Title: The 5-Step Blueprint for Crafting a Successful Business Commercial
In the dynamic world of advertising, where an unprecedented number of brands compete for the audience’s attention, creating a standout commercial can be a formidable challenge. To help navigate this journey, we’ve crafted a comprehensive five-step guide to producing a successful commercial for your business.
1. Define Your Commercial’s Objective
Every successful commercial begins with a clear and well-defined objective. It’s crucial to identify what you wish to achieve with your commercial. Are you introducing a new product, enhancing brand awareness, or promoting a specific event? Once you determine your goal, every element of your commercial should be crafted around supporting and achieving that aim.
2. Understand Your Audience
Your audience is the compass that guides your commercial’s creation process. To craft a message that resonates, you need to understand their needs, wants, interests, and pain points. Carry out market research, conduct surveys, or engage in social listening to gather valuable insights about your target demographic. The more precisely you can tailor your message to your audience, the more successful your commercial will be.
3. Develop a Compelling Story
We are hardwired for stories; they captivate us, evoke emotions, and make information more memorable. Your commercial should tell a compelling story that draws your audience in. This story should focus on the benefits of your product or service, demonstrating how it can solve a problem or improve the lives of your target audience. Remember, people buy with their emotions and justify with logic.
4. Craft High-Quality Production
Quality production values aren’t just for big-budget commercials. Even with a modest budget, you can create a high-quality commercial by focusing on aspects such as scriptwriting, cinematography, sound design, and editing. Hire experienced professionals, if possible, and ensure that the commercial maintains a professional look and feel that reflects well on your brand. Don’t forget to incorporate your branding consistently and appropriately.
5. Launch and Evaluate
Finally, you need to determine the best channels and times to air your commercial. This is where understanding your audience becomes particularly important; you should aim to reach them where they are most likely to be. After the launch, closely monitor the commercial’s performance, using KPIs such as reach, engagement, and conversion rates. Evaluating the commercial’s impact will allow you to learn and improve future campaigns.
Crafting a successful commercial is both an art and a science. It’s an iterative process that requires creativity, audience insight, strategic planning, and continuous evaluation. By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating commercials that captivate your audience and achieve your business goals. Remember, in the world of advertising, it’s not just about being seen—it’s about being remembered.
New F11 Rentals Las Vegas Studio Cyclorama - Open for Business
The studio cyc game in Vegas isn’t the easiest to navigate, especially for out of town productions that don’t know the offerings. Sure, there are some decent places but most are too small for many productions, don’t deliver on amenities or are out of the way and not convenient for talent or crew. That’s all changed with the opening of F11 Rentals Studio Cyc. This newly built stage offers a 3 sided cyclorama, 26’x35’x36′ with 18′ tall clearance. The stage offers free wifi, a secured yard with 12×14 rollup door and ample parking. The conditioned stage is open for business at this time and will continue to upgrade it’s offering with new makeup/wardrobe space, green room, lofted production overlook and state of the art lighting grid, all of which are coming soon.
The Perfect blend of functionality and affordability.
The space is large enough to accommodate vehicles, multiple talent productions, photo shoots, music videos and various types of large rehearsals for the entertainment industry. The F11 network speed runs on fiber and offers plenty of upload and download speed for live streams productions. The studio is situated next to the airport and is conveniently located not far from the strip. To make things even more convenient F11 Rentals is one of the largest production rental houses in Las Vegas which makes it easy to add gear to any shoot in the studio before or during the shoot itself. They also offer crew to fill out any production needs.
This studio, now open, will soon be the premiere cyclorama stage in Las Vegas and it’s exciting to finally have a space of this quality in the city. Contact F11 to arrange a visit if you’re interested or to go their site to book it in 2020 or beyond. This studio has the FiveSix stamp approval.
Shooting in a Green Room - No, Not that type of Green Room!
Corporate video production can have it's challenges. One of these challenges is locations as we don't often get to choose where we shoot. If we're lucky, we get a scout day or pictures of the location we're supposed to shoot in or we've been there before and already know what we're walking into. In these cases, we are prepared with the correct lighting and grip set up to make everything look great. But sometimes we go into a location blind as to what we'll be working with. At these times it's best to bring a versatile lighting set up because sometimes a green room is exactly that.
