True Value | Your Project, Your Way

The Challenge:

The team at Laughlin Constable came to me with a great high-energy/montage creative to support their True Value Campaign. The concept followed a few DIY’ers shopping in store and completing projects in theri home. The script called for a few in store sequences, a dynamic montage with several locations, and a story thread that tracks our main hero character. I couldn’t wait to dive in.

The Solve & My Approach:

I had a few priorities for the job. I wanted to make the store feel inviting, use transitions as a visual thread between DIY projects & locations, and underscore the story of our hero character.

Making the Store Feel Inviting:

Early on in my calls with the creative team, it was clear that True Value stores were not meant to feel like big box stores. They wanted the stores to feel inviting and closer to home than a traditional store. I pitched the idea of using warm sunlight sources inside our store (even when we couldn’t see windows) as a way to thread the store and home locations. My DP Patrick Ouziel and the whole G&E team did a great job at taking the edge off the flourescents inside and pumping in some sunlight.

Transitions with a Purpose:

I like transitions as much as the next director, but, I always want to make sure they’re always deployed with a purpose. In this case, I wanted my transitions to serve as the visual thread between DIY projects while still making sure each project/room felt independent. We shot each DIY scene in one home so I knew this sense of separation was crucial. Additionally, I love when transitions are motivated by on-screen action and don’t happen for the sake of being flashy.

Of course, this isn’t rocket science, but I think it makes the transitions feel kinetic and not forced.

The Story of our Hero Character:

Once again the team at Laughlin did a great job creating a thread for each of our characters at the start and end of their projects. The one story beat I added was to seamlessly get our hero character from the store to his workshop. Again, I used a simple transition (motivated by a hero prop shopping cart on one and, and a garage door on the other).

Previz:

And of course, as with every project I direct with lots of transitions and camera movements, I shot a previz on my iPhone.

And finally, the full spot! Enjoy.