Gateway Printing "The Box"

Another spot for Gateway. This one actually ran before the Back To School spot also on this blog. We locked down the camera and had someone under the table, handing things up through the box to the "shoppers" in the commercial. I would have preferred doing the whole commercial like the last scene- one person, one shopping cart, and an endlesss amount of things in the box, but I was still happy with the result.

PODS

Two spots back to back here. The client was very open to ideas and we made these two 15 second spots showing two reasons why people need to put things in storage. The spots make the point with humor. By the way, it was 100 degrees in the shade when we were shooting the "New Car" spot. Both commercials were shot at the same home.

Gateway Printing Back To School

I had a script when I went into this shoot, but I didn't know how many kids the client was going to round up, what they looked like, how old they were, or even if they could read. I ended up getting just the right mix of everyone. The store was also laid out in a way that lent itself to getting a little creative with the shots, including the choreographed shopping carts and part of a 360 degree pan around the store. All in all, a pretty fun commercial.

Nuevo Progreso Merchants

Enjoy this one, because it never made it on the air. We were asked to create a commercial for this Mexican border town that is big with the winter tourists. Due to various factors, including new border crossing regulations, their tourist traffic was down. We created a real slice of life spot- the true atmosphere of what you encounter when you go to Nuevo Progreso. The merchants, however, did not like the spot. What they settled for paled in comparison to this one, but as they say, the customer is always right. As a result, this spot never aired, but I hate to see it die. Thus, it's available for you to view here.

Vannie Cook Children's Cancer Clinic

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. A local auto dealer group donated the advertising time to the local Children's Cancer Clinic. Rather than spout a lot of dry statistics, we decided to let patients and their parents do the talking. Hopefully the end result of getting more donations to the Clinic will be realized.

Pump Arcade

I'm adding this because I love the concept of this place. A fitness center for kids that takes advantage of this video generation. You still play video games, but you have to exercise to do it! We also recruited a good ham for the open and close. How many parents have heard their kids say what this one says in the open in the exact same tone of voice!

Pueblo Tires

I just had fun shooting this. The original concept discussed was declaring war on high tire prices, but we figured in a time of an unpopular war, that concept might backfire. So I suggested a hunting theme instead and we just had some fun with it!

Dr. Carreon and Associates

We've all been in the dentist's chair and carried on conversations with a bunch of dental equipment in our mouths. So why not do the same thing in a commercial? They'd be the best kind of testimonials. It also helps that the dentist at the end is full of warmth- it just makes you want to cross the border to Mexico and have him work on you!

Surgical Center of South Texas

A testimonial spot using two of the doctors who actually did surgeries there. We got to go into the OR while they were performing surgeries, which is why I like this one.

Magic Valley Electric Finnegan

The last of the classic TV series of spots- this one for hurricane preparedness and based on "Gilligan's Island." What I really liked about this one is it's the first TV spoof commercial I've ever done that part of the charm was using a laugh track like old sitcoms used to have. This one's a full one minute commercial.

Magic Valley Electric Dragnet

This one was a very obvious spoof on "Dragnet". My favorite scene in this was when the Joe Friday character chides the homeowner for not having a clean air filter and the dual head-nodding and head-shaking that occurs- the same kind of bad acting that made the original show a cult classic!

Magic Valley Electric Mr. Science

Another of my on cameras as "Mr. Science", the 50's-style early TV ham. Another in this client's series of commercials based on classic TV shows.

Sports Ticker

This goes into the category of "Best Spot That Never Aired". It was a promo for our sports ticker. It's hard to come up with 30 seconds of copy about a bar on the bottom of the screen that carries sports scores and I was very proud of the outcome. Unfortunately, the sponsor said corporate would never go for it. I have no idea why that would be, but needless to say, we never aired the promo. I hope you enjoy it.

Shakes

An old-fashioned ice-cream store deserves old-fashioned treatment. We used 50's-style music and got classic cars to make a classic spot. Since it involved amateurs, some of the lip-synching isn't spot on, but it was still a fun spot.

