It was hard to get photos of the dogs with my 17-50mm lens. Next year I think I’ll take along a 200mm zoom lens so I can get some great shots from a distance. Overall tons of fun and if you’re ever looking to do something in Fairbanks, this is a place to start. Just don’t forget your winter boots, my feet were freezing.

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I have a theory, because that’s all advertising is, theory. Nothing I do can ever be completely proven, but occasionally you can see effects of it in sales and awareness. If done right, advertising seems like a gust of wind making ripples in pond. I know that sounds very zen, but it’s true. People react to advertising best when they can’t see it clearly and it doesn’t feel like advertising.

That’s why when I write an ad there is more to it than telling the audience what a business is offering. If you just tell them what you are and what you do you’ve missed the point. You have to give them a reason to care, a reason to visit your establishment. Tell them why they need you, and make it personal. For most people that goes deeper than value.

I’m a firm believer that value isn’t enough to get people into a store. Sure, you’ll get some customers but that’s likely just being on TV or radio in the first place. The residual effect of “top of mind awareness”, but all that does is push a person who was already going to go, into the store sooner. What you really want to do is show people who don’t care, why they should care, how it effects them day to day.

Here is an example:

Here at Johnson Auto, we have the most efficient, durable rigs available. And if you’re looking for a great deal, you get one with no money down and no payments for a full year. Drive away your new car or truck from Johnson Auto today!

It’s a great value, no money down, no payments…but it’s hardly persuasive. Great, if I want a car I’ll go there and maybe get a good deal. I have no idea what they value or what kind of service I’ll get though and most of all, they don’t have ANY personality. I would rewrite those two lines like this:

Sure, Johnson Auto has vehicles that will get you from A to B, and you’ll be able to find a deal you can tell all your friends about, but we’re more than just that. Just like you, we like to feel the wind from an open window and the control of a rig that just feels…right. Johnson Auto, stop by and we’ll go for a drive.

Granted, it took me a LOT longer to write the second bit than the first, but it feels better to me. When I read it, it tells me what kind of a place Johnson Auto is. Suddenly, I feel like they value me over my money. They’re more interested in giving me a vehicle that feels right than anything else, because that’s what they care about too. That’s my reason, that’s why I’ll shop there.

To the point: Don’t just tell your potential customers what value you offer, give them a reason to step inside your door, hit them where it matters most. In the gut, with emotions.

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That sums up my whole experience at WPPI (Wedding and Portraits Photographers International) in Las Vegas. I know I’m not a wedding or a portrait photographer but there is a considerable amount of overlap these days. Especially since I shoot all my work on a Canon DSLR. The concepts of lighting, composition, and how to achieve awesomeness are all the same.

I was so surprised at how much information there was to gather, gear to see and fun to be had. Of course, it also helps when you go down with some of your close friends. Joe and Rebecca of Rebecca Kurber Photography and Angela of Tekoa Rose Photography are some of the best people to take along with you for a cram session in photography.

I learned a ton of new techniques and pinpointed some areas in my skillset that I need to work on. If you’re ever looking for a way to get inspired, spend 5 days crammed in a casino with 15,000 like minded people.

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I know a lot of people are going to ask me how I accomplished the switching clothes bit without having him jump around the frame.

Well, we marked his spot under his each foot, which is why those feet never leave the ground. Then I told him to memorize each pose at the end of a take. He’s very aware of his body (which is a big deal for a job like this) and was really good at slipping back into the memorized pose. I would double check by playing back the previous take in the camera just to be sure.

The hardest part of this ad were those logos. It wasn’t that the animation was hard, just that I had to re-animate each logo independently. It’s time consuming and very tedious. However, it’s those little animations that make a big difference and when I played it back I was very happy with the results.

I wanted the animation to have some character, and I think it worked.

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Chase Jarvis at CES 2011. from jared abrams on Vimeo.

Now, for those of you who don’t know Chase Jarvis. He does great work, a lot of high end advertising stuff.

I love what he touches on with “blown moments”. Everyone screws up, a good shooter keeps plugging along learning from their mistakes. Failure is part of the process. If you want to get good at something, go out and practice it. Learn what works and what doesn’t by doing it yourself. Reading about what other people do, while valuable, will only get you so far.

