Back in 2014, I shot episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s TV series, The Help Desk. On that show, we set up a desk in busy public spaces and let people ask today’s most celebrated thought leaders anything. From Deepak Chopra to Devon Franklin, Cheryl Strayed to Rob Bell, we filmed in downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hermosa Beach, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. The series captured some beautiful moments that I highlighted in this blog post.
Ten years later, executive producer Danny Harris called me about recreating something similar to educate young people in partnership with The Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship and their digital storytelling arm, 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 and Ross Mac.
In addition to sharing invaluable financial lessons, we won a Bronze Telly Award for Series Entertainment. Huge congratulations to this incredible team. Hopefully this is just the beginning, and we’ll take the show on the road to campuses across the country to continue spreading financial knowledge. While the target audience is college-age students, there’s plenty here for all ages.
Similar to my experience on The Help Desk, I had to take a more hands-off approach to lighting than I’d normally prefer. Given the scale of the set and limitations on where we could place gear, we relied heavily on a 12×12 ultrabounce for our key. We oriented the couches to maximize both the sun path and our backgrounds. That said, we had a very unusual bogie crash our set in the middle of the day.
There’s always a certain level of chaos when shooting on location, but this campus was particularly wild. Aside from our root vegetable friend, there was a large concert happening down the quad. We rolled with it and stayed on schedule—that’s what happens when you have a great team.
CREW
Executive Producers
Tim Carr · Jan Ross · Jared Hoffman · Danny Harris · Shelley Miles
Producers
Victor Kong · Mary Liu · Vicki Syal
Camera
Director of Photography / A Camera Operator — Dustin Pearlman
B Camera Operator — Joshua Allen CSC
C Camera Operator — Chloe Smolkin
D Camera Operator — Bongani Mlambo
Camera Assistant — Morgan Miller
Grip & Electric
Gaffer — Team Bashet
Key Grip — Gyasi Howard
Swing — Caleb Phillips
Sound
Sound Mixer — Erik Clabeaux
Production
Production Designer — Dylan Jones
Makeup Artist — Ailen Diaz
Casting — Victoria Martzloff
Post & Social
Editor / Graphics — Andy Mogren
Social Media Producers — Nikki Noborikawa & Lea Reed
Talent
Talent Coordinators — Sarah Adolphson & Molly Stone
Sponsored by Experian
In Association with Pollution Studios, Asher Brown