170 community members. 38 locations. 20 crew members. One City’s pride. And a decade of trust that made it all possible.
Fifteen years into running a video production company, certain projects redefine your benchmarks. Game On — the new commercial campaign for the City of Ontario, California — is one of them. What began as a creative idea built around a song and an attitude became a full-scale production which captured the energy of an entire city.
This is how we did it.
The Creative Foundation: Tone First, Everything Else Second
A project of this size is built on careful preparation, thoughtful inquiry, and a remarkable degree of trust. But the truth is, tone is where a something like Game On lives or dies.
This campaign is about the undercurrent of pride that flows through the city of Ontario, a community that’s historically been counted out or confused with Canada. Game On’s direct and confident antagonism aims to challenge the narrative that Ontario is just another city along the eastbound freeways of California. It’s a place that thrives on foolish underestimations. And with the opening of ONT Field and the Ontario Sports Empire this spring, it is a city executing a big vision for the future.
Using sports as a metaphor, our goal for Game On was to convey a “middle fingers to the sky” attitude. We aimed to draw the parallel between the intensity of an athlete in-training and the fervor of a city on the rise—showcasing the community members, businesses, artists and musicians that shape Ontario, culturally.
Getting the tone locked before production began wasn’t optional. It was the decision that made every downstream decision faster and cleaner.
Pre-Production: The Work That Determines Everything
With that specific vibe in mind, Co-directors Byron Watkins and Joshua Krause developed a script and an ambitious mixed-media pre-visual— a structured assembly of imagery and rhythm that gave the production team a shared creative blueprint before a single frame was shot.
This is the stage of production where creative concepts meet tangible logistics and when client relationships take center stage. This is the part where our team asks: how far can we push this idea? Just how many places can we get access to? How many people can we involve?
Our ten-year partnership with The City of Ontario is the foundation that allowed us to be as visionary and as bold as this project demanded. It gave us the opportunity to be tenacious in our requests for access and audacious in our planned execution.
Our producer, Joann Mercado Hicks, coordinated closely with the City’s Economic Development Agency — Amber Cruz and Denise De La Peña — to translate the script and pre-visual into a detailed production plan.
With the help of our production team, 38 historic Ontario locations were confirmed and 170+ local community members were cast. Props were ordered and wardrobe sourced. And once the planning was finished, our crew made their way to Ontario to begin physical production.
Physical Production: Two Units, 38 Locations, Four and a Half Days
For four and a half days in February, Windsong prepped to have two independent units filming across the city. Cinematographers Justin McAleece and Peter Alton aligned to ensure the footage would match in the edit, stylistically. Then, our production team hit the ground running.
Here’s what it looks like to have two units filming at once: while one team was capturing a youth league at a local park, the other was filming on the mound at ONT Field. While one team was lining up classic cars for a shot along Route 66, the other was directing horseback riders as they cantered through an equestrian park.
In all, each unit averaged five locations per day and continually grasped at new opportunities for footage to drive the authenticity and vision of this project forward.
As filming commenced, we got word that the Ontario Christian High School girl’s varsity basketball team was poised to take home the CIF division title — the smallest sized school to win the open division. Our production team was tenacious in finding a way to include this story in the city’s commercial. With persistent communication and a pivot on production day, we connected with the coaches for few hours of filming with the team. One month later, the team took home the CIF championship.
Anecdotes like that have given us the perspective that on-set, the energy of Game On didn’t just represent Ontario, it lived within us too. It gave us focus and drive for the scenes we put together. It helped us push through long filming days, inspired to see what could unfold next.
And what we ultimately created, we’re pretty damn proud of.
The Result
Game On premiered at the 2026 State of the City where we saw the Ontario business community react to our work in real-time. It’s not often we get to witness a project we poured ourselves into find new meaning with others. These are the kinds of moments that remind us why we do what we do.
Game On is the kind of project that sharpens a team. It demanded precise logistics, creative flexibility, and the collaborative trust that only comes from a long-term client relationship. This was never about making just any commercial. It was about giving a visual definition to a community’s culture to encourage tourism. And we did this by listening and connecting — with the city, its goals, and the people who inhabit it.
To the City of Ontario and its Economic Development Agency: every location, every face in front of the lens, every frame in the cut reflects what we’ve built together. We’re proud of this work — and even prouder of the partnership behind it.
