New York-based design and digital production company Thornberg & Forester (T&F) recently produced four :15 spots for Friendly’s Restaurants via ad agency Allen & Gerritsen (a&g). The new spots will initially appear on www.Friendlys.com and on the brand’s social media channels.
“It’s not every day that we have the chance to apply our live-action talents behind a camera, shooting talent and food for a high-profile national company like Friendly’s,” said T&F co-founder, principal and creative director Justin Meredith. “We managed all facets of production and it was completed entirely in-house. Even the shooting stage was right here in our building on Fifth Avenue in Chelsea.”
Focused on Friendly’s “Build your own burger” menu option, in each of the four campaign spots, a different family member explains what they love about their own unique creation, which is shown via split-screen. Each spot ends with the respective talents inviting viewers to, “Make your own masterpiece.”
Under the creative direction of agency chief creative officer Gary Greenberg, a&g’s team relied on T&F for casting as well as all facets of production and postproduction for their campaign’s motion and photographic elements. Meredith directed the two-day shoot at Dakota Studio with director of photography David Griffiths, capturing live-action performances of the on-camera talent as well as tabletop stop-motion cinematography of the food creations presented in the campaign’s spots and other integrated campaign elements.
Several key tools factored into T&F’s project workflow. “We recently purchased the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and DaVinci Resolve, and we put both to the test for this project,” Meredith explained. “In short, it was an incredible workflow. The camera provides an incredible image that represents a giant leap forward, and the conforming tools in DaVinci are extremely powerful too. We took our footage, converted it to a pro-res proxy to pull selects, then took the selects, popped the EDL in and color-corrected in-house.”
To shoot the food stills, T&F’s team used the Nikon D800E system. “This was yet another advance in technology that allowed us to bring maximum quality to this project,” Meredith added. “The photos needed to be shot with repurposing in mind for all of their media including print and billboard. This is a request we’re dealing with on a continual basis.”
“The Friendly’s work called for a diverse and talented production company, and Thornberg and Forester delivered on every front,” said Greenberg. “From shooting and editing to animation, they did a great job bringing our ideas to life.”
