Macken Companies
Macken Companies approached C&I Studios about commissioning a video for a luxury waterfront townhome community they were creating in North Miami Beach. They wanted something creative that would convey the lifestyle possibilities latent within their newest residential real estate development: Koya Bay.
The purpose was to create a video that would build intrigue about their upcoming project. Our task was to create a commercial to advertise the homes of Koya Bay to the general public and potential buyers. The only trouble was, the homes of Koya Bay—a series of ten four-level townhomes situated on the water The Isle of Eastern Shores—had yet to be built.
Showcasing the Dream
A major challenge for this production was that there was no physical building to work film. To circumvent this, our team of professionals turned to other options to focus on. 3D renders. Clever cutaways. The surrounding area. The lifestyle possibilities. The conveniences and pleasures offered by a modern habitat. By doing this, we were able to capture the essence of the environment in lieu of showing it physically.
We wanted the imagery to be indicative of luxury and water-side living, elevated living. Wine, cheese platters, jet skis, sunsets, day beds, bikinis, beaches, and yachts. A world of possibilities for the viewer to inhabit in their imaginations. Our pre-production team expertly secured access to these items which helped take production to the next level.
A One-Day Shoot
First we began with a script.
We live for creativity, but we never allow our own visions to alter the integrity of our client’s brand; our job is to help them speak in the most effective way possible. We were sure in developing this script to receive the approval of both Alan, the owner of Koya Boy, and his sister Jodi, in charge of sales for the development. In fact, their input was imperative to us.
Once we had the green-light, we were flat out scouting talent and locations that would unify the script and bring it to life on screen, laying out the schedule for what would be an impossibly quick turnaround—the rough shots for this entire branding video were to be caught over the span of a one-day shoot.
With a crew call of 5:30am, we hit the ground running. A director, a lighting crew, and cinematographers toting two cinema-grade RED 8k cameras, staged interviews with Alan and Jodi to give the video a personal touch.
We captured b-roll of the talent; men and women looking out of windows, gazing up at their property with pleasure, drinking champagne on a balcony, enjoying the sun on the beach or jumping into a pool underwater.
We caught fly-over drone footage of the beach, the tropical coastline, the marina, to really hone-in on the location—it being perhaps one of the most important factors in the real estate business.
All of it, caught in just one day.
When it was over, when the cameras stopped rolling and the talent was wrapped, the day finished—our job was not. Editing came next. Cutting and splicing raw footage in DaVinci to create a narrative. We overlaid the final cut with the voice of our narrator, and color-graded the imagery and leveled the sound until it was perfect. A complete and compelling dream.
Our final delivery on this project was one 15 second video, one 60 second video, and a total of 30 still images for our client to use as promotional content for their development.
We like to highlight that such images were lifted from rough edits and then color graded. The reason for pointing this out is that frame-grabs so in fact live up to the standard of professional photography. In this case, the high-resolution of our RED cameras allowed us to capture a whopping eight-thousand pixels per frame. That’s why the quality of these photographs are so crisp, so cinematic—indistinguishable, you might say, from those caught on a traditional photo camera.
