Before you snort disdainfully at the phrase creating a commercial, remember that Guy Ritchie himself did not disdain this art (- it's art, let's not be afraid of this word!) That's really someone who would seem to have enough money and fame. The current level of video and animated advertising products is unspeakably high and it is far from easy to match it.
Shooting clips and commercials is a huge branch of the video industry, in which hundreds of talented people work and create - cameramen, directors, screenwriters and editors. It should not be denied that there are enough mediocrity with video graphomaniacs, but this is the misfortune of any art. If you can make money shooting commercials, then why not do it. It is with such thoughts that fans of quick money come into the advertising industry, forgetting that video clips and commercials of the post-perestroika level have been out of fashion for a decade and a half.
Well, seriously, what should you first of all pay attention to as an advertiser? You thought about making a selling promotional video, but search engines are full of links, sites with tempting words, prices with great offers - so there is no way to decide. It remains either, trusting in chance, to poke a finger at the first phone number that comes across, or patiently call each studio, “poke up” and ask around.
Shoot commercial or advertisement
So the first thing is professionalism. Of course, one should not demand from the studio to present diplomas from the Hollywood video school or membership cards of the directors guild, but it is also hardly worth entrusting shooting to a graduate of a road-building technical school, even if he took short courses in cameramanship at the Kamyshin Institute of Arts. Still, a commercial is a video product that must meet certain standards, requirements, not only in terms of its aesthetic, but also in technical terms. What is the maximum duration of a static plan? How to direct the key light to highlight the silhouette of the model? When is it worth using a manual aperture, and when is it better to rely on automation? Searching for answers to these questions by trial and error is too expensive, and it takes a lot of time. That is why, in order to shoot a commercial of the corresponding education, the screenwriter must “burn with style”, the director “turn the soul out of the actors”, the operator must work wonders with the camera ...
The professionalism of the studio employees is the first indicator of the level at which the company operates. Technique can be expensive and complicated, but the technique needs hands and a head, and if the technique makes a mistake, experience will always help to compensate for this mistake.
The second point is hardware. Just as having a camera in hand does not make a person a professional, neither does it bring a professional title to a studio. Cameras are different and without being a specialist it is sometimes difficult to outwardly distinguish professional equipment from semi-pro or amateur-level equipment. Look at the videos presented in the studio's portfolio, ask them to show you on the big screen, find out the technical characteristics of the equipment. Most likely, this will be enough to form an opinion about how good the company you applied to is.
Third - the timing of the production of the commercial. It usually takes from a week to a month to shoot a commercial, so if the studio gives you a deadline of several days, be careful. Sometimes the development and approval of the script takes dozens of days, but this is rather an exception. In general, the terms required for shooting a music video or creating a promotional video are strictly individual and vary quite widely. Anything can be an obstacle - bad weather during filming, for example, can ruin Mel Gibson's mood too ...
In food commercials, we often see such delicious things that we unwittingly become victims of marketers. And the sandwiches there are delicious, and the cocktails are multi-layered, and some Bavarian sausages are so steamy that it seems that I would give a lot for a couple of such portions.
But you will be very disappointed when you find out WHAT we are actually offered to taste!
Now we will share with you the main secrets that are used in the studio when shooting such gastronomic videos.
milk rivers
The milk that you see in a bowl of very healthy mules is actually a mixture of sunscreen and glue. Such a liquid has a greater luster and flows beautifully from a spoon. Flakes in it do not get wet and remain very appetizing.
foamy mountains
Have you seen the foam rising from the beer mugs? She is lush, huge, almost lacy. But certainly not beer! For its manufacture, ordinary soap or dishwashing liquid is taken and generously added to a bottle of tea or a mixture of apple juice and vegetable oil. Beer is ready!
Exotic cocktails
Do you think they have really expensive colored alcohol in them? Do you hope that a lady in a bikini really sips it through a straw and smiles so blissfully? No matter how! For these colored illusions, ordinary gelatin and dye are used. Well, and water, of course)
clouds of steam
What you think is fragrant steam from hot dishes is actually smoke from incense sticks. They are hidden behind a plate of food and filmed from the right angle. Therefore, the studio always smells not of some kind of shawarma, but, for example, of jasmine, which has a much better effect on the work process and does not allow the staff to relax.
And if they save even on sticks, then they simply draw "steam" on the computer.
meat supplies
The meat in the ads is usually neither pork nor beef. To advertise dishes with open meat fillings (for example, tacos), chopped makeup sponges are used. These porous pieces are carefully soaked in sauces, after which they look very much like meat and keep their shape perfectly. If the dish consists of several layers of dough, they are often glued together.
And if you need to remove a whole piece of meat (for example, a steak), then use a raw semi-finished product, only slightly browned for appearance. Then it is covered with hairspray and the characteristic “grill stripes” are applied with a special marker!
To create a golden crust on a chicken leg, it is treated with a building hair dryer, and mashed potatoes are injected under the skin with a syringe (this gives splendor to the chicken silhouette).
Ice icebergs
If suddenly you see ice in an advertisement, immediately say Stanislav’s “I don’t believe!”. Frozen water would instantly melt from the heat of the spotlights and the studio temperature that is comfortable for people, so transparent acrylic cubes are always thrown into the glasses, not ice.
succulent dew
When in an advertisement for soft drinks (juices, waters, nectars, etc.) we are shown beautiful glass glasses, all so foggy and in droplets of liquid, then immediately imagine food stylists who diligently rub the dishes before shooting with a matting cream and sprinkle it mixture of glycerin and water. And then bring the drink to a well-heated state and - voila! — you can start the first double!
ice cream balls
For those who think that promotional ice cream is ice cream, get a deuce in your diary! Advertisers do not want to mess around in sweet colored puddles for several hours, so they prudently stock up on a convenient mixture of flour, dyes and packaged vanilla cream. Alternatively, silicone or gel masses are sometimes used and watered with PVA dyed in different colors.
multi-storey sandwiches
This engineering design of 6-8 layers does not bother signing contracts, and therefore there is no clause on mandatory stability either. To keep all these meatballs, cheeses, tomatoes, greens and sesame rolls together, they are put on toothpicks, Chinese sticks are glued to them, tape and cardboard are used in all sorts of combinations.
Then the camera skillfully zooms in from the right side - and you admire another culinary miracle of fast food!
Are you a small business in desperate need of publicity? Are you an aspiring musician or an actor who wants to be famous? A blogger who dreams of becoming famous and attracting millions of subscribers to his blog? Then this tip is for you! I will tell you how to shoot and broadcast a commercial for free, which will allow you to wake up famous the very next day!
I'll start with a brief overview of the television advertising market.
An advertising video - such as you see every day on the air of central television channels - is a very difficult and expensive thing. Work on the creation of a thirty-second video lasts from one to several months, several dozen people take part in it (sometimes 100-150 people!) And this pleasure costs the advertiser from 1 to tens of millions of rubles in our country and up to several million dollars in the USA . Only very large, more often multinational companies that produce consumer goods can afford such advertising. And such advertising is produced by special companies, the so-called production houses (from the English. Production house - a production company).
It would seem, what can we talk about in such a situation, what free videos for novice musicians or bloggers? Indeed, my advice would end there if there were no such thing as the Internet in the world. The World Wide Web provides almost unlimited opportunities for advertising anything or anyone, and it's completely free. Let's talk about it. First, how to shoot your own commercial, then how to promote it on the network.
Today, video production technology has become so simple that you don't need to shoot your own commercial. Video can be shot on a simple video camera, camera, even a smartphone or a computer webcam - all of them today provide a level of quality sufficient for broadcasting on the Internet and the ability to attract an audience of millions. The only thing you really need to succeed is an idea.
An idea is a thing as simple as it is complex.
Its simplicity lies in the fact that for its birth, again, nothing is needed. As folk wisdom says: everything ingenious is simple. The difficulty is that not everything simple is brilliant. To give birth to a brilliant idea, you can spend a minute, or you can spend a year or a lifetime. But it’s worth trying in any case, because it’s impossible to understand right away whether your idea is brilliant or not. You may think that everything is bad, but people will like it. Or it's the other way around. The main thing in this process is not to go in cycles and not to engage in perfectionism. Made and launched! If it doesn't work, you can come up with another idea and try again. Once again. And one more thing... If you burn with desire, do everything with enthusiasm, buzz, drive, one day everything will work and your work will be rewarded.
The Internet is a unique place to place your advertisements. Free and reusable place. If you like the idea, millions will know about you, and you don’t have to do anything for this - information on the Internet spreads at great speed and captures millions and tens of millions of people.
But where do you get the idea if you've never done anything like this before? On the same internet! Spend a couple of hours or a couple of days and watch videos of other people, companies, organizations, promotions, musicians, video clips and the best commercials, such as the winners of the Cannes Lions festival, for example. Well, something like this: , or .
Read blogs and forums about your activity, see what people like on social networks, what has the most views on Youtube. There are a lot of ideas on the Internet, you need to absorb all the best that was created by people like a sponge, pass through yourself - your experience, your passion, your understanding of the world and give out something of your own, unique.
In no case do not try to copy someone else's idea, even if it brought worldwide fame to its creator - this is the way to nowhere. Real success comes only to those who create their own, original, unlike anything - this is what attracts the attention of millions and brings fame. To paraphrase a well-known saying: be simple, be yourself and people will reach out to you.
You can shoot, as I already wrote, even with a smartphone camera, even with a computer webcam, even with a DVR - the main thing is that the action being filmed is original and captures the viewer, makes him rewatch your video or clip, send a link to it to all his friends . You can mount it in any simple video editor, add music and sound of almost any quality - on the Internet, no one expects the quality of the First Channel video from you, but everyone is waiting for a non-standard, interesting action, an original plot, unexpected twists - give people what they expect and people will respond to you with their increased attention. As, for example, the little-known musical group "Silver" did at one time, literally blowing up the Internet with its clip, filmed in the passenger compartment of a car:
The videos we are talking about are called viral. They have nothing to do with influenza and ebola, the name comes from the way they spread - from person to person, from one group to other groups of people, capturing an ever larger audience. The most famous viral videos and music videos are made by very simple means, without the involvement of professionals, but the number of people who watched them is hundreds of millions of people.
Today, even many large advertisers resort to creating viral videos for the Internet, realizing their potential. An example is the Volvo Tracks video, which has received tens of millions of views worldwide (the video currently has 76 million views).
Of course, the best professionals in their field, including the Hollywood star actor Van Damme, took part in its creation, but who said that only professionals can come up with interesting ideas? Or why not become a genius idea pro?
These are questions that require a certain amount of self-confidence and adventurism for a positive answer, but it is precisely such people who become famous, create masterpieces and reach great heights. Become one of them!
Well, having shot the video, all that remains is to post it on Youtube (after creating an account there, if you don’t have one yet), and give a link to the video to the largest possible number of your friends, acquaintances, relatives, classmates, classmates, etc. and so on. If they like the video, be sure - it will instantly go far beyond this circle - many of your friends will throw a link to their friends, and those to theirs ... This is the beauty of the Internet - it works for you and for you, if you or your product is worth it .
If there is no success, as I already wrote, do not despair, it is worth making one more or far more than one attempt. Not everything ingenious is obtained from the first and even the second time. You need to analyze as meticulously what you did wrong and understand why your idea did not find a response in the hearts of your friends. It might be worth having a heart-to-heart talk with some of them, collecting opinions about your video and its shortcomings. The main thing here is not to fall into ambitions that have ruined more than one novice creator “I made a brilliant video, they are all fools - they didn’t understand, they didn’t appreciate it.” It may well be so, but you do not want self-glory, but the recognition of millions, don't you? It is worth understanding what these same millions want and make a video for them, and not for yourself.
This, by the way, is one of the fundamental principles of advertising - you do it not for yourself, but for other people. And even though the product is yours (by product, I mean anything - a product that you have made, a service that you want to sell, your music, your voice, the lyrics of your song, etc.), but you sell it to people, therefore should be guided by their needs and tastes. To successfully sell your product (including your commercial), you must understand your consumer - his preferences, mentality, tastes and needs. To stand out, your idea, your product or your service must be more original, more interesting, more unusual than what people see around them, on TV or on the Internet.
That is, everything is not simple, but not as difficult as it might seem to someone. It is enough to find your niche, to find that separate string that will touch the living, if not everyone, but some large group of people - teenagers, pensioners, snowboarders or office workers - success will be ensured.
And finally, a selection of videos that touched the nerve, surprised me personally. Not all of them are commercials in the truest sense of the word. But advertising is a broad concept, often the task is to draw attention to yourself, your activities, your products. In this sense, the examples given, it seems to me, fulfill this goal 100 percent.
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Pre-production should be a major part of the process, as you need to carefully think through the plot, approve the actors, create the scenery, decide on the sound and musical accompaniment.
First, evaluate your capabilities, calculate the budget by calling the most suitable studios that have professional cameras and provide auxiliary materials. Some agencies shoot commercials to order, providing the customer with everything necessary, from equipment to costumes for actors. But in this case, the cost of filming will be much higher than if you prepared the materials yourself. Of course, the professional quality of the video will be much different from the amateur video.
How to create commercials in companies
A company that shoots professional videos will prepare a script for you, think over the design, select suitable actors, provide good sounding of music, phrases, edit the shots and create a full-fledged, high-quality film. Therefore, if you do not have the rules and necessary skills necessary for the production of commercials, it is better to find a production studio that can handle all this at the highest level. When choosing a company, be guided by their experience and the availability of footage that confirms their professionalism. You should first listen to the voices of the announcers in order to choose exactly the timbre of the sound that is best suited to advertising your products.
In order to cut costs, try to conclude a contract for filming a video directly with the TV channel on which you plan to show it. Avoid the involvement of intermediary organizations.
How to make your own promotional video
If you still plan to shoot a video yourself, but you do not have special skills and abilities, follow the rule of simplicity in everything. Do not use complex effects that are available only to professionals. Eliminate long statements, minimize the participation of actors. High-quality videos are best shot outdoors, on a bright sunny day. Additionally, you can use a directional light source to help avoid shadows. When choosing music and sound effects, strive for naturalness, avoid too loud sounds, annoying repetitions of the same words, long enumerations of the advantages of the product and its properties.
An example of a good musical accompaniment can be music that fits the meaning of the plot. For example, when advertising goods for children, you can choose a cheerful children's song, while presenting goods for recreation, choose a gentle, light melody. And for sporting goods advertising, music can be rhythmic, invigorating.
At the end, show the created story to your friends, colleagues who will be able to express their comments, stop your attention on successful and dubious shots.
Now less and less people can sit with a newspaper in their hands or with a business newspaper on a laptop. Rather, it will be a smartphone or tablet with headphones and some kind of video sequence. Video - more visual, and also much larger
VISUAL SERIES
From the point of view of filming equipment, very decent cameras are often installed even on top-end smartphones. Also, for the same money or a little extra, you can take a SLR camera or a camera without a mirror with optics, which will give a more cinematic picture. In fact, every Canon DSLR since the 600D has been able to capture almost cinematic images. And slightly more modern cameras like Canon 80D, Panasonic GH5, Sony A7SII have completely redundant opportunities for shooting videos.
By the way, for cameras with interchangeable lenses, the lens can be even more important than the carcass.
For example, if you look at the clips of Lana Del Rey, then noise filters are specially superimposed on the video sequence to make the image seem more artistic and as if taken from a VHS video cassette. That is, in fact, you do not need 4K and an expensive camera. Relatively simple solutions are enough. But much more important is well-exposed light, atmosphere, image stabilization and so on. In a word, you need to have a certain taste in order to shoot videos.
But this is just a form. And in video, the issue of content is noticeably more important. Video advertising production can be compared to art, where it is important to find and show an interesting idea. And this is already a more difficult task than just shooting everything beautifully. In many cases, it is better to turn to creative guys who specialize in video marketing, rather than trying to shoot everything on your own. You need to be very talented in order to remove advertising on your own for a reasonable budget.
SOUND
Many videographers rightly believe that the sound in the video is even more important than the picture itself and its dynamics. Quality sound really makes a difference. Therefore, it is advisable to immediately think about suitable recorders and microphones. For example, I have at least two external microphones for vlogging. Record audio using the microphone built into your camera or smartphone. Although - it all depends on the specific tasks. But at least 3 out of 4 times it's better to have a suitable external microphone or recorder. Moreover, different types of microphones are suitable for different types of tasks.
INSTALLATION AND PROMOTION
And then - you should already think about promoting the video. YouTube, Instagram, VK or other social networks. Recording a cool video is important. But it's even better when hundreds of thousands of people see it. Therefore, it is worth studying search engine optimization, YouTube video optimization and viral video promotion ideas.
