Fastvertising with Minimum Effort
Bryan Rowland, the multi-hyphenate director-DP-editor at Ryan Reynolds’ production company Maximum Effort, is helping pioneer what Reynolds calls “fastvertising” — high-quality marketing content created at a breakneck pace with a timely angle and a winning sense of humor.
How fast is fast? Rowland describes a shoot where his job was to push through as many spots as possible for various brands within a three-day window. Rowland admits the set-up for the shoot was “as standard as it gets,” with three locked-off RED DSMC2 GEMINI 5K Super 35 cameras on a New York soundstage. Special guests included Rick Moranis and Hugh Jackman. Working quickly, the team shot content for Reynolds’ recently acquired Mint Mobile, then turned the cameras to shoot spots for Aviation Gin and Jackman’s Laughing Man Coffee.
At the end of the whirlwind production, Maximum Effort President George Dewey emailed the team, noting they had shot 30 pieces of content in 2 days. That’s fastvertising! And the pace doesn’t yield. Maximum Effort continuously produces content, such as the recent campaign for Match.com, which made Adweek’s list of Top 25 Ads of 2020.
Rowland may seem like an unlikely creative partner for Hollywood types like Reynolds and Jackman. He’s based in Heber City, Utah, a tourist destination about 20 minutes outside Park City. He got started by teaching himself desktop post production, becoming skilled enough to land a series of locally based gigs. One included a stint with streaming start-up Move Networks that lasted until the financial crisis of 2008.
Pivoting to freelance videography, he borrowed a camera from his father-in-law and started shooting short documentaries. To up his game, Rowland became a RED user in 2011. He believed that investing in the RED EPIC would help him develop his career. “Buying that thing was the biggest gamble for me, but I knew I wanted to start separating myself from everyone else,” he recalls. “I was used to a RAW workflow with stills, and I knew that if I could bring that same workflow into video, I would have an edge.”
He got lucky when Blake Lively saw a short piece he shot with the EPIC and hired him for a launch video. A few years later, he got a call from Dewey at Maximum Effort, which was preparing a brand launch for Aviation Gin. “It was the biggest job interview of my life,” he says. “The script was very aggressive, trying to do a lot with very little money. My producer for almost 10 years, Alec Eskander of Escape Velocity Productions, and I pulled out all the stops. I brought in my big drone and my RED camera and we shot it for next to nothing.”
From there, Rowland got regular jobs with Maximum Effort, flying to shoots around the world and returning to his home in Utah for editing and post. He joined the company full time in January 2020, embracing the opportunity to be part of a small, exceptionally nimble creative team. “I call myself a director and DP, but we’re very much collaborating as a team and doing things together as one,” he says.
The RED GEMINI is Rowland’s current camera of choice, thanks to its outstanding low-light performance, 5K resolution and, of course, the quality of its images. He shoots RAW at 8:1, filling about 2TB of media in a day. “I love the look of the camera,” he says. “The RED is scientifically perfect in terms of color, and you can create many different looks by dialing in a LUT.”
Rowland praises the GEMINI’s high-frame-rate capabilities, which outstrip higher-resolution camera systems. He says RED’s REDCODE workflow gives him a huge advantage on set. As long as he keeps an eye on his histogram to avoid losing any latitude, he knows exactly how and where he can adjust the image in post. “RAW has saved me in every production and I’ll never shoot a camera that doesn’t have it,” he vows.
The GEMINI’s dual sensitivity and low-light mode also helps Rowland work faster, with less light and a smaller crew. “We’re shooting so much in one day—for example, I think we had an hour and a half to shoot the Laughing Man Coffee spot,” he recalls. “So, I will pick locations with big windows. I grew up shooting documentaries, so I learned how to light with what you’ve got. It speeds things up considerably, as fast as our lighting guys are.”
In post, Rowland uses DaVinci Resolve with Final Cut Pro X as a back-up for motion graphics. What’s important, he says, is keeping the work on his desktop. “The thing that kills fastvertising is having to send it out to anybody. If you must send it out for VFX or sound, the turnaround destroys what we’re trying to do, even if it’s just a couple of hours.”
Rowland does a little bit of everything, but to him it’s all part of the same job. It’s a work philosophy that has served him well. “I had this pipe dream,” he says, “and I didn’t know how I was going to make a living, but I knew I wanted to do something with making movies and telling stories. I told myself, ‘Bryan, you’re never going to move to Hollywood, so you’ve got to make Hollywood come to you.’ That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s incredible.”
Follow Bryan on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rowlandbb/
