Hey, do you want to see what our video production process looks like? If you’ve never seen what it takes to make a video from start to finish, your in luck. Read on and see what the process looked like in making a commercial for oolala.
First we had strategy sessions with oolala to figure out their goals, their target audience, where they would be posting the video and we generated catchy ideas that would hook their customers.
They wanted a Harmon Brother style ad, long form info-commercial, that would be divided into smaller videos emphasizing the different problems customers of leggings would have and the solution: oolala leggings!
Next we need a script that people will love. It starts with a concept and then tested whether people will relate and react to it. What’s the point of writing a script if people won’t care in the first place?
Scripting takes multiple stages: concept, template, audio & visual script (the characters and the actions they take and things they say), and final script. Between each step is rinsing and repeating until the final script is perfect. The script must entertain, solve a purpose and be on brand for the company. During the process we choose the video styling, different ways of telling the story and the budget that we had to make the video happen.
There was a lot of pre-production for this particular project because we needed to find over 10 actors, scout multiple locations, figure out food for many people and it required props and wardrobe decisions among many other things.
All the client had to do was agree on big decisions like location, talent, etc and we handled the rest!
This was the most fun part of the process for sure. We got to laugh with the actors as we went through the script. We had to focus on getting great angles, great audio and make sure the lighting felt real and natural. The room was super big and had a ton of natural light, so we used that to our advantage. We put up negative fill and diffusion in certain shots so we could shape the light into the way we needed it to go.
People don’t usually see the mountain of work behind a project, it’s kind of like Instagram expectations vs reality. For this ad the pacing was crucial! It’s a 3 minute long ad and if pacing is to slow it quickly becomes boring, but if the pacing is too fast, it becomes overwhelming. We spent a lot of time changing every scene to make sure it kept peoples attention on to the next scene, all the way to the end.
Comedy is one of the most challenging things to edit but through trial and error and much testing and feedback, we eventually got from something ok, to something really funny and great!
Here you can watch our first draft and see how important testing, feedback and reiteration, over and over again, is.
The pacing wasn’t quick enough so people we’re losing interest and from the feedback we got, we were able to see what things needed to be emphasized to help make the “sale.”
All of our work brings us to this point: the final polished product! No more testing, no more changing and no more worries – now we sit back and get results, while oolala gets all the profit.
