When HEB and Dallas agency Plot Twist set out to celebrate Texas pride through one of the state's most recognizable young athletes, they brought the production to Camlock Films, an Austin video production company built for agency commercial production. The brief centered on University of Texas volleyball standout Madisen Skinner and a simple, charming idea: the UT Longhorn band trails her across campus, erupting into celebration every time she reaches for an HEB-brand product. The package totaled three spots — a hero :30 anchored by the band, plus two :15s built around mascot Hook 'Em and a string of on-campus shenanigans. As the Austin-based production partner, we handled production end to end, with Recess Editorial in Dallas on post-production.

The biggest hurdles were logistical. Producing on the UT Austin campus means navigating a patchwork of departmental jurisdictions — which buildings, streets, and shared spaces fall under whose authority — so scouting and permitting took real diplomacy. The payoff was access to genuinely iconic Texas backdrops, including a shot framing Skinner against the UT Tower. To pressure-test the creative before the shoot, we built full animatics in Unreal Engine, including a 3D reconstruction of the SAC building, giving the agency and client a clear preview of coverage and pacing.

The shoot was a single six-hour day, and we engineered the schedule around our most finite resource: time with the athlete. We ran a multi-camera setup on ARRI Alexa 35s paired with Angénieux Optimo primes, which doubled the camera department and pushed the crew to roughly 50 so we could capture every angle in fewer takes. To protect Skinner's hours, we hired a body double and shot four setups — three before she arrived and one after she wrapped — clearing over-the-shoulder coverage and hand inserts so her on-camera time went entirely to the moments only she could deliver. She nailed her takes in just a few passes, and the day put our director, a UT alum, back on campus leading a 50-person crew alongside the current Longhorn band.

The result was a tight, brand-forward campaign that delivered iconic Texas imagery on a compressed schedule without sacrificing craft — a credit to disciplined pre-production and a crew that could move fast under real constraints. HEB and Plot Twist walked away with three polished spots and a shoot day that wrung maximum value from a marquee talent's limited window. This is where Camlock Films does its best work: an Austin production partner agencies can hand a logistically complex commercial or branded content brief and trust to execute. For creatives and producers looking for a Texas production company that solves problems on set instead of creating them, that's the standard we hold.