Walmart – Team Rubicon

This shoot was a simple set of interviews setup in a park near one of our interviewees houses. Our end client was Walmart, but the main subject of our interviews was about two members of “Team Rubicon”.

Team Rubicon is a volunteer organization, primarily composed of military veterans that will go into disaster areas to assist those in need. Think of the Red Cross but bigger muscles and more tattoos.

The focus of the interviews was specific to the flooding of Wimberly, TX that occurred earlier this year, and the experiences that Melanie and Nicole had while providing disaster relief there.

We did not have an onsite producer, so I setup the interviews based on some example interviews that was provided before the shoot.

To get the look they wanted for the interviews, I used my Canon C300 with a 70-200 L-series lens to get a shallow depth of field.

If you have never used one before, the C300 is an amazing camera in exterior locations. To get our talent at the right height, I pulled some pelican cases out of my Suburban and had the each of the girls sit on the cases.

The reason I like to use pelican cases instead of stools or chairs, is that there isn’t a back of a chair that will show up in the shot and the case is big enough so the talent can sit however they like to get comfortable. It makes for a more natural look compared to somebody sitting in a hardback chair.

Since there was no producer on site, I played the part of the interviewer on top of being the DP for the shoot. It’s not very often that I get to conduct the interview but having been the DP for numerous ones, I was very comfortable sitting down to do these.

I was given a pretty straight forward list of questions to ask which made it even easier for me. Our talent was great, Melanie and Nicole were both passionate about Team Rubicon and the experiences they had down in Wimberly, which made for some awesome interviews.