Ever tried to hang a fifty foot logo on a downtown LA rooftop so nobody sees a single bolt?

Me neither, I filmed the people who did

A downtown arena and theater complex was getting a new name, and the sign company on the job wanted all of it on camera, from the shop floor to the last letter lighting up at night

I produced and directed it. The drone permit, the call times, the night shifts, the interviews and the edit, all on me

Floating signs and a very strict city

Here is the deal, downtown LA has some of the toughest sign codes anywhere, it took meeting after meeting before one letter went up

Then the engineers wanted every sign to look like it was floating, no visible structure

Hundreds of them. Little eyebrow signs over the doors, all the way up to the rooftop mark, the biggest version of that logo anywhere in the world

So how do you film something designed to be invisible?

From above and after dark

Mostly from the air

We flew aerials over the whole complex, ran time-lapse cameras on the install for weeks, something like 90 GB of it came back over FTP, and shot the night crews on lifts when the plaza was empty and the lights were the only thing awake

Then I sat down the people who planned it, the sign company, the branding side, the property managers, and let them tell you why it was hard

People trust a project more when the guy who built it says it was hard….

What the film is really selling

A sign company doesn't sell signs, it sells the next contract

The next client wants proof you can handle permits, engineers, three venues at once and a deadline that does not move, right? a four minute film says that faster than a forty page proposal

That's a marketing video. Two years on and off with this client, five hundred plus emails, one film that does the selling for them

Why the producer holds the camera

On a night install something always goes sideways, and when it does I'm not scheduling a meeting about it, I'm already moving the camera

Fewer people in the loop, faster decisions, nothing lost between the plan and the picture

Same way I run my fashion shoots, have a look at the Behind The Scenes gallery and the Marketing Video gallery

Floating signs, crew on the ground

Length: 3 min 50 s · Producer & director: David Victory, VRSET video production, Los Angeles & Orange County

Key moments

  • 0:00 Opening: planning the install
  • 0:14 Aerial over the complex
  • 0:43 Crews on lifts at the theater
  • 1:12 Branding partner interview
  • 1:40 Sign company interview
  • 2:09 Night installation
  • 2:38 Aerial of the finished rebrand
  • 3:07 Closing interviews

See the matching photography in the Marketing Video gallery.

More videos

The full video library

Also on our YouTube channel.

Planning a video or a fashion shoot? Contact David Victory or call (310) 988-6575 in Los Angeles, (949) 873-4551 in Orange County. Free consultation and quote for first-time clients.