Here’s a link to the original post:
http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=5362

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‘Stache for men, the bristly supplement…for love.

BEHIND THE ‘STACHE: FOR THE LADIES

So this is a short sketch that I had been wanting to do for awhile. I had written down the idea on my notepad about six months ago. It took me a LONG time to get a handle on the script for it. It started at a large scale production and I was too busy to get to it, so I cut it down to the essentials and this is what came out.

Sometimes the simple projects are nice to have, so you can try some new things without it being a burden.

I had told Alex (stache man) about it almost a month and a half before we shot the video. He started growing his facial hair immediately. So he had to go around with a semi goatee for awhile, apparently he hated it, but took one for the team.

Alex trying to find his accent. Stoosh is hard to say.

The shoot itself was pretty simple. Unlike most of my sketches I decided to shoot it out of sequence. Moving the tripod and lights in between every take would have taken a ton of time. So I set up the tripod and zoomed in and out to achieve different shots. Occasionally I would move the camera even closer, like the “for luck” line.

Daniel's looking for food. We were a hungry bunch.

We spend a long time getting Alex’s lines and we even shot some alternate lines for a few of the jokes. Once I felt like we had everything we needed for him, then I moved everything around for Daniel’s lines, which were far easier.

So ones we finished all the lines I had to get all the cutaways of the box and a couple of wide shots that I could edit in later.

When it came to the edit I dropped all the shots on the timeline and picked the takes I liked the best. When I had all those, then I had to determine a speed and flow to the dialog. Which is one of the fun parts. After that I fine tune it with shots overlapping and adding in the cutaways. One day I’ll have to do a post just on the editing process, it’s pretty in depth.

I had a particularly hard time finding a good music balance for this, but after some library searching I found this crazy European sounding track and I had to stick with it.

Stache and Stache, together at last.

Once the editing and music were in and set I had to come up with titles. You could probably guess I had fun with this. Titles are a great way to add in extra gags for people who watch it more than once. So if you missed them the first time through, watch it again and read what I wrote. I don’t want to spoil it here.

The box itself was done in Lighwave, I textured a cube and animated it coming across the screen to hide the fade transition a bit.

Once the edit was done it was time to render out and upload to Youtube! There you have it a ‘Stache commercial!

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Initially we were thinking about tagging a nationally produced spot with new footage, but I really wanted to shoot a whole new ad for it. When you tag footage that isn’t shot the same way, you can really tell. Lighting, frame size, and sound quality all shift suddenly. I think it throws off the viewers and so I avoid it as much as possible. I really want people to be taken for an enjoyable thirty second ride, so I try to create ads that feel smooth, no bumps allowed.

When I came to the decision that we were going to shoot a whole new ad I was freed up to write a spot from scratch, and this is what I came up with. I wanted something familiar to pull in viewers at the beginning so I started with the tissues. Almost everyone knows what it’s like to battle allergies.

I also tried as much as possible to keep the mood of the ad light and fun. When you draw people in, you have to try and keep them interested, even if it’s only for thirty seconds. That’s why I wrote the “sneeze free experience” line. It’s just something small, that gives the audience something to smirk at. The same goes for the closing line, “clearing the air”.

As far as visuals go, I knew I wanted to make the store look as good as possible, so I went in a few days ahead so I could see the space and figure out what options I had. This really helps the overall look and feel. If I know where outlets (for lights) and talent marks (places where the people stand) are, then I can go back to the script and visualize in my head how things will look.

When it came to the third shot, I knew I was going to recreate this poster they had in After Effects.

My first thought was to just shoot the poster and pan down along it, but I thought it wasn’t interesting enough. So I took the photo you see above and made an animation that brought more attention to it. Then I placed subtle sound effects for each title that pops up to make them more noticeable.

Speaking of which, I did more sound editing than I usually do for this one. The second shot, where she throws the tissues over her head, I placed a swishing sound effect on her motion to make it more pronounced. Also, if you listen to the original shot you can hear the box of tissues hitting the display and the floor, which broke the illusion and took me out of the ad. So I decided to cut out that bit of sound so it wouldn’t be distracting.

I usually color correct my ads, but in this one I was so happy with the image straight out of the camera that I decided to leave it as is. Thank you Canon for making such a great camera! (60D, for those of you who want to know)

And that’s about it for this one. I used the same lighting setup I mentioned in the Pike’s and Prospector posts, so you can read about it there.

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You can also check out Emily’s website here: www.emilyandersonak.com
And her album is available on iTunes. Just search, “Emily Anderson”.

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This production is quite a bit simpler so I won’t be going into as much detail here. Pike’s told me that we needed to shoot a new TV ad. Now, they do 15 second ads. One with food and the chef, another with drinks and the bartender. These ads run in “bookend” spots, where you have a spot in the front of the break and at the end of a break. So you can get the channel surfers pretty easily.

So as Jeff, the chef, cooked up the dishes I decided to break out the gear and set up. I knew he wasn’t going to move around and I had to nail the lighting on him only once, then we could shoot without having to adjust. I took a picture of the lighting setup here. You can click the picture for a larger size.

The setup…with my camera bag on the pool table. I shoot with a really small kit, makes me mobile.

THE SHOOT

I’m using the same 500w tota Lowel kit that I used on the Prospector ad. I put one light behind him to created a hair light that would define the edge of his face, and another one with an umbrella pointing right at him. With only two lights, I don’t have many options. Because the restaurant in a lot darker than the Prospector you’ll see a difference in how it looks. I think I prefer this look, but I can’t shut off all the lights in a department store to get the same effect. It’s bad when all the customers run into each other. That setup gave us this look, which I really liked. Click for full resolution.

No color correction, straight from the camera. Good look at the lighting here.

The chair closest to the camera in the shot above is where I sat for the entire ad. I only used a 17-50 2.8 Tamron lens on my Canon 60D, so I was able to zoom in and out depending on the shot I wanted. I also would lean in to get really close on his face.

We shot all the dialog multiple times, from wide and close. That way I could put cuts wherever I wanted in post, if he nailed the delivery right (and he usually does, he’s very good) I didn’t have to worry about continuity.

Once we had the lines shot, we moved along to the food shots. I know you only see one shot with a pan, but I have about seven variations of that on my hard drive. Close, far, quick pan, slow pan, etc. I always try to think about how my shots are going to edit together while I’m shooting. I also try to leave a little room to experiment, but still have a “safe” take if it doesn’t work out. Just another thing to file in the back of your brain when you shoot.

THE EDIT

When I got back to the office I dumped all the footage from the cards onto the hard drive. Then I dumped the audio from the recorder to the hard drive as well. I put both of them into separate folders so that I can keep all the files straight.

Now, because I shoot my audio separate from my video, I have to sync it in post. Luckily both the camera and the recorder number the files and I can pull them into the edit sequentially. I pull the footage first, then I pull the audio in below the video on a separate track.

Here’s a snapshot of the timeline so you can see how that looks. Click on the picture to see the larger size.

The timeline for this ad. This isn't bad at all, you should see some of the larger projects.

You can see the actual edit of the ad first. I always cut clips out of the footage and paste them at the beginning of the timeline, where I assemble the ad itself.

You can also see that there are extra tracks above and below the footage. The one below is for the music, and the two above are for the extra shot of the food and the logo that appears throughout the commercial.

Here is a closer shot of that section. Click to see it bigger.

Hopefully you get the idea of how I structure these things. I should note that I did have to cut a line, he was initially going to open the ad with his name, it ran too long so I had to cut it out. As it stands, it barely fit into 15 seconds, which is pretty normal.

After that I did some color correction. The Canon tends to be a really high contrast and I actually lose some detail, but I can bring it back by adjusting the settings. Here’s the difference from the raw video, to the color corrected version.

I added a little bit of a pink hue to the footage and dialed down the contrast so the black weren’t quite as strong. Also, I tried to get rid of the yellow color I was getting off of the ambient light.

All in all, I was happy with the way this one turned out. It’s simple but effective.

If anyone has questions regarding this ad, or any of my work really you can leave a comment or email me via the form on my contact page.  I’ll likely turn the answers into posts themselves so I can really go into detail.

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