Proactiv+ Commercials

Man, pimples suck!  I still get pimples now and again, and I certainly had my fair share in high school.  Maybe it was all the soda and doritos and taco bell… nah….

Enter Proactiv+.  It’s the skin clarifying formula we’ve all been waiting for!  And it’s endorsed by mega-artist Adam Levine, among others.

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So this was a fun but stressful job to work on- my task was to create shooting boards that would inform the crew of the various ideas for options of angles to shoot the talent, aka Mr. Levine.  These boards were very much location specific- as in, they were shooting at his house, within a 3 hour window, and they had to be prepared for anything.  Nobody could really know exactly what shots they would use, as the whole concept of the piece was to shoot it fairly candid/documentary style.  That means, you have a couple cameras going and you shoot everything, and edit it down to something that looks natural and relatable.

So, I accompanied the crew on a Tech Scout to his house, to survey everything and get ideas.  I had my sketchbook out and sketched everything, just absorbing it all very quickly.  We had to be efficient with our time, out of respect to the talent.  I don’t really “talk” on these excursions, or offer my creative input- all the parameters and requirements of the task are already in place.  My job is to pay attention and take direction.

After that, I met again with the director and producer at the fancy Vista Del Mar hotel in Santa Monica to  go over the notes and make sure I had everything.  We brainstormed a few more ideas, as I could offer input at this stage.  To do so earlier could risk undermining the director’s vision in front of the crew.  We tacked on a few more shot ideas and I took the work home.  I probably put in a good 8 hours that night, and the final boards were approved the following morning, pending a couple small tweaks.

Conceptually, the shoot was simple- my boards needed to show various angles of Adam talking to camera, with various expressions, and then show many different options for B-Roll- shots that they edit with voiceover, that depict the talent being down to earth, and doing relatable stuff; like playing with his dogs, or jammin’ on his guitar.  Here’s the boards:

Trickiest part of this job was the getting his likeness within tolerance- I probably could have done better but luckily the expectations for shoot board drawings are pretty low.  Still, the talent might see them, so I couldn’t totally slack on it.  I think they look pretty good given the time constraints.

Oh, you want to see the final spot?  Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t06p60TPtjA

Looks pretty good!  See you next week.


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