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Matinee: '2018 Fiat Campaign'
1 December 2018
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 268th in our series of Saturday matinees today: 2018 Fiat Campaign.
This 9:11 video takes you behind the scenes of a lifestyle shoot for the 2018 Fiat lineup. Nine minutes may sound like a lot, but it took a week in Austin, Tex., to complete the shoot using what photographer Dave Hill described as "a ton of 35mm Kodak Gold 200 film."
What we particularly liked about this video was seeing the finished images right after the chaos on the set. Watching Hill shoot, you wonder if he's getting anything at all. And then you see the final composition and appreciate what he was doing.
There's some river rafting and slipping and sliding with the car sunbathing in the background as the models nearly drown themselves.
Not a lot of these images show people in the cars, we chuckled as we watched. And the cars aren't moving either. Which is a "lifestyle" approach to selling a vehicle (or brand), we suppose. The message is more, "It's get you there, where you can have fun." Rather than stuff about mileage or reliability. Who wants to go home, anyway?
Hill is based in Los Angeles where he got his start shooting album covers for 50 Cent, Chris Brown, Three 6 Mafio and Soulja Boy, among others. That led to gigs shooting national ad campaigns for the last 10 years for clients including Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Buick, Chevy, Toyota, Shaun White and Target, in addition to Fiat.
The video starts with some pretty tame street shots at various locations before moving into some night shots. Then Hill shoots from a ladder on the top level of a parking garage where he also does some drone shots.
There's some river rafting and slipping and sliding with the car sunbathing in the background as the models nearly drown themselves. It looks like fun but Hill is always directing the action (with a little choreography thrown in) and firing away with his Canons.
You get a peek at the lighting and monitoring gear involved as well.
Wonder how many shots he took for a set? Well, he mounts a GoPro Hero 6 on his Canon and counts the images as he runs around the models with a live count in the right corner of the screen and the stills in left corner, picture in picture. Over 100 in one sequence.
We won't spoil the surprise ending at Starbucks. But other than that, the whole crew seemed to be having a lot of fun. More than enough to light up the 2018 Fiat lineup.