We took a group photo. But before all that… we did a lot of work.

USAA needed a content shoot that would advertise their home and auto insurance while also being flexible enough to be used to tailor the messaging for other product offerings and other media formats. We created three visually entertaining pieces of work, (which I can humbly brag and say, “They were my ideas!”) while also knocking out a lengthy shot list of still photography and capturing a bunch of other social media snack ideas. All in all, it was two days of on-set filming fun.

We worked with the talented Ava Rikki as our director and for location and we borrowed a small suburban neighborhood in the subskirts of Miami, which already felt like a film set. It was cozy and colorful and someone from the crew perfectly described it as something straight out of The Truman Show.

As for my responsibilities, I had to fight some internal politics to be there — so while the people with higher titles ran the A-camera on my spot ideas, I was tasked with pairing up with the still photographer to manage the photo shoots around the neighborhood. I got to work with Juan Algarin and his crew, who are all incredible people and awesome at what they do.

Despite feeling kicked around, I made the best of it and quite enjoyed the task. I got to avoid sitting on a couch all day in Video Village and dealing with knit-picky comments about set design, shirt colors or suitcase shapes. I like to move and be active on set and in this way I got to bond with the crew. I was able to be hands-on and direct the photography shoot while also learning from Juan and his process — all ideal for me.

I also had a great experience with my creative directors Tim, Tristan and my art director partner Blake from Razorfish. We ended everything on a high note, the client team from USAA was thrilled with what we captured and the entire experience of the shoot. All of that chalks up to my job being successful and allows me to ask for more moo-lah, more responsibility and opens the door to more learning opportunities down the road. All good career driving stuff! Woot. Woot.

Looking forward to the post-production edit and sharing what we captured here soon!

Heigh-ho. Heigh-ho.