Utah Symphony Feel it For Yourself Campaign

Utah Symphony’s recent Feel it For Yourself campaign puts the focus on its audience. It’s all about the wide range of emotions that symphonic music conjures within us.

I had a blast working with the creative geniuses at Struck and USUO to bring the key art to life.

Creating Vivid, Heartfelt Imagery

Rapture, joy, awe, love. Emotion!

Once our sets and rigs were dialed, I could focus on directing the talent with cues to help them visualize their assigned emotion. The entire campaign was centered around vivid imagery that instantaneously evoked a feeling. You can feel it in the samples below.

Photographic Approach to the Campaign

The creative direction: Match the emotion of the talent with a color wipe over a monochrome image. So I was thinking in terms of making beautiful contrast that would enhance the feeling and bring attention directly to the face.

We built approximately six different sets, on location in the seats of Abravanel Hall, and my grips worked frantically to move everything to stay on pace during the full-day shoot.

Our key was motivated by light pouring off the stage unto the audience. The rim for separation and level was motivated by house lights. We blocked our extras to create the atmosphere of a full house.

With real-time feedback coming to a production monitor, the creative director and I could collaborate and focus most of our attention on the talent.

Review from Utah Symphony

“I’ve really enjoyed working with Austen and highly recommend him for commercial projects. We’ve worked him shoot for the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera on multiple occasions and have always been happy with the results. Austen is very versatile and has captured photos for our advertising collateral and stock photography. He also captured great photos during a live concert.”

— Jonathan Miles, Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, Vice President of Marketing & Public Relations