by Highline Studios
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May 25, 2014
The world's fastest interviews with the world's fastest man, Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt. Highline Studios produced a series of super short interviews for Instagram to promote Nissan's latest version of the Nissan GTR. Usain Bolt was recently appointed Nissan's honorary "Director of Excitement", a spokesman for the company's new global brand campaign. Grace under pressure. We only had Usain scheduled for 2 hours, so these were indeed, the world's fastest interviews. By the time we got the space lit, cameras angles locked off and sound in place we were down to just 90 minutes with the speedster himself.
During setup, word about Usain's presence had spread quickly throughout the auto show. In just minutes, more than a hundred gawkers had assembled at the edge of our previously peaceful setup just to get a glimpse of the world's fastest man (and occasionally heckle him with selfie requests). By the time we were ready to roll cameras and sound, the scene had become quite a spectacle. Once underway, we had to continuously remind the audience to keep it down as we were recording sound. When shooting and framing for Instagram, a different approach is in order. For one, you know your audience will be watching these videos on their handheld devices, so you've got to think a bit differently about filling out the frame. In addition, you are now framing in a square. Oh how we take that wide screen aspect ratio for granted! Framing for Instagram proved to be a fun task that pushed our creativity.
In the end, Usain was awesome to work with. A truly humble individual with a great attitude who gave us exactly what we needed. The videos were a huge success on Instagram and Nissan's other social media channels. There's no better medium than video to quickly and effectively generate brand buzz. It helps to have a killer celebrity too.
