James West's Super Bowl Commercial for Doritos has Garnered a Lot of Attention. Here's How He Did It.

Since purchasing his Panasonic HVX200 P2 camcorder last summer, James West, a graduate of the cinematography program at the American Film Institute, has used it to shoot a documentary short for Current TV, a half-hour segment on a national comic book convention for the Independent Film Channel, and parts one and two of a feature film trilogy.
However, it’s his 30-second “Check Out Girl” commercial for Frito-Lay Doritos-which he shot with two 8GB P2 cards in HD at 720pN resolution-that’s getting all of the attention. Five finalists were selected from more than 1,000 entries and two were chosen for broadcast. The Frito-Lay spot was shot after hours in a Los Angeles-area grocery store (in Eagle Rock) in about three hours.

Since the spot (written and directed by Kristin Dehnert) appeared during the Super Bowl, James is experiencing newfound fame. He’s gotten all kinds of offers and is now headed with his HVX200 to New Mexico to shoot second unit on an independent gangster feature entitled The Rise and Fall of Their American Dream for director Nash Bhatt. The first DP will also use an HVX200.

“Check Out Girl” was edited by Kindra Marra on an Avid Media Composer 2.6 with an Avid Mojo SDI accelerator board. The spot was uploaded to Doritos as a QuickTime file for approval. The filmmakers also submitted a mastered original in two formats – a 16:9 D-5 HD version for HDTVs and a 4:3 Letterboxed version on Digital Betacam tape, for air on analog TVs.

Q: Do you have to be more organized on a shoot with P2 cards than when shooting with videotape? A: The key to solid-state media is to treat it as a film magazine. When the P2 card is full, you have to empty it and insert an empty one. Just like with a film mag. It's also important to have people on the set that are organized and know what they are doing.

I come from a narrative film background, so I like that workflow where film stock is precious. Shooting on tape, you tend to get a lot of garbage, because you run the camera endlessly. With P2 cards, you have to be more discerning. Of course, the cards will increase in capacity-hopefully sooner than later.

Using P2 cards, I’ll have the camera assistant copy the files to the hard drive and label them like I would with film (“reel 1”, “reel 2”, etc.). My assistant on set was working on a laptop with two hard drives. Full P2 cards were downloaded to one external hard drive (we called it our shuttle drive), and then copied to the second drive as an archive.

Q: Did you have any problems with the P2 cards on set?
A: I learned that the best thing to do is to reformat the card after you reinsert it back into the camera. Initially we were erasing the footage on the computer and we noticed we had a lot of ghost files on the P2 card, which confused us a bit. Reformatting in the camera takes 10 seconds, but it’s very important.
Q: How do you think your spot compared to the other Doritos ad winner (which was shot with a JVC HD camcorder?)
A: I was very pleased with the quality of the camera and its performance. We also used some tricks on set. When I’m shooting with a smaller CCD chip, like those in the HVX200, I try to use longer views and move away from the subject. When I was shooting the close-ups at the register [the scenario depicts a friendly cashier flirtatiously discussing her customer’s wide-ranging choice of Doritos.], I think I was about 15 to 18 feet away from the actors. You do that to blow out the background and focus on the foreground. We shot four different commercials for Doritos in two days, all for under $1,000.
Q: So it appears you prefer solid-state over tape.
A: As a DP I prefer solid-state over tape because it offers me so many opportunities to shoot at different frame rates and resolutions. I’m freer to capture images as I want to. I can also review the files on my LCD screen immediately after finishing a scene. I can match shots and review things I shot earlier in the day. Those things really keep the production moving forward.

I bought the HVX200 because I had heard a lot of directors and producers talking about the benefits of moving right into the edit room. Solid-state recording just makes it easier to do HD production.