“What was so amazing about working for The Oprah Winfrey Show was that we always really aimed for the heart, for that emotional connection. We would choose a guest based on how other people were going to identify with them. And we produced background pieces on people that were designed to evoke emotion in the viewer. I don’t know of any place that’s more emotional than working on The Oprah Show,” relates director Annie Price. Price, who has worked as a writer, senior producer and field director at Winfrey’s Harpo Inc., recently signed with Base Camp Entertainment for exclusive U.S. representation for TV commercials and branded content assignments.
Her experience with real people and real emotions at Harpo is already lending itself to working with brands and agencies. “It’s really about having a skill that involves translating something very personal into something universal, so that everybody identifies with it. Because the goal, whether it’s television, spots or branded content, is to make an emotional connection with the viewer. I think that advertisers target the heart too.”
She describes her first Base Camp project, a long-format piece for P&G’s Metamucil out of Publicis, New York, as a very comfortable situation having dealt with real people so much. She also wrote and directed her own documentary called Hollerin’ about farmers working to preserve some of the pastimes and practices that shaped farm life in decades past, such as pig calling contests.
Price enjoyed how collaborative and refreshing the Metamucil job was. “We were all making something unique, which is really thrilling as creative people,” Price says.
Interactive projects like this one is what attracted her to spotmaking and advertising in the first place. “I love the idea of creating things that are more interactive instead of a one-way medium and getting that response back from people who participate, especially with branded content on the Internet or mobile content. Thinking in terms of two-way communication instead of just one way–it’s a whole new world to explore as a creative person.”
Speaking of exploring new worlds, at press time Price was editing her first comedic short film called The Professional Interview, which she wrote with her brother Jim. It’s about a young man who goes to interview for a job and gets caught in a lover’s spat between the people who are interviewing him. She shot it in HD in Chicago this summer and plans to release it on the festival circuit.
“I wanted to do something really different. Its’ a lot of fun to do something completely on your own without having a particular deadline to meet or a set of guidelines,” she said.
In front of the camera
Price began her career as a hard news TV reporter in Boise, Idaho. She hadn’t been working much more than a month when she had to cover a plane crash. Shortly afterwards, she covered a couple of big murders. “My nickname around the station was the ‘Death Correspondent.’ It was very emotionally taxing. But it was an incredible education in how to always get it done accurately and quickly.
“You learn the skill of taking a giant swath of info and bringing it straight to the point and making it relatable to other people. That’s a great skill to have.”
Like her work on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she believes the experience will serve her well now that she’s on the Base Camp roster. “Think about taking a brand that’s got research studies, focus groups and pre-bid documents that say, ‘Here are our objectives and goals and we have to boil them down to one day of shooting’,” she points out.
Her work with celebrities will also come in handy with the quick turnaround spotmaking demands. She has worked with a lot of ‘A’ list celebrities including George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman. She directed and produced The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special and Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. She also directed Oprah segments featuring musical artists and pro athletes. For one segment New York Yankee’s start Derek Jeter arrive unannounced at a high school pep rally to take a wheel-chair bound student with him to Yankee Stadium to meet the players and visit the clubhouse. “We Got Derek Jeter to fly on Donald Trump’s helicopter to visit the young man. He was petrified of flying. But it turned out to be the most amazing day. We shot all of it in four hours.
“When you work with celebrities, you have a really small window of time. They are the busiest people on the planet honestly. So you have to be really focused, really efficient and at the same time you have to make them comfortable while making sure that what you are getting is going to work.
“I’m pretty speedy,” she says with a laugh.
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