This year, Altom turned 11 years old. The one-shot anniversary video we uploaded back in September, was one of the most challenging projects we have been involved in as a team this year.
To those of you who have already watched the video and shared their positive feedback with us, we wish to give you a little insight into the process behind the final result aka how we did it. Keep reading below for the whole story, bloopers and funny moments.
The plan
It all started with an idea: finding a unique way of capturing our essence, values, achievements over the years and the overall feeling of working with us. The whole project took us approximately 4 months to complete from script to the final video. That’s right, behind the 2 minutes and 52 seconds you saw, there was a lot of time spent on planning, changes, meetings, organizing, preparing, filming, editing and feedback sessions.
Having a script offered us a solid base to start with and it gave us a direction with the other steps that followed. Because we just turned 11 years old, the idea of the script was to illustrate 11 things that made Altom throughout time in ascending order. All good so far. The unique thing about this script, as we later noticed, was the idea of filming the whole story in one take. A one-take video means every action needs to be choreographed, everything and everyone has to be in sync and you have to get it right from start to finish. If at any point during filming you make a mistake – which we made plenty of – you have to start from the beginning because you can’t edit that out.
With this in mind we chose the video team which we felt would work great with us and from that point on we worked together on the choreography, the setup, and any changes we felt necessary along the way.
Now came the next big step: choosing the next Academy Award nominees to be.
The experience
The most rewarding thing about this project was the new ways in which we had to work together to successfully complete it. It was something entirely new that we haven’t done before in such a big number.
A lot of our colleagues were eager to find out details about the project and they were happy to get involved in the making of this video. From acting in front of the camera to choosing between songs that fit the video, they were proactive and helpful which made this whole experience even more enjoyable. It was a great team building exercise through which we learned the patience it takes to commit to your role while repeating the same take over and over again. 38 times to be precise.
We focused all our energy on moving together. We became extremely aware of everything happening around us. Some of us took on 2 or 3 different roles in the span of less than 3 minutes. Even the ones apparently working at their desk had specific tasks they were responsible for.
Working with a professional video crew, we got acquainted with the complex aspects of shooting a video such as lighting, placement and fighting the instinct to look at something moving towards you (aka the camera).
Lastly, we practiced delayed gratification. Because, by far, the hardest and most challenging thing about filming was not eating the macarons on the kitchen table at the end of each take.
It took us about 5 hours of living life on a loop until we decided that we have a winner – the one perfect take.
5 hours did not seem like a lot until we wrapped things up and we quickly came to realize we were too tired to move anymore. We decided that this would be the end of our workday and acting career – although we might make a comeback to your screens one day 😉 – and that a nap would be more appropriate after this demanding project.
To all the Altoms: thank you for being a part of this experience, for putting on the performance of a lifetime and for your unshakable patience!
PS. We will never forget these words:
Watch the full video below: