Working hard on set to deliver a message

How do you deliver a compelling & engaging message in 60 seconds?

We should be learning from great television commercials.

You’re probably so used to avoiding television adverts (that’s the time you get up to make a cup of coffee, or skip them on your PVR) that advertising agencies are constantly forced to come up with fresh, new & creative stories that will keep you glued to the ’set’.

A great commercial should grab you emotionally, tell you a memorable message & call you to action.

The best commercials also have the ’sticky factor’ – you remember them for ages & talk about them to your family & friends, possibly even share them online.

Creating a commercial is much, much more difficult than you think! A 60-second ad can take months to plan, shoot, edit & complete before the client is happy that it delivers the desired message to the targeted demographic.

I few years ago, I thought it would be fun to experience first-hand what filming a commercial is all about. Here’s what I learnt, on set, about filming commercials:

• A film set is organized chaos – it never looks like anyone knows what the bigger picture is, but each crew member only does his or her assigned task.
• The Director only has one job: make the final product exactly as his client & the creative team visualized it. The director is the artist.
• The Assistant Director YELLS A LOT. He’s the general, commanding his troops so that the director can get the shot he wants.
• It takes a looooooooooooooooooong time to get everything ready for a single take. This is the worst time to be on set because everyone is either rushing around getting things ready, or sitting around getting really bored.
• You can’t take a bag because you normally can’t take it on to set – so no books, video games, & especially NO CELLPHONES. You sit & talk to the most amazing (& the weirdest) people for hours.
• Actors are eating, talking props. As long as they know their lines & deliver the goods, the crew like them.
• The crew gets much better food than the extras. If you’re an extra, NEVER eat from the crew’s table.
• Always be professional on set – treat everyone with respect & call everyone ’sir’.
• The final product very rarely shows you the reality of what it took to film the commercial.

Here’s one of the commercials I took part in. It took about 3 days to shoot in Cape Town. Yes, all the “Canadians” are actually Capetonian (except Jason Jones, the lead) – really amusing, as the main message of the ad is how patriotic Canadians are towards their beer. Although you only see each scene for a few seconds, each one of those scenes takes at least 6 hours to prepare for shooting.

In the final scene, where you can see me on the left at about 56 seconds, the camera zooms into the glass so that you can see the company’s emblem. That shot was actually filmed in reverse & so we were slowly lowering our glasses of coloured water & plaster-filled beer cans. Yes, there’s no alcohol on set, even the drinks are fake. It took over 4 hours to film that shot alone, we were on set at 16h00, started filming at 19h00, and finished at about 23h30. I can’t even remember exactly, but I think there were about 45 takes.

But then, isn’t the final product just ‘perfect’?

Here’s another beer commercial I acted in (I not sure why I’m always in beer commercials):

Besides having to get covered in mud, dust & grass everyday, we had to stand in a cold river for over an hour at 7am, run up & down a mountain all afternoon, & then run through a forest until about 9pm. For 4 long days. Considering there were over 100 grown men who were tired, bored, hungry & sweaty, it was NOT a pleasant experience for the extras. In one of the final scenes, we had to run through the bush towards the ‘pub’. The pub is in Constantia, we were running in Somerset West (about 90 minutes away). Considering that we didn’t know if there were any snakes in the bush, I sprinted through that waist-high bush. About 12 times. Although, in the end we all got paid about 12 hours of overtime.

I have great respect for the crews & production teams that do this everyday in Cape Town. They work incredibly hard to deliver a great service, especially when assisting international crews. I’m just glad that’s not my job.

In conclusion:

• You don’t need a huge budget to deliver a powerful message. Remember: ‘Waterworld‘ was a flop; ‘Blair Witch Project‘ made millions. You have to entertain!
• The commercials that are most persuasive are those that connect to you emotionally & address a need. However, most commercials do not do that & you probably don’t even watch them. What a waste of energy, time & money …
• Everybody on set has their own skill & talent – they only do the job that were hired for. Are you the best person for the job, or should you defer that task to someone who has the skill to do it properly in the least amount of time?
• It takes time to prepare, create, tweak, edit & deliver a message. No pain = no gain. No preparation = poor message retention. Just as the production of a commercial takes months to create, you should take the time to practise & perfect your own message.
• The best commercials live forever, are talked about the most, & make the highest return-on-investment. Is your message memorable & worth talking about?
  Need inspiration? Watch a Nando’s commercial.
• Try to get a job on a commercial at least once. It will give you a whole new appreciation for the amount of work it takes.