Recently in Las Vegas, we walked into a room where the windows had such a strange tint on them that all the light coming into the room was an eerie green in color. These were large floor to ceiling windows and there was no time or enough crew to gel them accordingly. Luckily we had brought four Litepanel Gemini 1 x 1 LED panels. With these lights we were able to dial in the amount of green to match the light coming in from the windows and then after that, it was simply white balancing the Canon C300 Mark II cameras accordingly. The room, despite looking eerily haunted, looked perfect on camera and the subjects, instead of looking sickly, appeared vibrant. It's a simple technique but would have been much more difficult to pull off without the right tools. It's one of the things FiveSix is known for, everything turned out great in a less than ideal situation. Effective video production is about being prepared, even if you're tossed into a glowing green room.
Render This - New Mac Pro Arrives at FiveSix
Sometimes you just need a little extra power to spice things up in the office. Here at FiveSix Productions, we've been running a few different workstations for some time now, a couple mac trashcans from awhile back and a couple newer imac pro machines. But with the new Mac Pro out, we decided our Edit 1 Bay could use an extra boost. So far so good. We run the Adobe Creative Cloud suite working primarily with Premiere Pro and After Effects but also DaVinci Resolve for some color correction. This machine takes on video editing, real time 2D and 3D graphics creation and powers through the renders at a much better click than its predecessor, but I should hope so for the price tag. We didn't load it up with all the extras and purchased most of the additions from outside of Apple, though we did opt for the afterburner card to help with quick encoding. We're only a few weeks in but our editors can surely tell the difference.
There isn't much else to say. We've cut a commercial, half a dozen corporate videos and a short film so far and haven't had any issues. We'll update soon once we've really put it to the test and have some hard data of our own to report. Until then, happy cutting!
Cast Away - Casting A Short Film
At FiveSix we do video productions of all types including corporate storytelling, commercial, reality, social media, political, event, documentary and short narrative films. The last one in that list is fairly new to us and I'd like to chat about how the casting was done in a entirely different manner than our normal process.
For most of our productions in town we use local talent. There is a good pool of models, actors and actresses in Las Vegas to choose from. We normally utilize the local agencies and find a group that fit our demographics for each project. Then, together with our client, we choose the talent that fits the look and feel we're going for. We call the finalists in for an audition, all in one day, and then pick the final group. This happens within a day or two. It's a fairly simple process and one that we have become quite efficient in over the years.
Now, when we started casting for the short films, it was different in two main ways. The first was that the entire production was financed by FiveSix. We didn't have the budget to bring in talent agencies and pay the costs that go along with using their services. A different route was needed. With a little research we discovered that there are plenty of great resources on-line that give you access to thousands of talented actors and actresses. Sites such as Backstage and Casting Networks are great communities that help both producers and talent match together on a project. We ended up posting our projects on backstage.com and having a great pool of talent to choose from. We were able to advertise our day rate for each role and get only those people willing to work for that rate. It helped tremendously in budgeting for the films.
The second main difference in casting for the short films was that we searched over the entire country and not just locally. This brought us a couple of challenges. We ended up doing many auditions through recorded video and not in person. One of the best parts about casting live is that you can ask questions and try giving different direction with lines. You can get a general feeling of how the actor moves with you as you craft a role. This isn't so easy with a recorded audition. We found that we were able to quickly get a feeling about a particular role when auditioning in person but with recorded auditions it took many more views and lengthy discussions within our team. I would always advocate for in-person auditions but when you're on a tight budget and quick timeline, that's not always possible.
Moving forward, due to our ability to find what we were looking for through the on-line talent sites, I think we'll utilize both local agencies and on-line communities for any future auditions. On a last note, casting is fun but also difficult for all parties involved as it brings about more rejections than acceptance. I admire anyone who is willing to put themselves out there like that and audition for a role. Good luck!
