camera system to shoot the aerials of the glacier and mountains and our new BOLT JR+ motion control robot with a Phantom VEO4K for the high speed and product shots.

I learn from everything I do. Especially with new technology spec ads are a great way to find the limits of the gear used and challenging yourself with a specific shot provides a steep learning curve. 

I ordered a set of gin, gift box and glasses for the pack shot. I had to get this shot twice and rebuild the whole set as the red square with Swiss cross was missing in my shipment. So I needed to replicate that and shoot it again.