Director of Photography on a Low Budget Commercial

In November of 2025, I was contacted by a clothing company to film a holiday commercial. They had a specific vision in mind and had already written a script for the project. They were looking for a Director of Photography in Georgia who was willing to travel, so they reached out to me.

I will be honest and say that the expectations for the commercial did not fully match the budget. The client wanted a polished holiday commercial, but the budget only allowed for me to be there without any additional crew members. Even with those limitations, I did my best to get as close as possible to the look and feeling they had in mind.

The commercial was centered around ballet dancers. It started with the dancers lacing up their shoes, then moved into them practicing in the studio, and ended with them performing on stage in front of a crowd.

I filmed the project on my RED Komodo-X with a Laowa cinezoom lens. I really like the way this lens looks, it has very earthy colors. I also used my Sony FX6 on a Ronin to capture moving shots during the performance section. I wanted that part of the commercial to feel more energetic and less static.

The RED footage and the Sony footage do not match perfectly, but with color correction, I was able to make them work together. On a larger commercial shoot, I would usually want the cameras and lenses to match more closely, but on this project I had to work with the gear and time available.

The shoot was handled in more of a documentary style. I was only given four hours to film the entire commercial, so there was not much time to stage moments or make many lighting adjustments. I did set up two lights for the studio scene and created a look that felt like sunset light was streaming through the windows. With the limited time and resources available, I think that scene turned out pretty well.

Another challenge was the casting. The company arranged for the ballet dancers to be a high school ballet team. I want to say this as respectfully as possible, but they were not especially rehearsed for the kind of polished dance footage the client wanted. A lot of the shots that looked good from a camera standpoint were unusable because the dancers were often not moving in sync.

That made the edit more difficult than expected. I had to work around those issues and choose the moments that best supported the commercial.

In the end, the client was happy with the video. Even though the project had some real limitations, I was able to deliver a finished holiday commercial that matched the main idea they came to me with.

After the project was finished, I asked my point of contact to write a review for me: "Chris was great to work with on our project. He captured our vision perfectly. He's well-equipped, knowledgeable, responsive, and punctual."

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