BetterHelp | Part of the Process

Story

Our spec campaign for BetterHelp is built around gardening. As a plant grows, it gets attacked by the elements: too hot or too cold, not enough water or too much. As long as there’s a caring hand, you can pull out of it. We needed a time-lapse of a plant growing, and we couldn’t actually grow one. So we shot it in reverse: we cut the plant down and chopped it apart, then played it backward, and it looks like it’s growing.

I figured out the rain and the snow, and helped work out the heat with old leaves and a change of dirt. We found three of the exact same plant in different states of health, and we shot the dry scene first, since once the dirt and the plant were wet, it would have looked bad. A lot of it we shot in the opposite order from how it plays.

Michael led the directing, though with no people on camera there wasn’t much to direct. He and I worked out how to shoot the growth and each stage of it, and we lit it together. We were lucky to shoot in a studio, with a pro lens.