
“Some Guys Just Can’t Handle Vegas”
By Olivia Farrimond | March 15th, 2024A few weeks have passed since Super Bowl LVIII captivated the city of Las Vegas. Although the event is over, we have the unique opportunity of reliving some of the most thrilling moments with the help from our friends at Venture Production Group and CBS Sports. Talented Cinematographer Andrew Lee geared up with Bokeh to shoot “Some Guys Just Can’t Handle Vegas”, a Super Bowl pregame ‘Hangover’ spoof, and gave us the inside look at the making of this amazing short.
https://vimeo.com/915386515
Lee’s film career blossomed after graduating from Indiana University in ‘06, where he majored in telecommunications with a focus on TV/Film. After graduating, Andrew moved to New York and landed a “permalance” job with CBS College Sports. “Fast forward to 2011, I became a staff producer/shooter for the original programming department at CBS Sports Network. I left to go freelance and start my own company in 2014, but luckily CBS has hired me back often for projects, and remain one of our main clients still today. I do a lot of “sports centric” production, with CBS & Tennis Channel being the main clients.”
“Dan Ennis, one of the producers at CBS Sports, reached out about trying to re-create the scene from the original Hangover movie with the talent from CBS’s NFL Today pregame show.” ‘The NFL Today’ is anchored by James Brown, with analysts Phil Simms, Bill Cowher, Nate Burelson, Boomer Asiason, JJ Watt, and lead NFL insider Jonathan Jones. “They licensed the intellectual property from Warner Bros, and found a 5000 SQ ft suite at Mandalay Bay that could serve as the set for the shoot. The big challenge was we were only going to have the talent for 4 hours, for a shoot that probably should have lasted 2+ days. In that 4 hours we had about 8 different setups to get through.
We also found out the day before that we’d have 15 less minutes with Nate Burelson, who we needed in each shot, because he had a Patrick Mahomes interview to conduct at 3:30 that got moved up to 3:15 (We were scheduled to wrap at 2:30) So that was a fun little wrinkle, we needed every minute we could get.
Bokeh provided Cooke Varotals and the Snorricam for us. The Snorricam was crucial to recreate that shot of Ed Helms waking up, and so once we realized we could source it from Bokeh in Vegas, it was a no-brainer to get the rest of the package from them.
We decided to go with the Varotals because we wanted the look of the Cookes, but given the schedule there was no way we’d have time for lens changes, so we put the 30-95mm on the Mini LF, and the 85-215 on the Venice 2. We were thrilled with how they looked. We shot the entire piece at a T4-5.6. We also had to shoot the scene with Ed Helms in LA, so it was great that another set of Varotals was available from Bokeh’s LA office to match.”
We asked Andrew what his favorite part of this shoot was. “The Cookes! But seriously, the lenses were great, but really the best part, like with any shoot, is being presented with something somewhat creative, but also with a bunch of challenges, (in our instance) severe time constraints, and being able to make it happen. Another fun post shoot story - the elevator scene at the end of the piece, we ended up with about 40 minutes to shoot that. We pre-lit an elevator, but then we all got down there, the elevator wouldn’t open or close, so we had to bail to a working elevator for the shot that reveals the guys have “found” James Brown. We set the shot, and the elevator was beeping cause we had left it open, so we were just going to let the doors close then hit the door open button. Alas, someone called it and as soon as the doors closed we shot up to the 61st floor. We ended up picking up about 10 hotel guests, so it was myself (Andrew Lee), fellow DP and biz partner Ryan Newman, Phil Simms in his boxer shorts, and Boomer with a face tattoo. Hotel guys were a bit surprised to say the least. I was trying to call everyone back on the bottom floor to tell them to have JB ready as we didn’t have time to do this again.
No one would answer. Thankfully our audio mixer, Zack Thorpe, was listening and realized when the mics went out of range that we had gone up and let everyone know when we got in range, so the shot that made the piece is the one that happened “live.” We dropped all the guests on the casino level, and then went one more down and it almost made it more a realistic “JB”! Because we had no idea if he was actually going to be there and ready when the doors opened.”
Thank you again to Andrew, Venture Production, CBS Sports, and their incredible crew for
allowing Bokeh to be a part of this experience. We can’t wait for the next one!
Hotel Suite:
Producer/Director: Dan Ennis
DP’s Andrew Lee & Ryan Newman
AC: Eduardo Capriles
Audio: Zack Thorpe, Jameson Herndon, Stuart Peck
Gaffer: Rick Shipley
Key Grip: Andrew Williams
Electrician: Xavier Knight
Grip: Jacob Peterson
Art Department: Noel Calizo, Shayon Nejati, & Jared Perez
Production Managers: Don Sheridan, Gina Fernando & Claire Aller
For Ed Helms:
Director/Producer: Dan Ennis
DP: Sean Brennan
AC: Alex O'Brien
Audio: Ryan Agostino
Gaffer: Kelly Porterfield