Kevin R. James

Peter Mayer's client, Lumen, needed an awareness campaign for their high speed fiber network. Shot in Toronto with bouncy characters, animated by Psyop. I negotiated the master recording of “Something’s Got A Hold On Me” to give all these visual effects a little soul.

Negotiating celebrity talent is always a challenge. Not only are their busy schedules an issue, but they want to be involved in every creative aspect of the commercial. From script approval to giving their consent on director choice, it’s not just about the money. Once Sarah Silverman's requests were fulfilled, the New York shoot went smoothly.

On a separate production we created life size food costumes for our Orbit actors. Legacy special effects designed our food wardrobe and we increased their size by 20% in post, to give an additional sense of weirdness.

We filmed this commercial on a polo field with actual polo players. There is no shade on a polo filed, so we had to tent the actor in his nacho costume for fear he would melt into his dish of cheese, from the hot California sun.

Have you ever wanted to film a moose? Well, you might want to reconsider, because they are an untrainable and aggressive animal. Filming a live animal was not an option, so we partnered with Albert Kodigolian and the Mill, to direct a digital moose to carry flowers and ring a bell. Choosing Vancouver for our location was the obvious choice, due to a favorable exchange rate and heavy population of mosquitos.

Filming in January when you need a warm Summer location will lead you to the Southern hemisphere. I produced this SCJ commercial in Santiago, Chile. To achieve the POV of a swarm of mosquitos, I hired the best drone operator in South America. This was in 2011 before there were any drones available.

The Mundo sisters from Biscuit directed this campaign. Filming on a train was an obstacle that forced us to scout public trains all over LA. We overcame, the challenge filming on a private train in the hills of San Fernando valley.

When Unilever requested promotional content in collaboration with the film, “TED,” Seth McFarlane had a script and was ready to film. He needed a producer and production company. We used Seth's visual effects company to make Ted's questionable dialogue come to life. . He directed this AXE commercial using his animation assets created for his feature film. Our lead actress gave us a very spirited performance; however, she did not have the strongest voice. the team needed to bring in a separate female voice talent for ADR.

Directing birds to deliver dialogue and smudge glass is a big ask, unless they're CGI. Chris Woods and the Mill brought the campaign to life. We were able to make the mischievous crows star in the smudgiest Windex ad in SCJ history.

A former skate board competitor and resident of Finland, Vesa Manninen’s unusual casting and moody lighting defined this campaign.

When you have a small budget with an expensive concept, you have to assemble a nible team. The entire budget for this production, including talent and post was $200K. I needed to find a director that could handle the composites as well as the live action cinematography. We shot with Kommitted in Los Angeles and we maximized our dollars by using their sister company Asylum for editorial and visual effects. Combining the two companies, was the most effective way to hit the clients budget.