imagine that you're a company looking to
advertise during the American superbowl
one of the best commercial spots of the
year that cost about four million
dollars to have your advert shown so you
probably want to make the most of it
well in 2014 budweiser used up 55 of
their 60 seconds without showing a
single bottle of beer 55 seconds of a
sweet story about puppies friendship
with a horse followed by an easily
missable shot of what must be beer and
the branding only the very end so why so
many commercials like this
surely they should focus on the product
rather than some loosely related bit of
entertainment
well maybe they believe in the power of
storytelling so much so that they're
willing to spend ninety percent of their
expensive commercial slot to associate
their brand with a story of friendship
that harks back to the old days when
things were simpler. these are ideas that
we can connect with on a much deeper
level than if they just made a
commercial that tried to convince us
that they have been tastes better than
the other brands so with that in mind it
was my turn to make something definitely
not a super bowl commercial or any kind
of traditional advertising but still a
project that was paid for in order to
promote something in our case a film festival.
so we've got our client and we know
that they're looking to spread the word
about their festival as the submission
deadline is coming up. now it's very
important to know what they're looking
for what they're trying to get out of
this and then also their target audience
which in this case is filmmakers who
might want to enter a short film festival.
so we found out what the client
wants from a marketing point of view but
thinking back to the puppy story
I decided to approach this the same way I
would approach any project.
instead of asking myself what's a good idea for a
commercial i start with what's on your
mind
so for the past few months I've been
thinking a lot about how we romanticize
creative careers like it's just a
complete dream world of creative talent
and genius collaboration and everyone's
getting paid to do what they love
but for me that good stuff is only a
tiny tiny fraction of what it's really
like to spend your time writing shooting
and editing and so that became the
concept what if we could make something
that showed what it was really like to
make films or creative work at least
from my perspective of the people i've
talked to rather than making something
about the festival let's try and make
something that every single person who
enters the festival will care about.
making films
so we've got our main
concept but like most ideas it starts
out pretty murky and nonspecific so I
usually like to start by deciding some
things that I definitely don't want to do.
For example I didn't want to
sugarcoat filmmaking only showing the
fun and easy parts. We've all seen those
interviews where the actors are saying
how much fun they've had and how
talented everyone is but the truth is
for the people who are in charge of the
project at least, the pressure is very
very high
they've got a million things to think about
and things just keep going wrong
the second thing is I don't want to
imply that having better equipment and a
larger crew will make everything easier
money doesn't get rid of your problems
it just gives you different ones.
So what it's true the bigger productions have
more to work with
suddenly a lot more is expected of you
and the stakes are much higher so I
didn't want to present either low budget
or higher budget filmmaking as being a
perfect utopia.
so we know what we're
trying to say and we have a couple of
things to avoid but there are still a
million different ways you can make this
commercial should we show one moment
that sums up our message or follow
someone in a montage throughout their
entire career or should we focus on
multiple people or just one character
In the end I decided to follow a bunch
of different filmmakers
at different points in their career because
I kind of feel like that's what creative
careers are like no it's not just one
straight path. So I pitch that concept to
the client as a truthful montage of what
it's really like to be a filmmaker and
they gave the thumbs up. So i started
organizing some shoots and because it's
a commercial project as usual was a
little bit of money to go into the
production and I decided that it would
be most effectively used if it went to
the cast the crew and the locations so
no money spent on equipment basically
but how do you find people and places on
a very low budget
well I put a casting call On Star now
which is a decent place to find actors
in london at least they're found a
website where you can find venues to
hire for events and stuff it lists all
the spaces you can book and their prices
this one worked out well for London but
there'll be an alternative for your
nearest city
and so I started making a big list of
all these different moments in the
production process. These were based
around those Universal filmmaking
problems we don't have enough money and
we don't have enough time and so in the
true spirit of that I left all of the
organizing until two days before the
shoot which meant i was literally giving
a bunch of actors the details the night
before and so will leave this for now as
i'm frantically trying to sort ouy logistics on
the train until next week when we talk
about the shoot and by the way if you'd
like to see the finished product
the first link in the description but
i'll see you next week for part two