“Introducing Señor Queso and his tasty tale.” Mike Goubeaux directed this Doritos spec commercial for the Doritos Crash the Superbowl contest. An absolutely hilarious commercial, this is one of the best Dorito commercials I’ve seen, certainly has the highest production value. Mike was kind enough to share his production write-up as well as director of photography Joshua Reis’s write-up. I believe this production was well executed, of course it had its challenges but Mike got a lot of mileage out of preproduction and with an outstanding cast/crew created something spectacular.

mikeg.tv

Here is their write-up:

Joshua Reis DOP:

From a cinematic perspective, the Doritos spot presented a wide variety of lighting challenges during all times of the day both exterior and interior. We filmed daylight exterior, exterior morning, exterior magic hour, exterior night, and interior day.

In addition, we had a number of large exterior blue screen setups on an exceptionally windy day. Its uncommon for a commercial to present so many different styles of lighting setups and challenges.

Some of our setups utilized natural sunlight using shiny boards and large frames of diffusion.

Meanwhile, some setups we went for a more glossy aesthetic employing hmis.

About gear:
We had a 3 ton grip package. Lighting, 1 4k hmi par, 2 1.2 hmi par, 1 image 80, 2 4×4 kinos, and a small number of tungsten units. The Red was the perfect format of acquisition for this job. The camera gave us 35mm depth of field, manageable weight for handheld operating, good resolution for an HD deliverable, variable frame-rates, asa 270-320 asa, and met budget limitations. We used the RED 18-85 zoom for the entire spot.

Mike Goubeaux, Director:

Myself and Josh Lind, my producing partner, made “Doritos Please’ for the Doritos – Crash the Superbowl commercial contest. Our submission from ‘08, ‘Too Delicious’, made the top 5 earning us a fun trip to the Superbowl and some national airtime. We decided to tackle the contest again in ‘09 with something a little more upbeat and energetic. We opted for a musical feel featuring a nutty adventurer character who regales his wacky adventures on his quest for Doritos in the form of a song.

I wanted to do something with high production value, a rich aesthetic and a lively feel. I hooked up with Joshua after seeing his work and we decided to go for it. The RED One was a no-brainer. I’ve been shooting it for most of my commercial projects. It’s affordable, high resolution, over-cranks, and has a pretty nice (fast) post workflow. Being a self-funded spec spot, we had to keep things affordable. However, we had visual effects shots, animals and extras so we decided to shoot over 2 days.

I am a big planner, so I had the piece done up as an animatic first with reference images cut to the music and eventually storyboards. If you watch those two things side-by-side with the final piece, they’re nearly identical… I like working from a solid template with framings, timings and much of the detail already worked out. That really helps me get on the same page with the DP well before we step on set.

Doritos Please – side by side

To keep things moving and energetic, we shot everything handheld on the RED 18-85mm T2.9. Joshua tossed on some grips and we went handheld on the dolly for the opening shot which had a fun counter-zoom. We shot that at the end of our 1st day just as the light was dying. Our amazing crew carted the dolly up the hill and got us rocking on the counter-zoom in no time. We got a couple takes before the sun was toast. Joshua is a really solid operator and this saved us more than once when the sun was dying or special effects caused us trouble.

The 3 visual effects sequences on the mountain, water, and lava were all shot in an open dirt lot next to the Mexican village set. Andrew, our effects guy, rigged up a pretty sizable blue screen and Joshua controlled the daylight for the mountain and water. On the mountain scene, I wanted to shoot the whip-pan and crash-zoom practically so it felt natural. So, we stayed handheld and Joshua executed those moves for me. He had to op those in reverse since our actor was actually right-side-up resting his hands on a small fake rock. We filled the scene with trackable c-stands etc and filled in the mountains etc in post.

The ocean bit was fun. We basically tented joshua and the camera, turned on the rain machine and rocked a small row boat with our talent in it. We did all of this on the back of our flat bed, to get us up off the ground and in front of the blue screen. Joshua and I would just stay really near each other so we could talk about the crash-zoom timings and get those just right. He was also able to help add some rocking ocean feel in his handheld operating.

We waited for the sun to go down to shoot the lava scene so Joshua could under-light the “lava table” our effects guy built. It was basically a 10×15 foot table a few inches deep with plastic florescent light covers built into the base of the table to allow under-lighting of the lava. Joshua shot the lava handheld as well and we tracked in the environment around the small effects table our actor sat in.

The rest of the spot was largely practical with a few little effects here and there. We kept it handheld and loose throughout. I loved how Joshua lit the tango scene with our main character dancing with the girl and the chips. We didn’t have a ton of big units but I think Joshua did a great job with the sunlight through the slatted door and the spot light effect on the dancers. We took some time to light this up nice and really try to fill out the scene with extras, oped pars and atmosphere even though i knew in editorial we’d be smashing cuts together pretty fast. It really paid off. You may not catch a lot of the detail because of the crash-zooms etc, but for the few frames, it’s worth it.

In terms of post, I onlined to Prores 422 1080p for grading and VFX using Crimson to make intermediates and manipulate XML from FCP and REDCINE to do a quick one-light as we made our new Prores masters. I did basic adjustments to the spot in After Effects shot-by-shot since 90% of the shots had some amount of effects, compositing or enhancements. Joshua did an amazing job lighting, operating and framing, but it’s always nice to have the extra resolution to tweak a framing etc. I like to add little elements like dust or flares or relight the scene a little and I do this in AE. Even when our effects guy did the tough compositing in Nuke, I’d pull his renders into AE for little touch-ups or additions. I applied an overall treatment back in Final Cut pro to the entire spot using the FilmEffect and Vignette plugins by Sapphire. I may have gone about post a little different with more time and money. But I have no regrets relying on FCP, REDCINE and AE for a solid, quick workflow.

Projects like these require a HUGE, AMAZING crew and we couldn’t have had a more talented, fun crew who were so generous with their time!!!

Credits:
Señor Queso: Ian Pfaff
Song written and performed by: Ian Pfaff

Executive Producers: Josh Lind, Mike Goubeaux, Daniel Veluzat

Director: Mike Goubeaux
Producer: Josh Lind
DP: Joshua Reis

1st AD: Jett Steiger

AC: Dylan Johnson
2nd AC: Scott Johnson

Gaffer: Wyatt Garfield
Best Boy Electric: Zach Rasmussen

Key Grip: Matt Hartfield
Grip: Grant Goza
Grip: Marlow Nunez

Production Sound: Marcos Contreras
Music Playback: Brent Kiser

Production Designer: Megan Fenton
Set Decorator: Erin Staub
Set Decorator: Ashley Fenton
Art Assistant: Britt Spencer
Art Assistant: Thom Price

Stylist: Samantha Baker
Stylist Assistant: Kate Heckman
Hair & Makeup: Erin Nichols / Jill Galsterer

Visual Effects / Special Effects: Andrew Cook
DIT: Andrew Rinehart

PA: Matt Fredrick
PA: Bethany Liles

Set Photographer: Chris Rady

Craft Services: Amy Lind
Craft Services: Lauren Devlin

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