At first I was thinking of something more action packed than comedy. But the first idea wasn't really fleshing out. So after a few more days of thinking about the idea it finally hit me. I wrote out the script and began to story-board the whole commercial as I would have liked to see it in its final cut. This helped me get an idea of what the shots I wanted to accomplish and what was going to be needed in terms of equipment, cast, and location. Although for a 30 second commercial it took over five hours to actually story-board.
Then I began on focusing on finding locations. I needed an Art Gallery. Thankfully, downtown Wyandotte has a couple and I was able to get permission to film on a Friday night at River's Edge Gallery. Saturday night was planned to shoot at my apartment.
Now that locations were squared away, it was time to start making the shot sheets and diagramming out how I wanted each shot to be set up. In addition to that I began working on call sheets for my cast and crew. Call sheets are used to inform the cast and crew of a film production times, locations, and other important facts like, wardrobe and make-up times. Once all these documents were created, I sent them to my cast an crew.
Now came the fun part of actually shooting the thing. We met at the Gallery at 7PM on a Friday night. We were able to have the place to ourselves with a nice little corner on the second floor. This is when the shot sheets come handy because you start to refer to them to make sure that you got every angle you wanted for your work.
Friday night we worked for about four and a half hours, which compared to my other film shoots I have done before was really nothing.
The following night we met at 5. I had spent the entire day reordering my apartment to make it look more like a creative studio. That night we spent about an hour and a half prepping wardrobe and make-up. From there we worked until about 10 or so.
The next process was probably the most difficult of all the processes which was editing. I have editing all my work in the past and my previous employer had me working as an Assistant Editor. So I thought that this time around, being a thirty second piece, would be a bit easier than the twenty minute capstone project or my fifteen minute documentary. This was not the case. The commercial we had shot could have stood alone on itself as a short film between two to five minutes. I had to condense that all into thirty seconds. This means that I had to sacrifice some of the shots we had chosen. The spot needed a certain pacing. I struggled a bit with trying to find that pacing but then found the perfect track to edit the piece to.
I worked with each scene separately, the artist working on his canvas and the art gallery. Once I had an idea of where exactly each portion of the spot was going, I stitched them together making the music flow between the scenes so it felt as if there was no real hesitation.
After a week of working on the cut, I felt that I was comfortable enough to submit it to the contest. The final video was entitled Tasteful Art and you can view it by clicking HERE!
I would also like to thank my cast and crew for their tremendous hard work and patience with me through this process.
