Our Hide & Eek! video is unlike any other vid Knock Knock has stirred together. It took months to plan and schedule, a day to shoot, two days for location setup and breakdown, six weeks of editing, and a generous helping of brownie brittle to get the video to its polished debut.
“Hide & Eek!”
Now, we can’t reveal all our “movie-making magic,” but here are shots straight from set:
Our team’s concept was to show a boy discovering this fantastic book in a mysterious yet whimsical way. Our e-commerce manager, Sara, even referenced “The NeverEnding Story” for ideas. Arian Soheili of modshift ran with it—alongside directing, shooting, and editing the vid.
We started shooting scenes at 9 a.m., including the bookshelf scenes. For all the skeptics out there wondering, “Pfff, books can’t move like that! How exactly did they get the book to move like that?! It’s not alive!” All credit goes to our “book puppeteers,” Sara, and our marketing designer, Janet. Oh yeah, and lots of dental floss.
Janet also guided our art design. She steamed and steamed and steamed.
Our VP of Branding, Trish, and her son, Clyde, played characters “mom” and “boy.” They used the contemporary acting method called Actually Mother and Son. It worked really well.
Shane, our production manager, also helped with setup, breakdown, and all the technical stuff.
For the projection shots on the wall, we reprinted pictures from the book onto transparencies and used our cellphones—yes, our cellphones—to make it illuminate like so.
Other fun facts:
1. Clyde and Arian are two very cool guys.
2. Sara is silly.
3. Janet’s cat, Sherman, made a very short cameo.
Finally, we would like to thank our amazing editor-at-large, Jamie, and her husband, Gardner, for their hospitality and for letting us use their place for the shoot. Also, we would like to thank their dog, Elsa, for tempting us to scrap the vid and play with her instead.
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