Glenn Przyborski, Director / DoP / Editor for Przyborski Productions has a long history in making TV Commercials.
Glenn shares four Hospital TVC campaigns he recently worked on, with four completely different styles and looks, detailing his gear list and methods for getting the different looks.
4 Different Hospitals, 4 Unique TV Campaigns from Glenn Przyborski on Vimeo.
Here’s a look at 4 commercial ad campaigns that I recently directed, photographed and edited for 4 different healthcare systems.
SPOT #1: Sharon Regional Health System… This ad features Debbie Lewis who’s alive today thanks to Sharon’s Cardiac team. Deb shares her home with 54 unusual pets. The agency is Scoppechio from Louisville, KY.
I’m not a fan of testimonial commercials, but research shows they’re very effective. That said, this is my favorite testimonial spot… The audience gets to meet an interesting person and see a glimpse of her lifestyle. I think a sincere message from a single individual is more effective than quick, sound bites from 6 or 7 random people.
I shot the on-camera sync segments of this spot with a Canon C100 feeding an Atomos Samurai ProRes422HQ recorder. The “B-Roll” cutaways around the farm were all shot hand-held using a Sony A7S feeding a Atomos Ninja Star recorder. The A7S is an amazing camera for spontaneous, shallow depth-of-field shooting. You may be surprised to learn that I don’t use the Sony S-Log2 settings. Instead, I use a modified picture profile #5. Virtually all the exterior scenes were shot available light. We quickly realized that the crew, bounce cards and HMI’s were scaring Debbie’s animals. The C100 was set to wide-dynamic with a +2 point chroma boost. During the edit, I made use of the natural sound recordings from the A7S internal stereo mics.
SPOT #2: Curing cancer of the lungs or esophagus requires specialists. Dr. Rodney Landreneau and Dr. Blair Jobe are co-chairs of Allegheny Health Network’s Esophageal & Lung Institute. Produced for Mullen Advertising, this new spot introduces their team of patient-focused doctors. The agency’s creative called for all five doctors to speak on-camera combined with some interesting hospital OR and technology scenes.
As with the previous spot, I used a Canon C100 on a Fisher 10 crab dolly to shoot the sync sound scenes of the 5 doctors in various locations throughout Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA USA. Each doctor gave us 45 minutes of their busy day, so we had to be completely setup and ready for them when they arrived. In this case, all recordings were made on the new Atomos Shogun recorder. All scenes were shot 1080P (not 4K). The cutaways were shot on my A7S using a collection of Canon FD series lenses that I modified with the custom FD to EF kits that are sold by Ed Mika on eBay. These polymer replacement lens mounts convert almost any of the great and inexpensive FD series lenses to EF. I used a 20mm F2.8 super wide for high overhead shots and a 35mm F2 and 85mm F2 for most of the photography. Most of the operating room scenes are spontaneous, hand-held photography. A few cutaways were shot using my Manfrotto carbon-fiber unipod. The unipod also enables you to extend it to get some very interesting high angles, looking down on the surgical team. For those shots, I pre-set the focus and aperture then framed the action while watching the Shogun’s LCD screen.
SPOT #3: If you live in Ohio’s Akron-Canton area, there’s a good chance your healthcare provider is Aultman Healthcare. This ad is part of a campaign from the Innis-Maggiore agency to showcase the hospital system’s total capabilities…everything from preemies to end-of-life hospice care.
The hardest thing about this shoot was logistics. After our initial pre-production meeting, my producer and production coordinator, Judy Gurchak worked with the agency and hospital marketing team for days, setting up 2 complicated shoot days that were broken down into 15 minute time blocks. When you film inside a busy hospital complex, you only have access to certain rooms, equipment and people for a few minutes, so you can’t get behind or off-schedule. I used a combination of my Canon C100 & Sony A7S for every setup. I’d leave the Canon on the Fisher crab dolly, then after the planned scene was photographed, I ran around with the A7S grabbing cutaways for editorial options.
SPOT #4: The Marcus NeuroScience Institute is the latest addition to Florida’s Boca Raton Regional Hospital. This commercial introduces their new 52 million dollar facility and its talented team of doctors. The spot also credits the philanthropic donors who made the Institute possible. The hospital’s Vice-President of Marketing and Communications, Tom Chakurda created the campaign concept and wrote the copy.
It’s hard to believe that every scene in this fast-moving commercial was shot in one long day. Rich Schutte shot some of the OR scenes using his DJI Ronin and my C100. Most of the scenes in this commercial were shot on my Sony A7S using Canon lenses via the Metabones EF to E adapter.
A talented, Pittsburgh based 3-D animator, Glen Johnson created the 3-D brain animation that kicks off the commercial.
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