03 Oct United Health Care Spec Commercial

I have been M.I.A. from the social media space in a while because I have been running around shooting various spec commercials and a project for the University of Texas as well. It has been a good few months for Moth to Flame Films — just extremely hectic. My room looks like a tornado hit it and I look like I have been hit by a bus half of the time. School has been insane as well. Overall, crazy. Good crazy. Busy crazy. We released our Coors spec commercial, but unfortunately did not place as a finalist.

About 2 weeks ago I was invited to shoot a spec commercial for UnitedHealthCare, that would be due on October 2. I thought to myself… I have a paper due in all my classes, projects, no life… it took me 3 days before the deadline to say if the puzzle pieces come into place, then I will do it. The catch is, the invite was for a spec completely in Spanish. On Sept 29, at around 8 pm, I used my amazing Facebook and emailing skills to hunt down actors who could speak Spanish and Spanish families, with no luck (while Will and I frantically wrote a script in Spanish.) Finally, Fernando Gonzalez, my beloved MBA friend came to the rescue. His beautiful family agreed to help me in being in the film and providing their house as a place to film at. I then asked my security guard, Greg Lee, downstairs (because he looked Hispanic) whether he knew any 60+ year old ladies who could speak Spanish fluently. Coincidentally, his grandma also agreed to help out. On Saturday, we shot the entire film in a matter ofr 5 hours before I had to run to my next meeting. William Molina, an amazing Director of Photography, helped as my 2nd camera and we edited the entire night until 11 am the next day and finished the completed project.

I must say, given the amount of time we had to put this together… we did not do a bad job at all. I have a lot of folks to thank though. My cast and my crew were amazing. I know this is not the crazy, edgy material that I usually like to make, but I am strong believer that if you are a good filmmaker, you should be able to make anything look good. Hopefully, we did just that.

We find out about the results in 2 weeks. Wish us luck!

Credits:

Produced, Filmed, Written & Edited by: Christine Chen & William Molina
Directed By: Christine Chen
Director of Photography: William Molina
Sound Mixed by: William Molina
Translated By: Lydia Ordonez
Boom Operator: Greg Lee

Set Photographer: Fernando Gonzalez (this picture was taken by him)

Cast: Susan Garcia (LEAD),
Juan, Elizabeth, Mia, Jack, & Isabella Sanchez (Sanchez family)
Kelly Sanchez
Laura Bernal
Greg Lee
Taylor Schmerber
Fernando Gonzalez

Music (Stock) – “On the Clouds”
Brown House Media – AudioJungle

Special Thanks to: Fernando Gonzalez, Greg Lee, and the Sanchez family