Dana Dolly: Smooth Moves and Flexability #DanaDolly #SmoothMove #FilmGear
FiveSix Productions recently acquired at very cool, new tool for our arsenal that once again adds big tool/big budget features and abilities in a manageable size and for our Las Vegas Video Production team.
The Dana Dolly enables traditional dolly moves with equipment that is a fraction of the size, utilizing a fraction of the space. Now, before anyone gets too excited, there of course are limitations to the Dana Dolly that a traditional dolly wouldn't encounter. There is a weight limit for cameras on the Dana Dolly, a traditional dolly may be able to allow for more maneuverability of the camera on the mount (if it is equipped with a hydraulic arm that can raise and lower), and with the Dana Dolly, the operator can't switch sides mid shot, should that need arise. However, the Dana Dolly can hold up to 100lbs of camera, there certainly is a fair amount of maneuverability with the Dana Dolly's heads and attachments, and finally, there shouldn't be too many instances where the op wouldn't be able to get the shot from one side of the track. On top of all of that, the Dana Dolly can be positioned much more liberally and creatively compared to a very large and cumbersome cinedolly.
There are many different dollies of varying size, dimensions, uses, and more; the best thing is to buy what is going to be most practical and affordable for your most common needs. Having a dolly on set can add a really wonderful touch to any shoot, especially when doing pick-up shots during an interview, and it's a dream to have for b-roll.
If you are interested in renting a Dana Dolly, or full size cinedolly, our friends at F11 Rentals have both to accommodate your needs.
Keepin' It Loose #FilmTechniques #LooseTripod #LasVegasVideoProduction #B-Roll
To set the tone, please watch this short clip from a cinematic masterpiece known as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Here's the link.
As we can see, young Cameron here is having a hard time relaxing, he is caught in a moral and psychological dilemma about whether or not to accompany his pal Ferris on a day off from school. Cameron is already excused from school because of a subtle illness, but none the less, is no worse for the wear; there is no excuse not to join Ferris and Sloan on a gorgeous, Spring-day in Chicago. Cameron though, is still wound a little tight, so tight in fact, that Ferris claims Cameron can personally and physically assist in the process of converting a lump of coal into a diamond.
The moral of this story is, you've got to keep it loose. There is no sense in being wound so tight, or constrained beyond reason. The same can be said about your tripod head. David Dalasta of FiveSix Productions once imparted a bit of knowledge to me about keeping a loose and fluid tripod head when shooting anything from b-roll to some interviews (follow the link to view some FiveSix footage). Having a locked off tripod often can result in boring, and lack-luster shots, causing the audience to lose focus; by continually having slight movement and freedom in the shot, a much more organic and natural product will materialize.
Now, this technique is obviously not appropriate for every situation, but keep the thought on the back burner and don't be afraid to give it a try, you might just like what you find.
Ferris Bueller: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
There's a P in Pterodactyl
I often wonder what goes through the mind of an editor or graphic designer when they see the word Pterodactyl. It's a fairly common word really, most people learn it when they're children; and though it's an odd, almost Greek-looking word, I feel it's recognizable enough. Still, there is something almost mystifying about an editor and graphic designer's ability, or, should I say, lack there of, to spell even the most common words. Before I appear morose or offensive, I would like to say that I believe these folks are intelligent, creative, and capable of wonderful on-screen-text, if only they just believe. I spent many an elementary year struggling with the subject of spelling, the laughter and pointing fingers only drove me to be more diligent in my studies, as well as utilize the resources of "spell check" and of course, a dictionary.
This inquisition into the unknown finds it's genesis in an instance when I was beseeched by a superior of mine to email any written material to editors and graphic artists to minimize grammar or spelling errors that so oft find their way onto our screens. I, in the most gallant fashion, shot an inquisitive and most likely, befuddled look, to which the response was: "Editors and graphic artists can't spell, that's why there is copy and paste." Shakespeare himself couldn't pen a more beautiful explanation; I felt as if I was listening to a concerto by Mozart, or gazing upon a Monet or the statue of David itself. I vowed from that moment to not only follow through with the advice, but also, to explore the origins and reasons behind the phenomenon of editor's inability to spell well. I would encourage everyone to do the same, as well as offer their help to anyone in distress.
