Maxim Magazine "Hometown Hottie" Video
 

Thanks to Jason Robinson, I got the opportunity to shoot something very different than what I'm used to shooting. Each year Maxim Magazine has a competition for 'hometown' girls to try and become Maxim's 'hottie' for the year. In the past the videos were all shot by the girls themselves, with results being just as you would expect.

This year they decided to hire out the videos to professionals, and although the video had to be sexy and showcase the girl's personality ... I think we took it a step further and introduced some style and story.

Okay .. okay ... enough talk .... the video:

Maxim Magazine's "2009 Hometown Hottie" - Holly on Vimeo

I'm blown away! 1st rate production Travis! Not overly fond of the slide shot on her crotch where she is tanning on sand, my only crit.

Honestly, that's the one shot I wasn't totally happy with either. I had a different shot planned initially, but with how short the edit was that shot wasn't going to work. I had a few side shots of her legs but they weren't working out as well either. So I went to that shot. It bothers me more because you can see her nose, lol.

Travis...

What a great experience it must have been... were using a glidetrack on the dolly shots?

I liked how you used the sky as a transition point.

Steve

Yo, Travis,

That shot didn't bother me. It goes by so fast it seemed fine to me.

But Travis, you crossed the line with your first two shots! And again later on! Oh, the shame...

Other than that egregious flaw, I loved it. Really nice use of transition shots, too. That must have been a fun shoot.

i just liked it big time.

Stephen - It was a great experience. So fun to shoot and edit something totally different, especially with a great subject. d;-) And yes, that was a Glidetrack. Glad you liked the sky transition, because even though I had scripted it out it almost didn't happen. We had clouds all over and they cleared up just in time for those shots. I was pretty happy with the towel-to-shirt transition too, which was an improvised shot.

Vito - I'm assuming you're talking about the shots with the jeep, lol. I'm glad the other shot didn't bother you. When I finally settled on using it I decided to keep it as short and as fast as possible (I had a much slower glide version of the same thing). Thanks for the comments!

Dror - Thanks for watching!

Yes, and I forgot my smilies. Glad you understood the tongue-in-cheek.

Great job.

Did Maxim hire you directly, or were you hired by the model (or other intermediary?) Was there a set rate, or did they ask you for a quote? Were there a lot of requirements, or was it as easy as "look at our other videos and make it look something like that"?

...and please make sure that you don't forget the wedding videos after this...loved it Travis.Women are beautiful creatures and God bless those who work with them especially if they are models...The best scene was the one when she was fishing... :-) Don't you want an assistant for the next job?

Stelios

Travis, what story telling? I can watch this video without sound and still enjoy it. j/k

Great work Travis... Would be nice to do such a gig more often :-) Also agree about the "nose" shot - less nose would make it better :-)

I was contacted by a 3rd party who handled the details for Maxim. There was a VERY LOW set rate, but I negotiated mine up a bit (still very low pay). There was a 4-5 page shoot guideline packet with all the requirements, but the process was fairly open to creativity. They did provide a few samples, but mine doesn't look much like the samples. d;-)

I won't. d;-) I still love weddings. But I definitely wouldn't mind shooting some more of these as long as I'm allowed to be creative. I actually did want to have an assistant on this shoot, and it would have been really useful for me .. but believe it or not the 'model' was throwing a lot of static at me in the initial discussions of the shoot. I got the feeling she wasn't totally comfortable with doing it and decided less people on the shoot would be better. It's a bummer, because I would have liked to have some behind the scenes stuff and still shots of the setups. Oh well.

Success!! d;-)

Yeah, the original shot was to be from the opposite side, so head to toes instead of toes to head. But it didn't fit right with the previous shot of the pan down from the sky to the beach, because she moves right at the end of that shot. Thanks for watching!

Travis, great composition, great technical execution, great editing! But one thing really bothers me. The lighting was awful. A great majority of your money shots were done during the middle of the day, the worst time to shoot people. Look at the shots of her sitting on the hood. Half of her face is covered by deep shadows, and her eyes are black holes, lost in the darkness. There is no sparkle in her eyes. Those shots of the back of her thighs in that light is also not very flattering. Could you have done those shots very early in the morning or late in the afternoon? I think paying attention to the lighting would have made this semi-finalist a sure winner! Nevertheless, great job on the execution of your video.

Thanks for the comments, Warren. I had no control over the timing of the shoot. As it was, the girl was an hour late showing up from the salon.

The lighting could have been improved by using a reflector, but as I already mentioned, I think the girl would have been even less comfortable with more people there. I did try to rig up the reflector, but the wind kept messing with it so we scrapped it. Either way, I was actually pretty happy with how the lighting turned out given our shooting conditions.

Thanks again for the comments!

Heh . . get in line man. :-)

This is the first real instance of me not getting a job because I don't have HD cams (yet), so I had to bounce the referral over to Travis. Doh!

Next time you wont' be so lucky Travis! But good job on the shoot. I must now watch the other videos to properly compare yours. ;-) (j/k)

WE WANT MORE!!!! WE WANT MORE!!!

:P

favourite shot: glidetrack hottie's feet coming out the car from the back
favourite story board: "I've got a line of clothing for you" and she comes in the frame with bikiny

don't like: duplicate shot of tilting from bottom to top on the interview
summary: WE WANT MORE!!!

Santo

lol .. too bad it didn't pay like an HD job. Oh well, I definitely appreciated the referral. Glad we were both able to pass each other successful referrals finally!

I have plenty more .. it WAS a 7-hour shoot. d;-)

That glidetrack shot was one of my favorites as well. I was also quite proud of the shot where she drove over my camera (scary as hell), even though you only see like a 1/4 of that shot in the piece. I had another killer shot where I was hanging off the side of the jeep while she drove 25-30mph down a washboard dirt road. Just couldn't work everything into it.

That duplicate bottom-to-top shot is a good catch. The intended shot had her in the jeep saying the same thing, but do to the timing of the piece I couldn't jump to her in the jeep, so I had to use that shot. Oh well. Thanks for watching and for the comments!

Nice job Travis. Couple questions.. maybe I missed this but what camera did you use? I am still figuring out lighting.. why did you need lighting outside... trying to figure out how a light outside with so much sun light.. I would think you would just roll with no extra lighting.

The shot of the driving over the camera.. did you dig a hole in the ground to put the camera in? Curious how you did that.

Again, great work! Wish I could get gigs like this!

Hey, Kevin, thanks for watching. This was shot with the Canon XHA1.

Regarding lighting, I wasn't wishing I had more lighting out there, as in actual lights. What I could have used was some light off of a reflector to take some of the shadows out of her face that the high sun was causing .. sort of a bit of 'anti-light' to combat the intensity of the sun and not make it so harsh on her face. I still think it came out great, just a minor gripe of mine.

Regarding the 'drive over' shot .. no hole. This was in a paved parking lot, so she literally just drove right over the top of the camera. I checked for clearance first, but it was still nerve-wracking to watch her do it. d;-)

My bad.. I thought I saw her drive up on a gravel road.. there were a few shots of her driving so I got the wrong one on that question. I see about the reflector.. thanks.

She drove in on a dirt road, but arrived at a parking lot. d;-)

I was originally going to shoot that shot on the dirt road (wrap the camera up and everything), but decided it was safer to do it on pavement at a slower speed (no flying rocks to bust a lens).