Unless you live under a rock, you should be well aware that H-E-B is starting to expand into North Texas. They’ve already opened a few stores in the northeast of DFW, and Colectivo has been there for each one. We’ve been there to assist in providing high quality photography of the physical store, the interior with full stocked shelves, and capturing all the excitement of the store’s grand opening!

For the latest opening in Fort Worth, H-E-B tapped us to also provide video production assistance to their efforts and we couldn’t have been more excited. This addition onto our photography services was going to be a heavy lift, but one we were ready for.

G.O. Time

The Grand Opening of a new store is anything but slow. There are hundreds of partners running around, getting shelves stocked, prices matched, and making sure no product is out of place and ready for new customers. By now, we’re used to the franticness of a new store opening its doors, but adding a whole new video portion to the equation was going to be different.

For photography, we know the routine. For video, we were asked for a whole new set of deliverables. Primarily, we were tasked with creating an exciting and engaging announcement video letting the people of Fort Worth know that H-E-B is here. This roughly 2-minute video would capture the essence of the store, the excitement the partners had for the grand opening, and all of the passion that H-E-B fanatics have for their beloved grocery store. Did we mention that this project would be due within less than 48hrs of the doors opening?

We’ve managed tight deadlines before, usually a commercial due within a couple weeks of shooting it, or an interview cut and ready to go by the end-of-the-week, but nothing quite like a 48 hr turnaround on a full edit.

In the store, we captured quite a bit of b-roll, from sneak peek tours to shelves being stocked, the ribbon cutting to the doors opening. The best part is capturing all the excited faces and new customers eager to experience H-E-B, now in their own neighborhood. We often found ourselves stuck in the edit, having a hard time choosing between all of the great b-roll options we had. We almost wish we had another minute added onto the final video, just to include more fun b-roll options (as if 2 minutes wasn’t a challenge enough).

For the meat and potatoes (grocery pun intended), we captured a few onsite interviews with key staff and partners of the new store. These served as guidance to what we would include in the final cut. Steering these interviews in person is almost like pre-editing the edit. We want to make sure that we capture great and important moments, but without much else that we know will end up on the cutting room floor. This means we only ask question that we think may end up in the final video. We also direct our interviews to be a bit more concise with their answers, instead of open ended. When we shoot a larger documentary style piece, we may let the subject speak at length about their experience. For this, we really just want great sounding 1-2 sentence answers that we can drop quickly into the project without having to slice up a 5 minute response for 5 seconds of actual content.

To accomplish this tall order, we had a small and nimble team tackling each portion independently. One part would tackle the interviews and one tackle the b-roll opportunities that are happening simultaneously. When the big events arise, like the Ribbon Cutting or the Grand Opening, we tackled these as a pair, capturing the same moments from different angles or varying up our shots a bit to give us options down the road.

For our camera packages, we shot on two Red Komodo 6k’s with fast, constant aperture zooms. We chose this camera package for its high resolution and superb picture quality. We went with zooms over primes to give us options to change to the chaotic environment that a store opening brings. We can quickly shift from a wide angle shot to a closeup, giving us more more coverage than a prime would offer.

Post Production

Everything we deliver for the Grand Openings is turned around quickly! Our photos are due within the same day, and often within just a few hours to meet deadlines. This means we often have a dedicated editor onsite, going through the photos and making adjustments to hand over ASAP.

Editing for video is a much heavier lift. What seems like a small amount of time to fill, 2 minutes, can take hours and hours to cobble together. Most of our projects spend weeks in post production. To cram that all into 48 hrs. is no small feat. One great idea we had is to double our editor as an onsite assistant for Day 1 of production. Instead of needing to comb through footage with fresh eyes, being involved in the production, he could already know what our footage looks like, great sound bites to include, and where we could begin crafting a story.

During Day 2 (the actual opening), our editor could get a head start on the actual edit while we still filmed all the great bits of the event. Once we concluded our shoot, we quickly headed back to our editor and started passing more footage that we just filmed. By the end of Day 2, we already had a rough outline of what the final product would include and now it was time to start polishing and refining the project.

Day 3 was solely an editing day and the final video needed to be completed by 4PM that same day. This was our favorite portion of the edit, because we could see it all come together and filled in the spots with all the great images we captured. While we were staring down the clock as we made final tweaks, its a blast to see how we were able to tell such a great story in such a short amount of time. By 3:00 PM we compiled the final video and sent it out for delivery.

We love tall orders and challenges in our projects. It keeps our work lively, interesting, and on our toes to creatively problem solve what may lie ahead in our productions. We truly had a blast with this project for H-E-B Alliance and can’t wait for the next Grand Opening around the corner.