I really have to confess to getting pretty excited when I was first approached by Nick Tauro of RK Venture about directing the "My Story" series to play across the various NMDOT brands: ENDWI, JUSTDRIVE, SLOWDWN & ZEROPROOF. Reading the initial concept I had an immediate vision of treating the spots as a mix of docu-style interviews and first person POV camera work. The to-camera sections would justify a narrator with our horrifying reveal to come with each spot at the end.
We were, of course, hit head-on with a whole traunch of technical challenges to the POV work. Perspective had to work. From a narrative standpoint, how do you bond an audience to a protagonist they can't even see.
We discovered the reflection device to allow the viewer to see the protagonists and really step into the story from the narrator's perspective.
I was really taken with the look of the recent Zack Snyder film Army of the Dead so we decided to shoot on Red Cameras full frame and wide open. Our amazing cinematographer, Dean Mitchell, suggested the legendary K35 glass that really captured the films with buttery perfection. We did some tests with various vintage glass and I was sold. Our heroic 1st AC was in constant fight or flight mode keeping the razor thin focus plane where it should be but the device worked so well for characters who are so stuck in a narrow slice of reality that they don't realize they are about to collide with another person with terrifying results.
Ultimately the project was so gratifying and successful all around that we were invited back the following quarter to film a sequel series: My Story - Victims. Victims presented an amazing once-in-a-lifetime filmmaker's dream opportunity to return to our two hero stories and turn them around, telling them from the 180 degree perspective of the victims.
