Orange Handled Scissors - Fiskars — Lilly Forest Designs - Florist

This past year, I’ve been working with a new client, Fiskars. Yes, the one that is 376 years old at the time of writing this blog. It’s pretty wild to have a client who has been around for such a long time and has a high standing in the business world. I teamed up with my good friend Daniel Kinney, who owns The Diligent Company, to tackle a series of spots for their iconic Orange Handled Scissors. Fiskars was looking for several spots that showcased the different uses and people who use their scissors. This wasn’t a huge budget. However, it was sizable enough to make it work with a small crew for a total of 2.5 days of shooting. We had enough money for a crew of a Director, DP, Producer, Photographer, and Gaffer. We paired up with one of our favorite producers, Jenna Wilcox to help us produce and find as many subjects as we could. We also needed to capture photo assets while we were shooting the commercial. We were able to secure our choice of photographer, Chris Hynes. Chris and I have worked alongside each other in a lot of shoots that require this kind of dance between capturing video and photography simultaneously. It can be a little tricky at times, but having someone who knows what they need and is a blast on set can set you up for sucess. Chris and I have developed a dialogue and understanding that helps photography and video to flow seamlessly and help each other capture what we need for our clients.

Let me first say the marketing department at Fiskars is a dream to work with. They know what they want, and if they don’t see what they are looking for, they will speak up, and we can figure it out together. I love client relationships like this. It’s the type of relationship that builds a collaborative environment. This type of environment helps to elevate the project to the next level. That and trust. One of the many reasons I love working with Daniel is that we trust each other in our abilities and ideas. We bring that trust to the people we hire for our crew and especially to our clients. When there is a sense of trust in the production, we can take each other’s input and create something that none of us could have predicted.

We settled on 6 different locations and 5 professions for the commercials. We had a furniture maker, a custom car designer, a costume maker, a florist, and a tattoo artist. All of them used the orange-handled scissors in different ways. We thought these different professions would give us unique opportunities for different visuals, and it proved us right!

Fiskars has a style guide that they like to stick to. They love the “natural” lighting look. I’d say one of my strengths as a DP is in lighting. I came into the industry working as a grip in the lighting department. I fell in love with how one could transform the feel of a frame by the way the light was presented to the viewer. Even though this was a smaller crew, we were able to bring that sense of natural lighting to the space. Most of the shots in the spots are lit to feel like there is a window or some sort of natural source illuminating the space. It was EZ (Gaffer and super kind human being) and I against the world! We were able to work together to fashion something together in the 1/2 day of shooting we had at each place.

Each location had its own set of hurdles, as all locations do! I think that is part of what makes the job so fun to me. I love having a concept or feeling that needs to be translated into the space and figuring out how we can leverage the unique qualities in each location to play its part in the frame. There are many times when arriving on location where the weather or an event of some sort can throw a wrench in the plan. Having the ability to pivot on the spot while keeping your end goal in mind is critical. Having been a Cinematographer for over a decade, I have had the experience under my belt that if something isn’t feeling right I am able to shift into something that may be more suitable for the feeling of the shot and adapt the schedule to make it work.

One of the parts that Daniel and I try to do for most projects is scout the locations. This is an extremely useful step in our process that helps us to explore the location stress-free and to decide on how we would like to use the location in the best way possible for our client’s needs. This also gives us the opportunity to plan out each setup needed so we can set a schedule and make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. I love the ability to scout a location and put what I’m thinking into a camera. That way I have a medium to show my clients what I’m thinking that they can give their input in before the day.

The shooting days ended up being fairly efficient. Having scouted, we knew exactly what the setup would be and what props we needed to fill out the frame. We shot with my Canon C300 iii camera kit. I find that having a camera like the C300 iii is a necessity in this sort of project. It has internal ND’s, high dynamic range, 10-bit color (minimum), and a great look. With owning the camera, it often becomes second nature to adjust any of the settings and know the strengths and weaknesses, allowing me to make quick decisions. We had a small lighting package with us that included an Aperture 600X, Zilights, a few Asteras, and some basic grip equipment. Nothing too fancy! We had to move pretty quickly, spending only half a day at each location.

There is something about walking into a location the day of the shoot and seeing what inspires oneself. Often things change, sun has chosen to be present, there is a giant truck parked in the shot or something else has shifted and it doesn’t feel right. I find that’s where a lot of the magic can happen, often when I get pushed out of the comfort zone things get fun!

Daniel did his magic with editing and got the client’s approval. He then sent it to me to do a color pass on the end spots. For this series, I gravitated toward high saturation and a decent contrast curve in the grade. I can’t recommend a color pass enough. You can see the difference between the three videos below. The first one is what is shot in the camera, the second is a REC 709 LUT, and the third is the footage with a color pass.

Color grade process - (Top to bottom) Log - Rec709 - Colorgrade

Fiskars - Orange Handled Scissors