A Concept that Sat Just Right
Precision, Both in Product and Pitch
When the Shuttershot team sat down to imagine a new campaign for Shorebird — a beach chair brand based in Carlsbad, California — we knew we wanted to deliver more than a product video. We wanted to deliver a feeling.
Shorebird’s ethos is rooted in community, sustainability, and unhurried moments; we needed that foundation to support both messaging and the way our video moved. After all, the chair wasn’t made to be limited to the beach. It was designed to go where people go: into parks, onto patios, beside pickleball courts. A product built for presence.
Our creative approach was simple, but ambitious: a single vignette of friends connecting — repeated across multiple environments, stitched together so seamlessly it felt like one continuous scene. The through-line of human interaction would give emotional shape to the piece, while the shifting backdrops would quietly suggest versatility without ever needing to name it.
What emerged was a story shot over the course of one full day, played out in a singularly flowing moment that invites the audience to connect with a lifestyle, not just a chair.
Repeating Relaxation
At the heart of the Shorebird piece is a series of match cuts — a classic editing technique where two scenes are joined by mirroring action or composition to feel like a single, seamless shot. To pull it off, director Brian Shutters worked closely with Shorebird Founder Taylor Patton (who appears in the video) and the rest of our cast to devise and rehearse a scene that could be replicated — exactly — across every location
For further assistance, production used a tool called onion-skinning, which overlays the previous frame in translucent form onto the camera monitor. This allowed us to match chair placement, body position, and even prop angles frame-for-frame. Each shot followed the same choreography — fold the chair, sip a drink, reach to your left — wherever we went.
To hide any subtle variations, we placed each transition during motion (i.e. when someone shifts in their seat or moves their arm), keeping the viewer’s eye focused on movement, not environment.
The end result? A set of match cuts so smooth they seem digitally generated, but in reality, every frame was hand-aligned. A low-tech solution with high-touch precision.
Environmental Audio for Emotional Impact
Instead of opting for a traditional edit set to music, the Shuttershot team made a decision to strip away music entirely and let the natural sound of each environment carry the story. In collaboration with Gaussian Sound Co., a series of custom ambient soundscapes were created — ocean waves, coastal birds, hilltop wind, and more.
Each scene’s audio was tuned to highlight its surroundings, but just as importantly, the transitions between locations were intentionally abrupt. When the chair shifts from a rocky beach to a breezy park, the change in sound acts as a cue, while the visual continuity of the characters’ movement stays fluid.
This choice also reflected how the video would ultimately be used: not as a fast-scrolling social asset, but as the central piece on Shorebird’s website which needed to function even without sound all together. In the end, the sound design allowed the editing to move to the rhythm of the action and story, putting the chair and the experience of using it front and center.
Life Lives in Wide Screen
While much of today’s content is built to fit inside a phone screen, this one was built to breathe on any screen. We opted to shoot the film with anamorphic lenses — a cinematic format known for its signature widescreen aspect ratio, gentle distortion, and rich lens flares — resulting in lush, sweeping images that feel expansive and intentional.
This was more than an aesthetic choice. It allowed the chair — and the people using it — to be anchored within real environments. From the cliffs of the California coast to a quiet neighborhood lawn, the frame could hold the story and the setting at once.
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The takeaway? Format isn’t just a tech spec. It’s part of the storytelling toolkit.
While this campaign for Shorebird was shot in a single day, that day was backed by weeks of creative planning, choreography, location strategy, and technical nuance. Every decision — from how we staged elements on set to how we treated editing, audio, and aspect ratio — was rooted in the same goals as the company itself: connection, rest, and the ease of good design.
