JACKSON BERKLEY

WalkMe: Realize was a 3-day corporate video shoot that involved a lot of green screen work and some fun custom props. Intended as an attention-grabbing introduction to a long video seminar, the plot followed a Tom Cruise lookalike as he and several “agents” representing the client’s core values — Scale, Visibility, Proficiency, and Context — spring into action to maintain their company’s infrastructure.

Due to director Rani’s influence, the shoot was very silly and playful, and the talent — most of whom were WalkMe employees with little on-camera experience — had a blast in front of the green screen donning clown costumes and pretending to parachute through the sky. Many of the key props had me adding custom vinyl logos and text to wardrobe pieces, books, and even balloons; perhaps the most challenging (and rewarding) prop, though, was a “USB falafel”. In the scene, our Tom Cruise lookalike receives a real falafel wrap from a secret agent dressed as a food cart hawker, then proceeds to pull a falafel ball out of the sandwich, revealing an embedded USB-A stick. Matching the color and texture of the actual falafel was key to this prop’s success, and was a highlight of the shoot.

While a massive blizzard threatened to derail this shoot entirely, it only proved a minor inconvenience, and I had a blast rigging up fun props on the fly with a solid creative team and a cohort of very enthusiastic employees-turned-actors.