Way back in 2014, I shot episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s TV series, The Help Desk. On that show, we discovered what happens when you set up a desk in a busy place and let the public ask today’s most celebrated thought leaders anything. From Deepak Chopra to Devon Franklin, Cheryl Strayed to Rob Bell, we filmed downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hermosa Beach, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. The series captured some really beautiful moments that I highlighted in this blog post.
Ten years later, executive producer, Danny Harris, called me about recreating something similar to educate the youth in association with The Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship and their digital storytelling wing, Million Stories. For the pilot episode of The Finance Couch, we spent a full day on a beautiful Los Angeles area campus last spring with our two hosts, Andini Makosinski & Ross Mac.
In addition to imparting viewers with invaluable lessons about their finances, we won a Bronze Telly Award for Series-Entertainment! Congratulations to the wonderful team for their accomplishments and hopefully this means we will take the show on the road and visit other campuses across the country to spread knowledge and financial wisdom. While our target audience is college age students, there’s plenty of nuggets for people of all ages!
Similar to my predicament on The Help Desk, I had to take a very hands-off approach to my lighting than I normally tolerate. Given the gigantic size of our main set and the limitations of where the campus would allow us to place gear, we had to mostly rely on a 12×12 ultra bounce for our key light. We orientated the couches to maximize both the sun path and our backgrounds. Speaking of, we had a very unusual bogie crash our set in the middle of our day.
There’s a certain level of chaos that we expect when shooting on location, but this campus was particularly wild. Aside from our root vegetable friend, there was a large concert down the quad from us. We rolled with the punches and kept on schedule in spite of it all: that’s what happens when you have a great team.
CREW
Executive Producer – Tim Carr
Executive Producer – Jan Ross
Executive Producer – Jared Hoffman
Executive Producer – Danny Harris
Executive Producer – Shelley Miles
Producer – Victor Kong
Producer – Mary Liu
Producer – Vicki Syal
Director of Photography/A Camera Op – Dustin Pearlman
B Camera OP – Joshua Allen CSC
C Camera OP – Chloe Smolkin
D Camera OP – Bongani Mlambo
Camera Assistant – Morgan Miller
Gaffer – Team Bashet
Key Grip – Gyasi Howard
Swing – Caleb Phillips
Sound Mixer – Erik Clabeaux
Production Designer – Dylan Jones
Makeup Artist – Ailen Diaz
Social Media Producers – Nikki Noborikawa & Lea Reed
Casting – Victoria Martzloff
Editor / Graphics – Andy Mogren
Talent Coordinator – Sarah Adolphson
Talent Coordinator – Molly Stone
Sponsored by Experian. In Association with Pollution Studios, Asher Brown.
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