Just shot a commercial

F

FatBird19

Well-known member
I just finished a six minute product infomercial for this guy's site. He's a window and stucco coating salesman. I made 2 six minute videos; one for window installation and one for the coating.

He was really happy with them, and I want to know what you guys think

(again these are six minutes and they're infomercials. Don't expect to be entertained a ton)


Wincoting
WindowInstall

And please save-as and for my bandwidth's sake. thanks. :)
 
and btw, yes I do want criticisms. Me and my friends are trying to start a production company and we need all the advice we can get.



For starters, I should have had them look in the camera the whole time. I learned that later when it looked wanky in editing. :furious3:
 
how many people can't view it? If enough people don't have the latest version of windows media player then I need to know and tell the guy I made the video for. :0
 
I viewed it. Its pretty good, I found that spray logo annoying in the beginning, it was blocking to much, other than that it was good.
 
Hi,
this is my first post on this site, so bare with me.
I watched the first video, a lot of this are small points but still stuck out to me.

The looped music wasn't working for me. It got grating really quick, maybe try limited sound, pulling out background music at some points, or mixing in another couple songs.

The first shot of the owners is a little awkward, when the others not talking they don't know where to look, maybe start with the establishing two shot, but bring it in closer, to not have the other one sitting there uncomfortably.

The blurred effect of shots of houses behind important text was effective, but it seemed a bit too blurry. I understand the effect that your going for, trying to keep the focus on the words, but the background is so blurred you start to focus on it to try to make it clearer.

Very small point try to do something about the "^2" If its aftereffects you should be able to put in another layer where you can change the size of the font.

4:30 in "simply said, wincoating...." he keeps getting quieter and where it seems hes throwing out the company mantra or whatever, it gets covered up by the music.

As someone who knows nothing more than what the video shows me about this technique, i am guessing its some sort of spray on wall protector. So the final "now your house is done" at 5:50 i don't get the switch to the house with panelling, do you have a shot of the finished house that they were working on, i think that would be more effective.

Over all i really like it, i think the comercial was effective, I kinda feel like there should have been some last words by the owners, but i think that was done during the aformentioned 4:30 scene. Haha, i hope i didn't seem like i was bashing your work, i am trying to be as constructive as possible. I suppose i am used to having to be brutally honest during critiques at school.
Good luck, and please, CHANGE THAT LOOP!!!!

alex.
 
epsilonbass said:
Hi,
this is my first post on this site, so bare with me.
I watched the first video, a lot of this are small points but still stuck out to me.

First of all, thanks for the feedback. No, it doesn't seem like you were bashing my work, this was exactly what I was looking for. :)


The looped music wasn't working for me. It got grating really quick, maybe try limited sound, pulling out background music at some points, or mixing in another couple songs.
Yeah, um...may I start by saying that this video project was one of the worst experiences of my life. The guy on the right in the video had the temper of a wolverine. (I mean c'mon man, I'm going to bust my butt to get this thing done as quickly as possible. I'm not a production company, I'm a student in college who's making a video for you and who's getting my friends to work for me, so if things go overschedule, you're just going to have to deal with it.)
About the music though, in one of our 8 heated conversations over the phone, he basically told me to get the music done in 4 days "or else." So I desparately searched for someone who could do music cause' my original guy bailed and at the last minute I found someone to record what's currently in the video. I tried to turn it down as much as possible and vary the loops that he gave me, but if it's annoying it's kind of unavoidable. He should have given me more time and a bigger budget.
Would you suggest that I turn it down more?

The first shot of the owners is a little awkward, when the others not talking they don't know where to look, maybe start with the establishing two shot, but bring it in closer, to not have the other one sitting there uncomfortably.
Haha. Yeah, I was really understaffed that shooting day(more crew wasn't in the budget). I thought that maybe I could manage being Director, Script Supervisor, Cameraman, and Sound Guy all at the same time, but I was wrong. The quality defenitely suffered cause' there's so much I had to keep track of. I'll never make that mistake again.
Also, they should have been looking at the camera. I realize that now, but I thought at that time "in interviews people always look at the interviewer." Well I didn't take the time to think that in this case, the interviewer is their customers, they should have been looking at the camera. Ooops. Another mistake I won't make again.

