Are most commercials shot on Video or Film?

lawriejaffa

lawriejaffa

Veteran
Hi there guys!

I was wondering what you guys think of this, I was chatting to a pal of mine at the ol' film university and we began to discuss whether most advertisements on television are filmed with video or film stock.

Now of course I was speaking from a UK perspective when I suggested most adverts were shot on video (which he disagreed with.)

So i was just wondering if any of you gentleman have any ideas or stats, for what percentage of US or UK commercials are currently shot on film or video and how that trend may be shifting!
 
Most national commercial spots in the US are shot on 35mm film.
 
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Well, when you refer to "what percentage", you have to define where you draw the line. There are scads of local commercials produced by the local cable TV channels, they're all shot on video.

Any commercial from any major advertiser is going to usually be either 35mm film or perhaps 24p HD video.
 
I agree with JP and Barry. National commercials have been paying my mortgage for 20 years and it's all 35mm. Funny, the more regional they get, the more they are willing to experiment with new technology (i.e. HD).
 
Yup just to clarify my question, i simply mean the percentage of 'ALL' televised/broadcast advertisements on all the channels (digital/cable/local etc.)

If you were to add all the adverts that are produced from the fancy to the local - into one big total, then what % of those would likely be digital/video or film.

This % (just to be even more ambiguis) was one i was interested in of, in regarding most of the worlds adverts (not just the US or UK) tho if someone knew specifically such % for the US and UK distinctions that would be fascinating too.
 
The question is: how can anyone know those answers? I mean, you could try rooting around on the AICP site to see if they know anything like this, but the problem is, low-budget video shooters are very unlikely to be members of the AICP so...

If you're talking about all commercials, then you're including the $500 micro-budget furniture store commercials and local lawyer commercials and political spots and used car dealer commercials; those are usually shot on video, in fact I'd say that they're almost exclusively shot on video now. Spots for national advertisers are nearly exclusively film or HD 24p video. Any thing produced by the local cable station is going to be video. So of the ultimate pie of all commercials broadcast at all times, certainly the majority is going to be video.

But if you added the budgets together, more probably still gets spent on the film spots than on all the local video commercials put together!
 
Most commercials where I have been on set (nationals, wild spot, major market) for are shot on film; easily 90% plus.

Commercials often are used for both NTSC and PAL markets so they shoot 24 frame and speed up to 25 frame for PAL. I was in South America (Argentina and Uruguay) recently for a Coca Cola commercial, that one was shot 25 frame as they ONLY intended to use it in the Latin America and European market as they would have had to pay the talent a lot more to add the US market.

The ones that are shot on film have been mostly 35mm projects, with the rare occasional S16 B camera shot.
 
most are shot on video. Most major national commercials are shot on film. Every year film shoots will go down and hd will go up. Also lots of Regional Car commercials are shot on HD varicam/f900.
 
Under $10k it's definitely gonna be tape. $10k to $40k, depends on how much profit the prod. company wants to make whether it's HD or film... Over $50k, it'll be Super16mm. Over $100k, 35mm. At least that's my best guess, I don't really know for sure...
 
now a days i'd say it's 80 / 20 (film / 24p video)
although any ad exec I've spoken to welcomes video with open arms
 
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