Recent Launches from
The Lab | January 2020
To celebrate the creativity and diversity of our clients and the work that’s produced here at our Toronto Film & Photo Studios, we do a monthly roundup that highlights some of the great projects that have recently taken off from The Lab.
Here is our roundup for the month of January, 2020! Projects are in no specific order.
Want your work featured? Shoot us a note!
BUZZFEED x SPOTIFY | CORBIN VISUAL
"What Nobody Tells You About First Year"
INTERVIEWS | SOCIAL CONTENT
Corbin Visual is practically a resident here at AstroLab, with productions almost monthly, sometimes more. They support all kinds of clients, one of which is Buzzfeed and its many brand partners.
This one for Spotify is aimed at first year college/uni students, providing them with useful advice on everything from partying, studying, dating to budgeting, and of course ending in a strong CTA to try out Spotify Premium.
Corbin Visual’s approach is fairly simple, but effective: multi-cam setup against a solid backdrop, talent seated at a table, directly addressing camera. This is a formula consistent across much of Buzzfeed’s content, and they are no stranger to content, so it obviously must work really well!
THE CREATOR CLASS | CANON CANADA
Feature On Photographer Cary Fagan
INTERVIEW AND STILLS | SOCIAL | WEB CONTENT
For his interview and portrait shoot with Cary Fagan, Toronto director Dan LeMoyne took a fairly minimalist approach to his lighting setup, creating a dark and moody atmosphere in what is literally a bright white cyc studio(!).
We think it’s a perfect fit for Cary and his personality, and if you look at LeMoyne’s work, even just on his Instagram account, you can see that it’s bang on with his personal style as well.
No set build or fancy props required. Studio 2 has never looked so good with so little actually done to it!
REBECCA KAHN x ABHI PRASAD
"Who Among Us"
SHORT FILM
Director duo Rebecca Kahn and Abhi Prasad have recently been making a lot of noise in the genre scene, after capturing the attention of Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival – being featured on their Facebook Page, and from there being featured by Film Shortage, and even trending on r/Filmmakers on Reddit!
Despite gaining a nod from Fantasia, the filmmakers actually launched the film themselves with an online premiere. A strategy that has proven very successful, as the film has picked up over 65,000 views and counting across YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo.
Their story will forever be part of AstroLab’s history too, as they actually got engaged on set! We were honoured when we found out.
Their set is still one of our favourites that’s been built in our space. It is really quirky and so perfectly fitting for the creepy ass show it hosts. We don’t want to spoil it for you, but had to include some BTS below, showing some of their VFX. CREEPY!
dbrand
ASMR Teardown ft. JerryRigEverything
YOUTUBE CONTENT | E-COMMERCE
dbrand has to be one of the quirkiest brands out there. Run entirely by “robots” (?), and very direct with its marketing.
This particular shoot was to help promote their partnership with YouTube Star Zack “JerryRigEverything” Nelson, in which they designed a skin and case that looks like the internals of your phone, a limited drop called “Teardown”.
Shot entirely on white cyc, as well as tabletop on a white table, it depicts how the partnership between Zack and dbrand came to be.
SILVERSTEIN
"Infinite"
MUSIC VIDEO
To support the release of their latest single “Infinite”, part of their forthcoming album entitled A Beautiful Place To Drown, Silverstein and director Wyatt Clough came up with the idea to shoot almost all of the video within an “infinity cube”.
Wyatt and his team built the cube entirely by hand, even applying the two way mirror film themselves. It was a gutsy approach, but as you can see below it turned out fantastic, so we’re sure they all feel it was well worth taking a chance on it!
WCROW.CO
"Future Nostalgia"
FASHION SHOOT | SOCIAL | E-COMMERCE
Toronto’s own fashion brand WCROW recently came through to shoot a bunch of content for their latest line: e-comm stills, and video and stills for social.
Once again we’re reminded that sometimes less is more. Using props, coloured lighting and backdrops, they were able to make one white cyc space (Studio 1) into any number of different worlds.