The blurred effect of shots of houses behind important text was effective, but it seemed a bit too blurry. I understand the effect that your going for, trying to keep the focus on the words, but the background is so blurred you start to focus on it to try to make it clearer.
haha. Interesting

Very small point try to do something about the "^2" If its aftereffects you should be able to put in another layer where you can change the size of the font.
Cosmetic touchups weren't in the budget. I agree that the "^2" looks bad, but after logging 120hrs of work I didn't want to invest any more time in fixing things that weren't errors.

4:30 in "simply said, wincoating...." he keeps getting quieter and where it seems hes throwing out the company mantra or whatever, it gets covered up by the music.
hmm, I should have fixed that. :/
He didn't say anything though so maybe he thought it was fine.

As someone who knows nothing more than what the video shows me about this technique, i am guessing its some sort of spray on wall protector. So the final "now your house is done" at 5:50 i don't get the switch to the house with panelling, do you have a shot of the finished house that they were working on, i think that would be more effective.
I defenitely agree. All of the footage that you're seeing in that video is probably 7 years old. He made a video production with company a few years back (similar to what I just did for him) and the quality was just bad. No visual reinforcements. No textual reinforcements. Just some nerdy guy's voice talking over installation video for 6 min straight.
He didn't want to pay for me to go out on set with my DVX to video new material, so I just had take the internet quality MPEG1 videos from a few years back and use the footage from those(I'm sure you noticed that many video clips showed up a few times :)) So safe to say, as much as I would have liked to use the visuals that I wanted, it just wasn't in the budget.

Over all i really like it, i think the comercial was effective, I kinda feel like there should have been some last words by the owners, but i think that was done during the aformentioned 4:30 scene. Haha, i hope i didn't seem like i was bashing your work, i am trying to be as constructive as possible. I suppose i am used to having to be brutally honest during critiques at school.
Good luck, and please, CHANGE THAT LOOP!!!!
Thank you alex. I do appreciate the criticism. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

alex.
Click to expand...

-Justin
 
Not bad at all, seemed like the real deal to me. Aside form the few points that epsilonbass made, it was overall solid and got the point across. I liked the animations for the most part, and was actually interested in the product! Keep it up!
 
im not sure if i quite understand the storyline. the main characters seem to be a bit to mysterious. have you enterd this into any film festivals? where did you find this screenplay?
 
imryankohler said:
im not sure if i quite understand the storyline. the main characters seem to be a bit to mysterious. have you enterd this into any film festivals? where did you find this screenplay?
Click to expand...


AHAHAHAHA!! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

thanks.
 
Good work! Sound was good, video was good. A few thoughts/sugesstions:

WindowInstall video:

00:00:53 - This would be a good time for a music change.


General notes:

You might want to use the spray can to create a lower third for the names. You can also use the spray can for transitions.

Titles look good. You might want to blur out the background slightly when video is under the text. I noticed you used this technique in other parts of the video, and it looks great.

The "removing the sash" animation isn't very clear, some titles or labeling might be good.

When the owners come up on screen again, you could put the lower third with their names on the screen again. Maybe like "Joe Lamkin Billy Pedrino" with their titles, "SonRise owners" or something like that.

The sitdown interviews look great, by the way. Love the accent lighting in the background.

Love the sequence talking about sealing the windows. Some of the best cuts and shots in there.

One last note, I see you shot alot of outdoor footage and it looks great. You might consider some simple color correction to adjust some of it. Some of the footage can use a little more contrast.

Is there some kind of contact info slate at the end? I'm asking because I don't know the total delivery package.

Keep up the good work!
 
Nice work!

Nice work!

I liked it. Nice work! What codec and setting did you use? I had no trouble viewing it and it streamed very well.
 
newtodvx100a said:
I liked it. Nice work! What codec and setting did you use? I had no trouble viewing it and it streamed very well.
Click to expand...

Windows Media Viewer codec 9.1
460x320
550kbps

and thanks. :D
 
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