Where there’s smoke, there’s fire— or is it mirrors? Nokia was looking to promote their newest emergency communications device, the Ultra Lightweight Mobile LTE Antenna, and its potentially life-saving advantages.

Harry Bouton from NextWave Creative needed a video production company who could shoot on location and in studio, creating a project of enormous scope in very little time.  Having worked with us on a similar project for Nokia, he knew CRM Studios had the experience to duplicate the success of a disaster-oriented corporate marketing video.

The goal was to create a new video that effectively demonstrates Nokia’s emergency response capabilities in a real world catastrophe situation, where lines of communication and response have proven especially tricky, yet immensely important in the past.  We decided the best course was to demonstrate the ability of the Mobile LTE Antenna to quickly deploy to hard-to-reach places and coordinate rescue and emergency response efforts by creating a wildfire scenario with  the smoke jumpers who battle them.

Of course, such a scenario presented many challenges. Time is always a factor on any shoots. CRM Studios had to create a wildfire scenario intense enough to require smoke jumpers, safe enough to completely control, yet authentic-looking enough to be believable at every level of the response. Naturally, the project budget allowed for only two days of shooting, and the turn-around time for the entire project was about two weeks. 

Maximizing Our Opportunity

The shoot was structured in such a way that each location would be done on a separate day, in order to maximize the potential of each. We chose an out-of-the-way park with a very rural feel and an airplane hangar at a small municipal airport.  The park would serve as the field training area for our “smoke jumpers” while the hangar served as headquarters.  Stock footage would have to be used for any fire sequences due to safety and budget concerns.

“Pay No Attention to the Main Behind the Curtain.”

CRM Studios worked closely with Harry from NextWave Creative to construct a corporate marketing video that would combine a series of “packaged” news-style interviews with experienced smoke jumpers.  First, we booked an actual LTE operator to describe the benefits of the new emergency communications system, especially concerning a fire scenario.  A professional actor was hired to play our on-camera smoke jumper while actual smoke jumpers were consulted for authenticity in representation. 

These decisions allowed us to work largely off-script in the field with our operator, but meant we’d have to find a way to cue our actor at “headquarters.”  In order to quickly move from shot to shot within our location, we decided to use old-fashioned cue cards instead of a teleprompter.  This required a bit of prompter gymnastics in order to move from card to card while keeping the text at eye level.

Finally, the whole thing was given over to our editors and animators to work their magic. 

Disaster Averted Achieved!

Once our editors added music beds, graphics, video effects and well-placed stock footage to complement the interview footage, the project really came into focus.  The whole video had a documentary feel, complete with a sense of urgency, which fully demonstrated the need for and capabilities of the LTE emergency antenna. Although we had previously collaborated on a similarly challenging project, the fact that Nokia and NextWave chose to partner with CRM Studios again for their latest “disaster,” well, that’s the kind of disaster you want to be associated with.

See more examples of our corporate marketing videos, or contact us to get started on one of your own.