The Battle at F-Stop Ridge Continues

Photography News

When the team at The Camera Store in Calgary decided to make a commercial for their store, none of them expected for it to become an internet sensation. You can imagine their delight when “The Battle at F-Stop Ridge” racked up over two million views and was featured on the homepage of Youtube. The creative ad spot features a battle of epic proportions; however these soldiers traded in their guns and ammo for cameras and film. If you haven’t seen the ad yet, take a look here:

The idea for the clip started out almost as a joke between co-workers, admits Chris Niccolls, “We were doing our usual thing where we’re supposed to be working at the store, but instead we were talking about movies and ideas and things we could do.” When Jordan Drake mentioned his idea of camera wielding soldiers, the two ran with it. They got their co-workers on-board, all the while hiding it from management in fear the ad would be shot down, pun intended.

As the popularity of the clip rose, The Camera Store staff geared up for a second invasion and produced a sequel to the viral video. At the time of writing this article, The Battle at F-Stop Ridge 2 is only a few weeks old, but is already following it’s prequel’s footsteps as it already has accumulated tens of thousands of hits. Watch part two, here:

To shoot the commercials, Drake and Niccolls borrowed a collection of cameras from the store to use as props and a professional grade JVC HM700 solid state camcorder. Of the cameras many notable qualities, Drake especially enjoyed the in-camera cranking ability. You can hear more about how the two ads were created in this humorus look back on the video shoots, here: