Show Your Work 2003

[Josh Martin]

Hey guys, I've never shot a commercial before and I'm needing to know how long (exactly) is a 30 second commercial. Also, if I'm wanting to give this to a local TV station, what format do commercials have to be in? Doesn't there have to be a count down on this thing? Thanks,
Josh

[Charles Papert]

When I was shooting and cutting local spots about 13 years ago, I used the guideline of 29:25 for run time, which gives just a breath of black before the next spot starts.

At the head of the tape, lay down 30 seconds of bars and tone, then an ID slate followed by or incorporating an accurate countdown with a 2-pop.

[Glen Elliott]

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles Papert :s.

At the head of the tape, lay down 30 seconds of bars and tone, then an ID slate followed by or incorporating an accurate countdown with a 2-pop. -->>>

Excuse my ignorance- what is a 2-pop?

I just finished shooting my first commercial a few weeks ago. My only background in video for profit has been wedding videography. The format my local cable company uses is Beta-cam and my client already has someone in the wing to do the conversion.

So I'm assuming you add the color bars to allow the cable company (or whoever is going to be broadcasting) to have a standard by which to adjust the colors of the peice?

[Joey Nelson]

hi, i've been lurking here for several months now and thought i'd show you guys my sketch comedy show, The 15 Minute Show. you can visit the website here: http://15.bloop.org

the video section has the first two episodes and a 5 minute short we made in a 24 hour video contest. everything is shot on my gl2 and edited in vegas video. we definitely aren't doing anything too sophisticated on the technical side, we're really focusing on writing i guess.

anyway if you like mr. show or kids in the hall this is sort of in the same vein. let me know what you guys think.

[Charles Papert]

The bars are a reference for the station's engineers to calibrate the output of the deck through a time-base corrector to make sure that the spot will represent as intended.

This brings up another point, that one must pay close attention to the video levels when submitting for broadcast. DV cameras deliver a lower black level (0 vs 7.5 IRE) which has been discussed in various threads here before, which is not broadcast standard. Likewise, beware of over-saturated colors and highlights above 100 IRE. If your editing software has a mode that checks for all of the above, run your piece through that first to check your levels before delivery.

The 2-pop refers to the last number on the countdown which will have an audible "beep". It is another venerable standard for both film and video production that allows for correct synchronization of picture and sound.

If you are able to generate timecode upon output to tape, it is also a good idea for the spot to start at a round number such as 1:00:00:00. Again, this helps the broadcaster dub the spot into their system.

[Jack Robertson]

Hi Josh, sorry long reply!

The 30 sec commercial should be 30 seconds long but audio is slightly offset. See the below explanation from the Australian Broadcast Standards:

"Standard Audio to Vision Start and End times

Where vision starts at the first frame of any material produced for broadcast, ALL audio should begin twelve frames after the first frame of vision.
This means a twelve frame period of silence at the beginning of all product, programs, segments, promos, clips and commercials.

The end point for all audio should similarly be twelve frames before vision end. Thus leaving twelve frames of silence at the end of the program.

Typically in a 30 second promo/commercial
Vision start is on first frame, Audio start is on frame 12
Vision end is 30seconds 0frames, Audio end is 29seconds 12frames.
Total audio duration is 29 seconds."

I work at a broadcast station, and I have seen many times this rule not being adhered to and audio got clipped/faded as a result which sounded bad and most of all annoyed the commercial client. This is not a major problem if the audio in question is only background music, but is a major problem if it is the actual audio of the voice over.

Example, if your commercial is sitting at either the start or end of a break, most stations dip through black (fade in fade out) between program and break. This takes time as any transition would (apart from a straight cut), and thus would clip/fade the audio of the commercial if (for example) you had someone saying something right at the head or the end of that commercial!

Many times I have seen this problem in this scenario: Voice over on the commercial was right to the end with the last words being a phone number... if at this stage the commercial was faded, the person at home would have missed the number of that phone number.

BUT, In the end it really depends on your broadcaster and how they transmit signals :)

Hope this helps!
Jack

[Matt Stahley]

I watched the first episode and think you did a very good job.I especially like some of the beats in the soundtrack.Did you produce those? Is that a SP1200 im hearing?

[Joey Nelson]

yeah my friends and i did the music, but it's all done on the computer. if you hear any sp1200, it's all sampled.

[Alex Knappenberger]

Hahahahahha, nice.

I watched both of them. I liked the way they flowed, it's different then any "sketch comedy" stuff i've seen before, because the whole 15 minute show is in a way one. I don't know really whatelse to say other then I enjoyed it, maybe work on setting up the shots a little bit better because I saw the boom in a few, and some shots needed a tripod.

By this time next year, I hope to have a finished hour long video with about 6-8 different little short comedy videos on it. It's going to be very retarded, but I plan on putting lots of time into shooting all the stuff. If I pitched some of the ideas for the videos I have so far, you guys would probably think I am smoking something.

[Joey Nelson]

yeah, after the first episode we were a lot more careful about the boom mic. you don't see it on tv but the computer doesn't cut you any slack.

[Alex Knappenberger]

I was checking out this skating video the other day, and towards the end they had a segment with "invisible skateboards", where basically they painted all the skateboards green and had the camera movements repeated with a motion controlled camera system (atleast I hope thats what it's called). Anyway, it was very cool.

I posted a couple screenshots:

http://www.l33test.com/upload/Image513.jpg

That doesnt do any justice for the whole segment though, it's really good, if you don't mind watching a bunch of skateboarding, then check out the video, it's called "Girl - Yeah right".

I'd like to try something similar, heh, except there wouldn't be any camera movements though.

IDEA! I might do a whole short video around this concept, nothing to do with skateboarding though. Just have some kind of super-human who can float around, hehehe.

[Jesse Meehl]

I might have to watch that video. It was directed by Spike Jonze. It's interesting that he got into the film business by making skateboard and music videos. Now he's a bigtime director.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Looks like the footage was shot with an XL1.

[Hannes Schobesberger]

We are an Austrian based group of filmmakers. Our new film "Die Stimme / The Voice" will be a period movie about a young actress reading poems to poor people in an old factory. Shooting starts next week. We will use our Canon XM2 for the whole shooting! If you like, you can have a look at our pre production stills on our website at:

www.8ung.at/gruppe_filmkunst/voice.htm
(Please forgive me for the bad translation. It was the best I could do...)

Greetings from Austria

Hannes Schobesberger

[Rob Lohman]

Amazing location! Very very beautiful. I wish you luck with your
project. Making a feature length film is quite the undertaking.