Theia Financial | National Commercial

Jon Millard and I, as I’ve said before, go way back. Originally working on acclaimed dental documentaries that aired as national spots then collaborating on “Netfall”, a feature film that has yet to be released. A few years back, Jon started bouncing around at national TV studios as an editor and producer finally landing at Magellan Financial, a studio which specialized in live tv broadcast. He suggested to them that it may be worth it to get into creating commercials to add to the live broadcast to help promote the businesses on the actual show. This culminated in our first national tv spot together: “Rock your Retirement”. The client for this commercial as well as the studio we made it under absolutely loved it and began to edit it to work with other clients at the same studio. It still runs continuously to this day.

Jon approached me for another national spot a few months before we shot this one, telling me he was “tired of seeing the same spot over and over” and suggested that we blow it out of the water so that we could have something new to show and maybe start making them on a more regular basis. The concept was to create a retirement commercial that featured something other than an older white man retiring. The client wanted to focus specifically on women in retirement. We loved the concept and Jon began drafting a script that would tell that story best.

The script began with a dichotomy. A man plants a “For Sale” sign outside of his house as his neighbor, a woman working with Theia Financial, gets a letter telling her that her retirement is all set up and sufficient for her lifestyle. The rest of the spot shows her (and other featured women) enjoying their life, retiring happily, not worrying about money, etc. I immediately saw this as a bright, movement-filled, airy look and developed the camera package around accomplishing that.

The camera package was the studio’s Blackmagic Ursa mini 12k, which I’m on record as calling one of my least favorite cameras I’ve ever used. I decided to suck it up and use our limited budget to secure lenses, a gaffer, and camera support. We went with Rokinon Xeens with a Prism FX Subtle Dream filter. I felt that this combination cut some of the clinical characteristics of the 12k sensor and also made the older women we were shooting look their best. For camera support we shot most of the spot on an Easyrig to get some movement that I believe helped everything feel a little more grounded and helps the viewer to feel like they are in the scene with the characters. Most of the film was shot between a 24mm and 35mm lens but the opening specialty shot was on a 14mm.

I hired expert gaffer Stephane Strande, a long-time collaborator and someone I would not want to be caught on set without. He and his G&E package really helped get the look we wanted to go for. Soft, bright, airy, and ultimately realistic. Exterior scenes were supplemented with a 4x4 frame of 250 overhead and a 6x6 ultrabounce to fill in the shadows and raise exposure while keeping it soft. Some smaller exteriors we did with a 4x bead board that we clipped a cut of unbleached muslin to. One indoor scene was an Amaran f22c through 6x full grid, a 2x4 quasar-flo for wrap, a 4x solid for negative fill, and a 300x with spotlight attachment for the background. Another was two 300ds through 8x16 1/2 grid and a 300x spotlight in the background. Stephane and I are always on the same page with keeping it simple and we both agree that the more fixtures you add the less realistic the lighting becomes. I am very happy with the work we did on this spot.

I did the color and post-finishing on the film and went for a warmer but naturalistic look throughout.