What you put in your business's TV advertisement depends on your resources, your target audience, how you want to present your business or product, and your own comfort level. Consider these advertising possibilities:
  • Appear in your own commercial. You’ve probably seen a store owner step in front of the camera and do his or her own commercial. If you're a natural, then by all means, go for it. No one else could possibly bring the enthusiasm and expertise that you can to this endeavor.
  • Promote with a professional. Although you do have to fork out some extra cash, a professional actor may be just what your business needs. Before you decide on an actor, be sure to ask yourself what type of person will advertise your business in a way that attracts your target audience.
  • Highlight your place of business. Hiring a remote crew to come to your place of business and shoot the spot puts your business front-and-center. Plus, shooting footage inside your store, showroom, studio, or office may be a lot easier than hauling a bunch of your products somewhere else.
  • Focus the camera on your product. Go ahead and cut to the chase — immediately show the products you want to sell. You may be best served by getting right down to business and featuring the items that are going to make you some money.
After you decide what type of commercial you want to make, it's time to start putting it together. An effective TV commercial uses the three basic structural elements: audio, video, and computer graphics. Divide your TV ad's structure into these three elements to make your job much easier.
  1. Decide on a big idea or campaign theme to use in your advertisement.
    If you don’t have a theme, you’ll just develop a series of unrelated ads — which won’t help build name recognition for your company or attract customers to your business. [For our project, you will want to identify your goal and/or product.]
  2. Choose the audio that you want to use in the commercial.
    The audio can be a voiceover or an on-camera actor. The audio track may also include any music or sound effects that you select.
  3. Come up with video that complements the audio you plan to use.
    The video can be anything from you doing an on-camera sales pitch, to product footage, to video you shoot in your store, to anything else you can think of.
  4. Add computer graphics, if they fit your advertisement.
    Use computer graphics (CG for short) to flash words and prices on the screen. You can also use computer-generated effects, like making entire scenes fly into the frame, spin, explode, appear out nowhere, or perform other interesting tricks. [Be careful not to over do these effects--you are not selling effects, you are selling an idea or product!]
Don’t get too carried away with elaborate visual elements; they can drive up the cost of your TV ads. You can create visuals that are effective but cheap with just takes a bit of creativity. 

 For example, instead of having a herd of wild horses gallop through a scene, you can use the sound effects of a herd of wild horses galloping by off-camera.

 [This idea also goes with playwriting...!]

HOMEWORK: None. We will be working on this project during next week.