It may have been the most secret fishing expedition of Scott Kimmel's career.
The longtime Poulsbo resident, who owns Port Townsend-based New Day Fisheries, says he got a random call last April from a friend of his deckhand.
"They wanted to use the boat and shoot some film," said Kimmel.
It was a member of the NHL Seattle digital media team.
"I wasn't really sure what it was going to entail, but they ended up sending me a storyboard on how things were going to play out," Kimmel said.
That led to a shoot on a sunny day in May when he says he took a small film crew out with his two kids and dog Bentley. Kimmel, whose company has been in Port Townsend for 35 years, said he didn't probe about how the video may be used or for what purpose. His previous film work involved a QFC commercial years ago. The crew was with him for 12 hours.
"I didn't really know what questions to ask or anything,” Kimmel said. “It was all really, really new to me. So we just kind of went with it and you know when they got on the boat with all their gear, I just did whatever they asked me to do."
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Kimmel said he had a hunch but didn't know the video would be used until around 9 a.m. on Wednesday when he was told to watch for the video at 5 p.m. that evening.
The “teaser trailer” as some may call it has well over 2 million views and was used to hype the announcement of the new franchise logo and name the following day. It ends with Kimmel and his daughter pulling a light out of Puget Sound, flickering with the noise of a horn – a stick tap in hockey terms for the sound played after the scoring of a goal.
Kimmel says he was never told the name of the team during the course of the shoot and learned of it just like everyone else the following day. It was another example of the levels of secrecy around the franchise name launch even though senior executives had zeroed in on the name in the first quarter of the year.
Now that the Kraken has been released, Kimmel and his family have been fielding calls and emails and weighing in on their moment, literally and figuratively, in the spotlight. He likes the name too.
"It's been crazy," he said. "They did a good job."