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Seed Factory collaborate with local companies to ramp up creativity during slower Covid-19 times.

When business slows down, make lemonade.

August 14, 2020 – Atlanta, GA – Seed Factory, an Atlanta-based advertising agency, partnered with Autohaus Social and Tunewelders, an audio experience company, to create an action-packed video that plays up the experience of visiting Autohaus Social’s unique European auto service and repair shop. When Covid-19 slowed down the workload of Seed Factory, they offered their services to Autohaus for concepting and executing a highly produced video featuring one pretty Porsche–a staple brand for the repair shop. From concept and creative direction, to sound design and editing, every detail was a collaboration between Seed Factory, Autohaus and Tunewelders.

“We have always believed that any non-billable agency hours should be dedicated to creating the kind of work that we want to be doing more of a year from now,” said Mark Sorensen, Creative Director and co-owner of the agency behind this collaboration. “That often means finding a pro-bono client that has the understanding and desire to produce great work themselves. In this situation that client was Atlanta’s own Autohaus Social, which focuses on European auto repair and providing a great customer experience.”

Shoestring Budget Produces Exceptional Work
The companies that worked together all have one common trait – do great work and the financial payoff will follow. Shooting a commercial with little budget requires dedication from everyone investing their time to focus on the end-result. The teams brought together company owners, creative directors, video editors, sound engineers and musicians who were passionate about creating a fun story line and 60 seconds of the best filmmaking they could.

“Seed came to us with an idea of heightening the lengths we go to for the customers’ experience, by creating a fun nod to Atlanta’s best car movie ever, Baby Driver,” said Nash Tehrani, owner of Autohaus Social.

The budget also meant many elements needed to be begged or borrowed for the shoot–like the car. Since Autohaus is very engaged in the regional Porsche communities, and with Porsche’s North American headquarters being in Atlanta, it made a lot of sense for it to be the car brand to use. The lack of a car commercial level production budget dictated that roads couldn’t be closed for stunt driving, fancy car-mounted camera cranes couldn’t be rented, and everything had to happen within the legal speed limit and driving laws. Luckily the streets of Atlanta were fairly empty when shooting in early June and the agency had a few other production tricks up their sleeves to pull off the idea.

 The prominent car in Baby Driver was red, but there was only access to a yellow car; a really nice, twin-turbo 997 Porsche with Mezger engine yellow car. The movie was studied and as many similar shots that could legally be pulled off were incorporated to make it Baby Driver-esque. It also helped that Autohaus had an employee with a baby face and actor-level looks that didn’t mind driving his boss’ car all day long.

Bringing it All Together During Edit & Post Production
Most of the agency tricks came in edit and post production. They wrangled the help of local music and audio house, Tunewelders to enhance the energy of the video through sound design and an original soundtrack, created just for the video. Autohaus’ own Director of Operations Joseph Renter was able to lay down the guitar track while collaborating with Ben Holst, a composer and owner at Tunewelders.

“This was a fun project to insert our audio talents into while helping a couple local companies move their brands to the next level. Who doesn’t want to work around awesome cars all day long?” said Ben.

Seed Factory’s team threw all their in-house talent at the remainder of the project with the hopes that a year from now, they will be considered for more automotive and motorsports projects. “We have a lot of creative and film talent in Atlanta along with major brands based in the Southeast like Porsche, Mercedes, Cox Automotive, Michelin, Fox Factory, Yamaha Motorcycles, Bridgestone and many more”, said Sorensen. “Although Seed Factory might shoot some stuff in LA, we want national companies and ourselves to produce more commercials in Georgia. You don’t always need huge budgets to produce amazing work here.” But he goes on to caution, “companies should make sure they’re getting great ideas that make strong story lines and not just pretty pictures.” He then put his Ducati in first gear and gently lofted the front wheel toward his next client meeting.