My best recommendation for a place to start is, Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster- masters of their craft. Also, keep in mind friends, even our once great and prudent leader, President George Bush Sr.'s Vice President, Mr. Dan Quayle, had trouble spelling at one time or another.
Staring Contest #staringcontest #videoproduction
If you find yourself locked in a staring contest with a goldfish, chances are you're going to lose. The National Center for Biotechnology Information, at the U.S. National Library for Medicine, released a study that shows that the average attention span for a human dropped from twelve seconds in the year 2000, all the way down to eight seconds in the year 2013. That worthy foe floating inches away has an average attention span of nine seconds- goldfish: one, humans: zero.
This is a troubling statistic in terms of contests with household pets, and the success of advertisers and entertainers alike. How can you sell your product or keep folks in the seats if they journey into Imaginationland every 8.1 seconds? As time goes on, and our society delves deeper and deeper into the immediate gratification of social media, the world wide web, and sites such as Twitter and Instagram, our ability to pay attention lessens. It's almost a wonder feature-length films exist anymore.
The Guardian of Great Britain released an interesting "Internet Users Attention Span 101" sort of article about a year ago. The article highlights some of the key points and basic principles of consumer attention spans and internet surfing habits. As previously stated, the main goal of an advertisement to portray and promote a product has now turned into a very real science and very big battle of creativity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. No longer is the staple sixty second commercial an acceptable standard. Now, not only on television, but increasingly more on websites such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vevo, and your favorite mobile app and game, there are ten, fifteen, and thirty second spots. Effectively advertising your product in thirty seconds is a challenge, doing so in ten or fifteen seconds is the new mark of a master.
Finally, in an attempt to explore the dark side of the moon, Variety, released a very interesting look at some major companies and brands pushing away from the shrinking attention span, and relying on quality storytelling, advertising, and production to sell a product, even if it takes two or three minutes. FiveSix Productions' David Dalasta wrote an interesting article about episodic social media that could well be a look at effective advertising in the near future. Perhaps these young minds and young consumers aren't losing the ability to pay attention; instead, the young folks and the generation behind them are simply overwhelmed with too much of a bland, mundane thing and are waiting to be thrilled, enticed, and engaged in a new, creative, and exciting way... even if it takes more than eight seconds. Game on gold fish.
Episodic Social Media - #videoproduction
Brand identity is crucial to most businesses. In recent times, social media has been the outlet that has given a 'voice' to the business and a sense of community with its customers or clients. This is often done with relevant tweets, one off videos, personalized responses or hashtagging. This is great and all but when everybody is doing it and doing it alike, you're just one of the crowd. Just like the explainer video has become normal and not creative anymore, so is social media blabbering. It's tuned out most of the time... unless something goes terribly wrong and a poorly worded post brings ruin to a company. But that's why responsible teenagers are often put into this position, right?
Well, something needs to shake things up and the next evolution of social media will be to drive consumers and clients to products, services and experiences by creating a continuous story that they want to follow and seek out. For this, brands will find it beneficial to create episodic social media. This would almost be like a narrative television program, featuring characters and situations that end up drawing people to them. These videos can't be commercials in the traditional sense, but rather comical or dramatic storytelling that has just a hint to do with the product or service being offered. The show brings them back to the site, which allows them to interact with the business. Nobody is doing this all that well at the moment, for lack of idea, budget or perhaps its too scary to be the first few adapters. Either way, if episodic social media is done well, I believe the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs. This is just another way video could transform how brands interact with their customers and clients. Perhaps in a decade, the next big hit shows will be created by specific brands to be shown only on their site. If so, those seeds will be sown today by the bold few. Think about it, millions of dollars are spent on television ads that are losing effectiveness with each year as there are more shows and more channels competing for the same audience. Rather than chase the mass audience, more ad dollars should be shifted and spent on luring a targeted demographic to original brand programming. The technology is there and many young talented graduates are looking for an outlet for their creativity. You won't see this shift tomorrow, but perhaps sometime soon.