Commerical Shooting

Just wondering if any rebels on here have ever shoot a commerical. I've been approached to shoot a commerical at a local Sports Bar and wanted to get any feed back/ideas about ideas to make the commerical as effective as possible. The commerical will be 30 seconds long.

Thx!

Dave

I've shot many, many commercials, both as a director as well as a creative director in an ad agency.

I would say that the most important thing you could do to help your client and make a hard working commercial would be to identify what (in general) attracts sports bar frequenters the most, the way in which this bar satisfies that need best, and then find ways to support that.

So, for example, if you discover that "cold beer" is the most important thing in the mind of a potential sports bar customer then your central thesis might be, "coldest beer in town," and you would support that by showing the imported German cooling system that maintains temperatures at precisely .5 degrees above freezing and the flash-frozen beer mugs made out of high-density glass that maintain freezing temperatures longer, etc.

That's not likely to be the actual solution. It's more likely to be something like, "more screens with more games," or "more fun in a congenial atmosphere," or "hot babes," or "extended happy hour for Monday Night Football."

How do you find out what attracts sports bar patrons to one bar over another? Ask them. Go around to all the other sports bars in the area and casually ask people what they like about the place. I'm willing to bet that a high percentage go for convenience (It's the closest!) so you'll need to drill down and see what else is attractive to them, or even what they DON'T like about a place.

The important thing about commercials is focus. If you talk about too much stuff you'll confuse your audience and they will tune you out. It's not like they have don't have anything better to do than watch your commercial. As a result, not only so you need to have a clear focused message, you need to entertain as well. It may be as simple (depending on your audience, obviously) as peppering your spot liberally with attractive women or it may require wit and humor. Do not attempt wit and humor unless you're REALLY good at it. It's not easy and when it fails your commercial becomes a laughing stock (and not in a good way) and it will end up doing more harm than good.

So, to summarize:

1) Understand what attracts people to sports bars

2) Figure out what your bar has that is attractive to people (see #1) and excels at

3) Design a commercial that focuses on the bars strong points and demonstrates why what you say about it is true

4) Make it entertaining so that people will want to watch it

Arthur

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sockstories.blip.tv

to follow up on that great post...^^

more then anything make sure you get your message across.
this is the most important thing

like if you have a super amazing funny commercial on your hands, but it has nothing to do with a bar, you cant just shoot it and slap the name of the bar on at the end.
make sure you get your point across.

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AIM me!

Two things: Story and Character.
If you can personalise this, you have a chance of making it memorable.
30 seconds is not a long time, but many ads get this right.

Either find a customer who is appealing, in the target demographic, and a natural on camera, and get him to tell you what the bar means to him, how it fits into his life; or get a good writer and a good actor and fake it.

I may be wrong

Thank you everyone!

Filming went very well. I'll post what I have in a week or so and gauge feedback. I'm just having problems transfering the footage to my computer.

I have shot commercial 2 times in my life. Both times I got consult with “ezscreenwriting” they efforts for Diane Drake, Screenwriting Consultant, UCLA Screenwriting Instructor, screenplay help, story consultant, how to write a script, how to write a movie and many more things. The most important thing of commercial is script and character. You should get advice from any screen writing consultant.

Thanks.

I'm redoing the commerical again because I;ve never been satisifed with the final result. The owner didn't like my idea of filming over several days that way I can show the various events (quizzo,etc) the voice over talks about.