This week at Havas People: Three days, six films, and four paws

Never work with children or animals they say.

Sound advice as we prepared to shoot six videos in three days for a professional services client at their facility in Westlake, an upmarket suburb of Dallas, Texas.

OK, our shoot didn't have any children, but we did have two animals.

Sure, one was a child's toy, but you never know.

Luckily for us, the other, a dachshund schnauzer cross called Rigsby, was incredibly well behaved.
 
As were our crew, who were amazing.

The challenge with any shoot is coping with the unexpected and making sure you get exactly the footage you need - you literally get one shot.

This can be especially tricky when you're shooting outdoors.

On any shoot, the weather can be a demanding diva, prone to sulking and spoiling your day.

For us, she managed to maintain a beautiful disposition, ensuring day long sunshine - we did all get sunburnt though, just to remind us who's boss. 

Apart from Dallas air traffic control insisting on routing every plane within a 50 mile radius over our location every few minutes, we managed to contain the external factors to a minimum.

The days were long, but very productive and well marshalled by the team at Casual Films, our partner on the shoot.

Extremely professional and very client friendly, they coped with the intricacies of shooting in a sometimes sensitive environment.

We've seen the first edit and it looks amazing, and we're confident the rest of the videos will be just as good.

Film shoots can be either a lot of fun or very hard work - our shoot in Texas managed to be a combination of both.

​Gary Singh, Project Manager