30 sec High Impact B-Ball commercial.

Kevin Briggs

Kevin Briggs

Well-known member
Hey all,

I just got some footage from a 3 on 3 basketball tournament called 3ba. I'm trying to make a 30 sec or less high impact commercial for it. I have a lot of good footage, but I need some ideas on how to make it more obvious what the commercial is selling. The commercial is being made to get more traffic and sponsors to check out the web site 3ba.com to promote the sport to the next level. Should I cut some of the clips and add some other footage? Right now it looks more like a slam dunk contest I think, but maybe not. And1 and hoop fest resemble this type of b-ball the most, but the rules and court size are different. I think the most obvious thing I have not done yet is throwing the url on the end. I was thinking some kind of slogan...Got game?....we'll see... (cue action footage)...check us out at 3ba.com. I'll have to change the audio, or get the rights to it.

http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=3ba-rough-cut3


Thanks

-Kevin
 
Is this a local thing? Very cool shots, it has the pottential to be a really good comercial. You got the creative part down, now you just have to sell ur product. I did a commercial recently for a shoe sale and what I learned was that to alot of local business people, creativity is an afterthought. I had to sacrafice some quality and creativity to quickly deliver the type of product my client wanted. In marketing though, you want to show them information as much as possible, put titles in more than once so it gets into peoples heads. And maybe to better explain what you are selling get a read done by one of those professional voicover people.

The difference between small local commercials and large national commercials is huge, what works for one won't necissarily work for the other. Local commercials tend to be seen less that large national commercial campaigns so you need people to see information more than once during the duration of your commercial. And national commercials often tend to be all about product association, and making a better name for the companies product, local commercials have to let you get to know about the product. For example nike can get away with making a commercial and never talking about or showing shoes. If you did a local shoe comercial like this, it would be a total failure.
 
I liked the ball rolling and other sunset shots, some of the others (when its overcast) stick out like a sore thumb, visually, to me. I also like the blurred background idea on the last title scene. You might want to ask Jurassic 5 for permission to use their tune, or grab another one, unless of course you already have...

To me if you're advertising a website maybe you want so screenshots of the website as well with some voiceover.

Or maybe some text (or voiceover) on some of the features of the site. This definitely doesn't feel like a website ad, it feels like an ad for this event...and yes, it does look like a slam dunk contest. Have any footage of someone rejecting a shot, or some fancy passing or dribbling or something?

Also work on that "The Future of the Game" text looks a bit choppy, maybe it's just from compression...
 
Hey
It does look like a dunk contest. After watching it I dont really know what it selling or what is different about it or even what it is besides basketball. If I saw it on TV like that I would see that it said the future of the game and see that a bunch of guys are dunking it and there are no crowds. It just wasnt enough. I think a VO will really help. Really nice editing
Brian
 
Hey 356 and everyone,

Thanks for all the comments. I'm getting off in the right direction now. Yeah so far it's just a local thing. It was shot in Seattle, but the owner of 3ba is hoping to promote this thing to go much, much bigger later, possibly even overseas. My job is to create a couple high impact commercials to attract more attention to the web site to build up more sponsors and make it grow from its infancy. 90% of the footage you see was shot at their practice game. That's part of the reason I was able to get such creative shots, like running behind the players on their way to the hoop. We had an announcer at the main event that I'll be using for voice over, and I'll be adding more information like you suggested. This was a local event, but we hope to eventually have a nation wide tour. Oh yeah this is Pro-Bono. If it gets big and starts making $ we will be paid fair market value for services rendered.

-Kevin
 
Lyons Den,

I'm glad you liked the footage, and I agree about the overcast shots. It was actually just getting darker out, and in order to get more light I would have had to boost the gain (adding noise) or adjusting the shutter speed to 1/15 or 1/8 but then I'd get the blurry motion with it. The second to the last shot I did adjust the shutter to 1/8 and you can see the motion is blurred and a bit noisy, but it looks kind of cool. Everything you see here was done in camera. The only thing I did in post was slow down a couple shots and add titles and the music.

It appears I definitely have to incorporate the web site a lot more. Extra footage? I've got 8 hours of the main event I have to look at still! The footage you see I shot all myself, but for the main event I rigged my vcr mini dv behind the glass backboard and we had a second DVX for a master shot and a Gl2 courtside with me. I am kicking myself though because I didn't separate the players and instruct them to show me some dribbling skills. I've got plenty of nice passes and rejections I'm sure. I just have to find them. I guess I could shoot some dribbling after the fact and add it in.


the-lyons-den.com said:
Also work on that "The Future of the Game" text looks a bit choppy, maybe it's just from compression...
Click to expand...

What is the best way to add text to a project to make the edges really smooth? I did this text in photoshop and imported a PSD file into Premiere Pro.

Thanks for the comments,

-Kevin
 
Thanks Hector and coffee for your comments,

I need to stop admiring my own footage and do some more cutting. We got a lot of the crowd reaction on game day, but I'll have to wait to get that footage. I agree it really needs VO work. I'm glad you liked the edit. The funny thing is that 50% of those dunk attempts didn't go in. I got the “money” shot about mid game with the Blue Angels F14’s going right overhead. I hope I can use it. I'll update this post when I get some more footage to work with and the VO work done.

Thanks for all the comments guys. I really appreciate it.

-Kevin
 
Kevin, just look at the start of your own signature. :-) Write a script. Figure out what information needs to be conveyed and then figure out how to convey it. Making a spot from already-shot footage sans script is difficult (I've tried), but not impossible. I'm a bona fide, jaded, cynical ad writer, so my advice is either spot on or complete trash due to the aforementioned jadedness. (Yes, it was a long day at the office, okay?)

Fox
 
If your goal is to drive more users to the site, I think you would do well to include the URL of the website itself -- even if that means just adding ".com" to the logo. That alone could prompt people to some sort of action, but as it is we don't know what 3BA is, or what the commercial is about. Good start, though, and keep at it.
 
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