About the Project
While Abbott is located all across the USA and the world, my most recent project with them ended up bringing us to the countryside of Fort Pierce, Florida. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a warm, sunny beach in sight (it rained the whole time). But this didn’t stop us from capturing a great story. Through a connection of mine, my production company was hired to produce an emotionally-driven testimonial of a young farming family who had a premature baby. Here are a few stats on their heart-breaking story:
- The mother went into labor at 22 weeks with their twins
- Their surviving son, was in the NICU for 135 days
- The parents couldn’t hold him until 25 days after he was born
- The baby boy weighed 1lb 5oz at birth
My Role
As with any production that I handle, there is always a good amount of pre-production that happens before a shoot. My role in this Abbott piece was the Producer and Director for the entire production. Whether it was crafting storyboards, booking flights or directing my crew on set, I always had something to preoccupy my time.
Key Challenge
Two of our biggest challenges were on-set inside the house and outside for exteriors. It rained the whole time we were there, so adjusting for that lack of light was key as well as adjusting our desired b-roll expectations. The other smaller challenge was working with the little boy, who was 14 months old at the time.
Kids aren’t the easiest to work with on set.
That being said, his parents were great and so was the little guy. The challenge came with planning shooting schedules in pre-production around his napping times and getting him and his parents to act out several scenarios for b-roll footage.
All in all it was a great shoot and we were able to capture this amazing story of life and Abbott’s involvement in this little boy’s birth story.
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