Ferro Block & Tile

I wanted this commercial to come out so much better than it did. The concept was to have people wearing outfits that would go with the various tile we shot to show that flooring is fashionable. Unfortunately, the people showed up not wearing what I really wanted so the idea gets lost a little bit. Still, there is one great shot of kitchen flooring in here and I was still relatively pleased with the result.

NAI RGV

The client liked the color schemes on the national corporation website and wanted to duplicate that look. Our graphic artist did a great job on the animation and we took the matrix square approach on the transitions to make for some nice visuals.

Beautique

A commercial I actually wanted to do a little more with. I wanted to take advantage of the unique color of the logo and have a series of graphic green lines going across or up the screen. and inset the video. This was a rare case where the client wanted less graphics and fuller screen picture. Nonetheless, it still came out pretty good.

LJ's Shrimp House

One of my early TV spots and one of my favorites. When meeting with the client, he mentioned that they often have dishes that "aren't on the menu". That led to the whole Bogartesque Mystery Man.
When you work for a TV station, there isn't as much post-production time available for a spot, plus this was during the days before non-linear editing. As a result, we did the "quickie" version of colorizing the food while keeping everything else black and white. We just did an extreme close-up of the dish in full screen color, then dissolved to black and white on the tilt up. It worked pretty well. Believe it or not, seven years after doing this spot, I still occasionally get someone from the office coming up to me and saying, "I want what isn't on the menu!"

1st Baptist Church Weslaco

Nothing real spectacular about this one. When I walked through with the client to get ideas for the spot, they showed me where they do puppet shows for the kids and that became the impetus for the spot.

Casa Petrides

Another one where I make an appearance. The client wanted something a little different and I started thinking of famous cigar smokers- thus Groucho! We shot this over two days. Unfortunately, I didn't do my make-up very well for one of the shots, so it's a little smudgy at the hairline. Still, I had fun with this one!

Valley Association For Independent Living (V.A.I.L.)

This was tricky because there was so much that needed to be there. In addition to the camera shots, we needed: 1) a sign language interpreter doing the script, 2) graphics of the announcer script at the bottom of the screen, and 3) the names of all the people we used, as well as plugs for the companies that employed them. Also, before this was even shot, a jingle/animation company in Nashville produced the closing segment and had to make sure the sign language was right in the animation for the name of the organization.

H&H Foods

A Christmas spot where everything came together...in a chaotic way! We arrived for the shoot, had three kids ready to go... and one of the girls starts crying...and crying...and crying!!! We could not get her to stop! At about that time, a neighbor girl happened to come over. She was bright, she was a ham, she was perfect! She became the star of the spot, and we ended up using her for another client about six months later.
Soft lighting, kids being kids, and Santa getting something different for a change. It added up to a great commercial- and one that won an ADDY Award in 2004.

Barbee-Neuhaus

Two spots that I like mainly because my photog got me some interesting angles on the equipment. I like the scripts I came up with too!

Magic Valley Electric Co-op Part 2

This spoof of the Waltons is a favorite because I only used one still photo for an entire 30 second commercial, but thanks to our graphic artist doing two more versions of the photo in Photoshop and the use of multiple voices and sound effects, one photo manages to hold your interest.

Magic Valley Electric Co-op

By the time I'm done, you'll see several spots from this campaign. The Co-op's Marketing Director wanted to do energy tips but wanted something entertaining, so he came up with spoofing old TV shows. This one is a take-off on Mr. Wizard and yes, that is me as Mr. Science!

United Methodist Church

This is an example of a commercial by committee. This looks like a pretty simple spot, but since I had to deal with a committee, it took about eight pre-production storyboards and six months to get an approved commercial.

Heritage Village

I wanted to let people know that retirement communities are active places, not the nursing home atmosphere some think it is. Thus, a look at some real senior moments!

Crazy International Buffet

In my neck of the woods, we have Chinese Buffets on just about every street corner. In this case, I used the name and the logo to try to set them apart from all the other buffets.

La Joya Federal Credit Union

I like this spot because it was something in which I had nothing to work with besides the client logo. Thanks to a moving background, rotating the logo and even isolating one part of the logo, the commercial became visually interesting to look at and, hopefully, spurred potential customers to visit.