Cognition / Corridor

An acquisition announcement can turn into logos, headlines and corporate language fast. This one put the people behind the deal in the same room.

Cognition was acquiring Corridor. Russell Kaplan represented Cognition. Jack Cable and Ashwin Ramaswami represented Corridor. The finished film was under a minute, but it still needed to feel like more than a press release.

I handled remote live-action production for Skale in San Francisco. Morgan Ellis led the crew on set. My part was preparing the interview and B-roll shoot, coordinating access and the teleprompter script, and organizing the footage handoff.

Put both sides in the frame

The shared interview was the center of the film. Russell, Jack and Ashwin sat together first. Then the edit could move into their individual points of view without losing the relationship between them.

The office footage gave that conversation somewhere to live. One person at a workstation. Two people around a laptop. A wider team discussion. The announcement stopped feeling like three people in an interview chair and started feeling connected to the place where the work happens.

That was the job of the live-action shoot. Give the edit the people making the announcement, then give it enough of their world to keep moving.

Prepare the details nobody sees

The brief called for two cameras, a teleprompter, a contrasty talking-head look, office B-roll and behind-the-scenes coverage.

My coordination work sat underneath that brief. Which floor were we filming on? How would the crew load in? Who was meeting them? Was the teleprompter script current? Where did the footage need to go after wrap?

A street address wasn’t enough. The crew needed the floor, loading route and on-site contact. The teleprompter needed the current script. Those are small details until one of them is wrong.

Morgan made the calls on set. Skale connected the shoot to the wider launch work. I handled the production around both, without blurring who owned what.

The handoff

I coordinated the media handoff. Skale handled the edit and finishing.

The job was simple: give their team clean interviews, useful office coverage and footage ready for a very short launch film.