A Commercial I’m finishing up

[Ken]

This is a commercial I’ve created for a local business. I’ve done multiple videos for them before, including a previous commercial. The only new footage in this commercial are the clips of the girls at beginning and end. All the other footage is older, from older videos I shot for the company.

So this is only my 3rd actual TV commercial, most of my work is for the web, where time constraints aren’t an issue. Anyone have any feedback or advice they can give on the effectiveness or value of this commercial as such?

thanks,

Ken

[Grinner Hester]

It runs 10 frames long for broadcast. 29;20 is the norm for a 30 secons spot. This gives time for dips to black with no cut offs and you don’t want your client hearing, “afterall, aren’t they wo”. Outside of that, as long as the client digs it, you’re all good, man.

[Ken]

Cool Grinner, thanks for the tip. I’ve trimmed 9 frames to bring it in at exactly 29;20. The client digs it, which is pretty important, but I feel the critique of other video industry professionals is paramount to improving my craft. Thanks again!

[Grinner Hester]

I respect that.

Do they not have a company logo? That’d look mucho better than the bold font you are using (is that just airial?) You do want it to be readable but at the same time, may as well make it look snazzy while you’re there. I like what appears to be natural lighting. I see no harsh shadows or anything that screams bad lighting. Good job man. Keep rockin’.

[birdcat]

Thread Hijack Alert!

Based on what Grinner said, Arial is a good usable font but certainly lacks that Wow factor.

Fonts I use (when not doing something fancy wi Digital Juice Fonts) all the time:

• Trebuchet
• Friz Quadrata
• Benguiat

Who else has some favorites?

[Grinner Hester]

The personality of the piece depicts that. I don’t hesitate to dowload per project. I go out of my way to not use the same one twice. I don’t use airial at all. Not even on a slate.

[Anonymous]

Well, the only thing i can think of is a lack of a logo. I mean, the gold letters arent that bad, but i bet if you put a logo there somewhere, it would enhance the commercial. Maybe talk to the company, and if they dont have one, you could make some extra money creating one for them.

[Ken]

The font for “Capitol Duct Cleaning” is called “TheMix,” I’m sure it’s from the arial family. Quite similar. The lists were “Copperplate.” The company doesn’t have a logo, I would design one, but that’s not really my bag. I didn’t even feel like it was appropriate to put their web url in because it’s kinda unwieldy and would have competed to heavily with the other content in the commercial – http://www.asktheairductcleaner.com

I think their website is atrocious, I have recommended them to the company who built mine, but they seem okay with what they’ve got.

An issue I was having was with pixelation of the fonts on the curves of letters like “C.” I ended up creating the graphic in LiveType, but it still has the pixelation to a degree. Any tips on that?

[Anonymous]

The font pixelation problem is probably due to a lower number of pixels in the title compared to the rest of the video.

For example, if you shot the video at 1080 HD and you did the titles inPhotoshopat SD resolution, the title would be pixelated, specially in the curves. I only worked with a mac once, but if possible, try to increase the number of pixels in LiveType.

[Grinner Hester]

Just keep your text and graphics uncompressed (including the render). If you liike at my reel, many of these were imported from photoshop and after effects. No aliasing whatsoever. It has nothing to do with the pixel count. They’ll always be 72dpi once in video.

[Anonymous]

Really?

Because i once did a video using a little logo i made using photoshop, and when i put it on the video it looked pixelated. I then created a new logo with a higher Pixels per Inch value, and when i exported it and added it to my video, it looked perfect…

[Harlin]

looks very professional to me!!

Harry

[Author]

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