Cloud CMA Promo Video

[REPRINTED FROM “LIGHTNING | TWICE” , THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF W&R STUDIOS]

I’ve wanted to do a short promo video about Cloud CMA for sometime now. I’m a big fan of the task management software “Things” from Culture Code. I got really inspired from this video for their new iPad version. I’m also a big fan of the “There’s an app for that.” commercials that Apple put out. So with those two videos in mind I got started.

What normally gets my creative juices started is music. And I had a particular song I wanted to use, played on a particular instrument.

The song is “Singing In The Rain“, I thought this would be clever music to use with a product named “Cloud”. Not sure if anyone would get the reference but I thought it was fun. I also wanted no vocals, just the music.

As for the instrument I was dead set on having the song played on the ukulele. The bright strumming sound was perfect for the vibe I was going after. I did actually find the song done on a ukulele on You Tube, and even a version on iTunes. But they either had vocals or just didn’t match the song I had in my head.

So where do you go when you are looking for a ukulele player to record a song you have in your head for a real estate web app?

Craiglist!

And I totally lucked out. A guy by the name of Abe Lagrimas responded. I Googled him and found a few videos including one where Abe plays Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirt” on the ukulele. Needless to say, if your playing Nirvana on a uke, your exactly the guy I’m looking to work with.

We negotiated a price then discussed a few things on the phone and after a couple iterations Abe e-mailed me over the audio files. They were just perfect! Abe produced the song exactly the way I imagined it in my head.

So in my original vision I just wanted music and images. But as I got to editing the video I realized it was close to impossible to make it work with just music and images.

So I took a few hours and wrote a script. I decided to do a play (homage?) on Apple’s “There an app for that” commercials.

With the the script written, I needed to have someone do the voice over. That part was easy. My wife Jenn did the recording in one-take, just like a pro. And it came out amazing.  She really knocked it out of the park.

So without futher adieu…Here is the offical premeire of the Cloud CMA Promo Video -“There’s A Report For That!”

Hope You Enjoy!

gr

TIP: If you want to see this video without the black bars across the bottom and top just click the video again and it will send you to You Tube where you can view it in full glory.