How to Produce a TV Commercial/Spot

How to shoot TV commercials/spots?

Shooting a TV commercial is easy for the people who do it every day, but not so easy for you and I. Basically it involves a certain level of planning. Planning saves cost and is the key element in every step of shooting a TV commercial.

There is a form called an AICP form now on spreadsheet which has every possible expense one would need to shoot a feature length movie, or a :30 second TV spot..

Basic things to plan:

Script: Always have a script that is agreed on by all members of the production crew. Knowing this will save you lots of money going from one scene to another in a minimum amount of time.

Budget: How much do you want to spend shooting a spot? Be realistic. Are you going to be able to shoot film or videotape? Are you going to shoot all the scenes in your spot in one or will it take two or more days? Consider that when you're planning your budget.

Shooter: Who's going to do the actual shooting of the video for the spot? Are they going to shoot it on videotape or on film? If you're shooting on film it's prettier, but you're looking at a much higher price as there is processing involved. It's also necessary to commit the film product to video tape eventually so you may edit it with all the digital visual effects available on videotape mixing bays. You might want to consider shooting a higher quality video tape instead saving that extra step.

If you're going to shoot using a video tape shooter, your cost will also be lower as video tape is much easier to find and the audio is linked to the video automatically.