The Bag Has Arrived

The call came from The Deli, a Toronto-based agency tasked with launching Wealthsimple's Monthly Millionaire campaign in Calgary. The concept was simple and loud: a fully wrapped, military-grade armored truck rolling through the city, delivering the message that the money is here. Capture it dynamically. Make it feel like an event. Because it was one — a press release, a city-wide activation, and a social campaign all rolled into two days.

My job was to make the truck look like it belonged on a movie set. Which, for two days, it did.

The Brief — Agency Work with The Deli

The Deli runs a tight ship. The brief was direct: capture the truck driving around the city in a dynamic way, show that it has arrived. Everything was built around that single idea. No complicated narrative, no multi-location story — just the vehicle, the streets, and the energy of something significant showing up uninvited in downtown Calgary.

This is the kind of agency job I enjoy. The creative problem is already solved. The brief is confident. The task is purely cinematographic: how do you make a truck feel cinematic? The answer, as always, is angles, movement, and sound.

DJI ACTION 5 MOUNTED ON TRUCK · LOW-ANGLE ALLEY RIG · CALGARY · MAY 2026

Going Vertical — The C500 Rig

The entire campaign was designed for 9:16 — vertical social media first. That changes the way you think about framing. Everything that reads wide and cinematic in a traditional 16:9 frame has to be reconsidered. The truck is tall. The buildings in downtown Calgary are tall. Vertical actually works in your favour when your subject is an armored truck moving through an urban canyon.

We ran the Canon C500 Mark II rotated 90 degrees for the primary camera package. The rig on the bridge over Deerfoot gave us the money shot: C500 vertical in frame, truck passing below, Calgary skyline stretched out behind. It's a frame that only works in portrait, and it works well.

The Money Bag POV

The shot I was most excited about was the money bag POV. The idea: shoot from the perspective of the bag itself, being carried through a downtown alley toward the armored truck. We rigged the Canon C70 with a DZO 16mm — wide, a little distorted, intimate — and walked up to the back of the truck in a parking garage. The lens made it feel like you were carrying the money. Like you were the one delivering it.

It's a simple idea executed with the right glass. The 16mm on a full-frame sensor gives you just enough drama without going fisheye. The alley environment, tight walls, the truck filling the frame as you approach — it reads exactly like a bank drop, which is exactly the point.

ACTION CAM ROOF RIG ON THE MOVE · MONEY BAG POV BTS · CANON C70 + DZO 16MM · CALGARY · MAY 2026

Three Cars, Two Days, One Truck

This was a proper rolling production. Three-vehicle convoy: the armored truck, a follow car for chase angles, and a camera car running alongside. Production Manager Jen Whitehead kept the convoy moving between locations while Shaun Robinson was with us for day one shooting stills — his photography complements the video work well, and having a dedicated stills shooter on a job like this means you're not splitting focus.

We also flew the drone outside Bragg Creek, taking the truck out of the city to catch it on the open highway against the foothills. The contrast between the urban footage and those Bragg Creek aerials gives the edit something to breathe. City pressure, then open space. It works.

Audio was another piece of this that I cared about. The DJI Mic Mini, magnetically attached to the truck body and wirelessly linked to the C500, gave us real truck sound — engine rumble, road noise, the metallic weight of the vehicle. That audio is what separates this from looking like a GoPro shoot. Sound design starts on set.