Back to TV Commercials

BACK to the days of creating TV commercials.

I think the last time I worked on a TV Spot we were all still getting over the effects of Y2K. Yeah, it’s been a while. And the last boss I had developing TV was David Morris. The CD at UPROAR. Fitting that the making of this spot has come full circle with David Morris as the client (still the boss). 🙂

The process is the same. But the actors have changed.

Brainstorming was great… because it was just like we left it as before. Big ideas are great because you don’t have to worry about producing it. Big crane camera moves, CG on every frame, celebrities? Why not. It’s not the time for “NO… we can not do that.” Brainstorming is great!

Then the good old storyboarding. I miss those days. Sketching out the shot list, then handing it over to a commissioned storyboard artist. My pencil style was let’s say… rough. “See that circle in the top right corner? Yeah, that is a group of people trying to put out a fire with a bag of gas.” Pretty rough.

Then comes the production phase. Back in the day, it went something like this. Our team would go to an early lunch and then come back three maybe four days later and the first rough cut would be done. We would make a few comments on the edit, then take a lunch and knock off early. The next day it would look perfect! For this project, I have to produce it myself. OH, ^$#$%!!

Hey kids, want to learn something new… make it a deadline… for a client! That will get you there! At this stage in my career, I feel pretty good solving problems with Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, but with 3D? Well, that is like learning algebra in a foreign language by the first quarter. Some would question the odds on that, but I accepted the challenge, lost years of my life, and made it happen!!

Here’s another trick kids, want to make something happen that that is out of your wheel house? Collaborate with talented folks! I manage to solve the ”make it a reality” part of the project by collaborating with my buddy Dustin Grant at Pink mouse Blue mouse. Talent guy and he was kind enough to put on the production manager hat and guide the project all the way to the deadline correcting the boat as we went along. Check out his work here: http://www.pmbmp.com

The journey was quite a ride with many peaks and valleys but reminded me how great it is to cross that deadline line with a great final product. It was also a good reminder of how many crazy long hours it takes to get to a great thirty seconds! 🙂 Cheers!