Three commercials shot on the GH1

R

rjk2000

Active member
I just recently shot and directed three commercials for a friend of mine's family furniture store. It was a pretty quick shoot, done in a weekend, with a 1.4 Nikon. No extra lights, no setup, just run and gun, with a tripod, and (when it was working) a Zoom H4. We did three: the "straight" serious commercial; the stalking chicken, cheesy furniture store commercial; and one that just fell into our laps with a little kid that did NOT want to say his lines. 1080/24, down to 720P for Youtube. I hope you enjoy. Any comments and criticisms are more than welcome.

The Straight
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I AGREE


The Stalking Chicken
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I AGREE


The Short Attention Span
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I AGREE
 
First one - aesthetically looks better than any furniture commercial I've seen. Usually hard lit, infinity focus- too bright. nice job

Third one's a keeper for sure- people will remember that kid.
 
thanks! they should be airing the commercials in local markets next week. they liked them, and are commissioning more. although they don't want to use the kid commercial, which is a shame. i really liked that one too...

it's finally nice getting paid to do this. feeds my addiction and let's me buy more gear.
 
Nice work. And if it looks this good, imagine how much better it would have been if you did use lights. Something to think about if they are commissioning more.
 
They all look good. Nice job.

That kid in the first one looks like she has a bright future doing work like this. She's very fluent and seems confortable in front of the camera.
 
nice commercials, always good to see an organization not taking itself too seriously :) great work
 
They definitely don't. You should hear some of the wacky ideas we've got planned for the next few holiday advertisements -- working on an alien invasion one now. Some of our ideas, however, would never ever get aired. :)
 
Thanks. The girl is definitely a good actress, very comfortable performing. She auditioned for the newest Coen Brothers movie (True Grit), got called back, but ultimately didn't get the part. Which didn't faze her in the slightest. She looooves the fact that she got called back to audition for the Coen Brothers.

The Coen Brothers loss is my gain. Ha!
 
Needs light, way too soft...... IMO does not fit the commercial. Many people think just because you get the fastest lens that means you do not need light, trust me when I tell you that if you bring sone lights in there it will look a lot better.
 
I agree, the first one has a great cinematic quality - something you don't often see in local furniture spots. It's not really under-lit, but you need a key light on the girl when she's talking. It makes a big difference. The last two shots are pretty flat though, and that's probably the shots you want to stick in your audience's mind. Invest in a small DP kit and work with lighting. Otherwise, really cool spot.

I like the third one too, I get it. The kid is enjoying rolling around on the sofa. People should buy one. (Ummm, is that what you were going for?) But the lighting kinda kills it for you. It should be brighter and friendlier-looking with the kid in there.
 
You're right -- we definitely knew we needed a soft light on the faces, to make them pop out more. It was the one thing I wished we had. But it was a case of either shoot or not shoot -- if we had lights, we definitely would've used them, even with a crew of 2 -- although we only had one half day to shoot the whole thing -- so we were moving pretty fast. They had some local cable people who were originally gonna show up with a HDV camcorder, and not much else, to shoot the commercial -- with the standard wide shot speaker and cutaways of furniture -- but they were charging a lot for not much at all. So we offered them something a little bit cheaper -- it was a very low budget -- but even renting lights would've eaten up most of our budget. Tiny, tiny budget -- but I'm pretty much using what they're paying us to get more gear.

As for the kid, that was impromptu. He had some lines, but he wouldn't hold still. So, we just kept the camera rolling, cuz we thought it was cute and funny, and we edited it something together for it.

I definitely know we could improve more on our shooting skills, especially lighting -- so thanks for the comments.
 
Cieloent said:
trust me when I tell you that if you bring sone lights in there it will look a lot better.
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I definitely believe you. The last commercial I directed was on a RED with a light truck and a ten person crew. Strictly volunteer -- got asked by a local producer to direct as a favor to the restaurant who had connections to the local film crew -- but I jumped at the chance to work with a talented crew and the RED. So yeah, I know the difference on what a good lighting kit can do. (You can see the commercial here, although it's not my cut and for some reason, they didn't upload an HD version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8PMb0f8q8Q) But I do know, if we don't have access to lights -- which we didn't -- having a fast lens on the GH1 at least gives you a more acceptable image, than say, a standard HDV cam.

Not making excuses, mind you. Of course it would've been better with lights, god, yes. But we worked with what we had, within the tiny budget we had. On the next shoot, we're gonna try to have a good soft fill light at the very least... I just hope that we at least made some commercials that would be entertaining, despite our limitations.
 
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rjk2000 said:
I definitely believe you. The last commercial I directed was on a RED with a light truck and a ten person crew. Strictly volunteer -- got asked by a local producer to direct as a favor to the restaurant who had connections to the local film crew -- but I jumped at the chance to work with a talented crew and the RED. So yeah, I know the difference on what a good lighting kit can do. (You can see the commercial here, although it's not my cut and for some reason, they didn't upload an HD version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8PMb0f8q8Q) But I do know, if we don't have access to lights -- which we didn't -- having a fast lens on the GH1 at least gives you a more acceptable image, than say, a standard HDV cam.

Not making excuses, mind you. Of course it would've been better with lights, god, yes. But we worked with what we had, within the tiny budget we had. On the next shoot, we're gonna try to have a good soft fill light at the very least... I just hope that we at least made some commercials that would be entertaining, despite our limitations.
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?

You can own a cheap lighting kit for less than $300, even if it's just some soft boxes. Soft Boxes actually work very good with DSLRs, so when you keep saying "budget" I really do not understand because "Lights" is something every person who holds a camera should have, even if there cheap ones.


Outside if that the commercial content was good and it works, great job BUT as far as the technical side of things IMO some light in there would have really made your material shine. Trust me when I tell you that you can do this, half of day is plenty of time. I have shot entire projects in 2-3 hours running 100ft extension cords with soft box lighting and a nice on camera light to achieve excellent results.



Regardless though great work and my opinion comes from the fact that NO MATTER how fast a lens you get your footage will ALWAYS benefit from some light.


ps. The restaurant footage from the Red camera with lights you posted is a key example what I'm talking about, looks great!
 
I really liked these. The girl in the first one definitely has some talent. Down here in Florida we have a lot of car commercials featuring the owner's girls and the presentation is horrible.

Definitely agreed that you could have used a fill or so on some of these, but overall they really did look good. I think the second one can probably be trimmed to a 30 second spot. Funny as hell, but it dragged a little bit at the beginning.
 
Hey Rob I only just found this thread, its great to see you putting my beloved ole GH1 to awesome use. Keep up the great work and give me a holla if u ever passing thru NY!
 
I definitely will. Thank you very much for selling me the GH1. I mother that thing, it's like my baby. I hope to put the firmware on this weekend, but I think I may need to get some better SDHC cards first.

I'm really looking forward to seeing your vampire flick, btw.
 
Angry Leprechaun said:
I think the second one can probably be trimmed to a 30 second spot. Funny as hell, but it dragged a little bit at the beginning.
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That was what I was thinking too. We edited two versions of each commercial. A 60-second spot for the internet, and a 30-second spot for TV. Sadly, they air on local markets this week, but not in my area -- so I won't be able to see them.
 
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