Commercial Filmmaking: Everything You Need To Know To Write Great Video Advertisements

1. Introduction: Collectively, we see thousands of advertisements every single day. And of those advertisements, studies show that people are almost three times more likely to click through on a video ad and then an image or text ad. Yet, I've found that the information on creating these engaging ads is a little bit hard to find. So I want to uncover what some of those techniques are through trial and error as well as lots of research on lots of practice. I think I've figured out the core principles behind creating these engaging ads. And I've managed to build a strong business around creating these ads for local companies as well as international brands. Video advertising is growing. When it comes to marketing, there's always more that you can learn and always more things you can explore. But this course is designed to help you engage your viewer and set up a solid workflow that will get you away from the dreaded writer's block will cover a lot of in-depth theory as well as practical methods for generating ideas. How to find and use inspiration, what ideas work, and why. How to structure really any type of ad. Set you up for the solid workflow that just works. By the end of this course, you'll have a much deeper understanding of how to actually build a successful video ad. As well as create a solid spec script that uses all of these methods to get you working in the industry or take your marketing to the next level. So thank you for joining me and let's get started. 2. Research the Brand and Product: The first step for any video project is finding out everything you can about the product or brand or service that you're trying to sell, the history, the features, statistics, really anything you can about the product itself. Sometimes your client will give you lots of information and lots of key points that they want you to hit in the video. Other times they'll give you virtually no information. So either way you're gonna be doing some research on the product. I like to try to find the things that excite me about the product. So there's usually something that will stand out to me as being interesting or unique. Maybe whether it's something simple like the shape of it or a feature, something like that. Look at the gears turning a little bit and it might be what I build the entire thing off of. I just like to find something that initially excites me about the product because if it excites me, it probably will excite somebody else. A good understanding of what the company and its pillars and what it stands for will act as the foundation that you build the entire script on. So go through their website, their social media pages, really anything you can to get a good idea of who they are and the visual style that they're going for. A lot of companies will also have brand guidelines which they'll want to see those things incorporated. So all of these little things will help inform your script later on. And the more you understand it, and the more you really can get into the nitty-gritty of it, the better off you'll be and the easier the writing process will come to you and the happier your client will be. So talk with your client. Learn about the brand, learn about the product, the goals of your client, the desired outcome of this particular project. And you're really just gathering information at this point. Once you've done that, then you can move into the next step, which is all about defining your audience, which in marketing is huge. 3. Define Your Audience: The next thing I want to talk about is how to define your audience. This is honestly a really complicated subject and a whole course could be done unjust this alone. But this is really what marketing is all about. You basically want to make sure that your customer is seeing the ad be, your customer is benefiting from the product that you're selling. You and your client want to spend your money and your time and your energy on marketing to the consumer who is most likely to buy the product. So find out as much as you can about your ideal consumer. And that's really how you build a successful ad. This is obviously easier said than done. And sometimes you just go in for a quick boost and brand recognition and that's fine. But at the end of the day, running an ad cost money and you want to make sure that your client is seeing a return on investment from running this ad. And not only that, but defining your audience can help you build out your script. Because now you know who you're talking to. Let's take for example, one of the most famous commercials ever. Hello. This ad is great. We all know it's great. It's great because it's clever and entertaining, but it's exceptional because it was a direct response to clever market research and understanding their audience. Now this is obviously a big time example. You may not have the time or resources to do such in-depth studies on your market. But this should at least give you an idea of the power understanding your audience can have. And then we'll talk about ways that you can define your audience yourself. But to continue on this Add, usually these products were marketed to men, trying to influence men to buy their product. But Procter and Gamble, the company who owns the Old Spice brand, realize that the men were less often making the purchasing decision. And if they could capture the female audience, it would more than likely increase their sales. A fine line to walk, because if they made the product seem too feminine, it would backfire. So they spoke directly to the females but made the product seem manly. So did it work? Yeah, it absolutely worked. Targeting a predominantly female demographic. They were aiming for 15% increase in sales. The ad came out in February of 2010, and by July, they had seen a 125% boost in sales, which is huge. And soon after they became the top brand for men's body wash. So how can you define your audience? Well, first, talk to your client who is currently buying the product. Who were they marketing towards? Maybe you want to double down on that market or maybe you want to try and reach a new audience. It may even already have their ideal customer built out already for you and they can give you all those notes. If not, I'd like to build a hypothetical profile of who my consumer is, the person most likely to do the thing that you're asking them to do, buy the product or visit the website, whatever it is, think about who that person is, what they do, and build a profile around that age, location, gender, occupation, interests and hobbies. These are all things that you can build a profile around, plug information into, and end up with your ideal consumer. In the next lesson, we're gonna be covering a little bit more in-depth on how to do that. And we'll be starting our class project. 4. Project: Choose a Product + Build a Customer Profile: For our class project, I want you to first choose a product and then start writing down as many notes as you can about that product. What do you know about it? What are the features that stand out to you? If it's a Coca-Cola bottle, maybe noticed that the brand colors are red and white. Then is it flavored or is it original? Is can be as deep as you want it to go. But for this project, I want you to try and choose at least five to ten ideas, features, statistics, observations, really anything about the product itself that stands out to you. Anything that you learn about the product that excites you or inspires you, or just get some ideas turning in your head. Write that down. Maybe it's a phone case that has a really cool design or shock absorbers or really anything, whatever it is. After that, we're going to build a basic customer profile around that product. So who would most likely by this thing? The old? Are they young? Are they male or the female? Would they be inactive or outdoorsy type of person or not? If anybody is going to use this product, who would it be? To keep it simple, we're going to use this list. But if you'd like, you can add to it to get a little bit more specific. Things like education, ethnicity, online behaviors. Really the list can be endless here, but this is what I want you to focus on for now and just get those key characteristics of your ideal consumer. By the end of this, you should have at least two pages, one with a bunch of notes about your product, the other with your consumer profile. This is going to inform our writing process. And really without you even noticing, it's already got your writing. And I think that's one of the most important things is that the first steps are always the hardest. I mean, when you look at this blank page, you think where do you even start? Writer's block is a real thing. And I think writer's block tends to happen when you're not really sure how to begin. So this gets you writing already and now you've got work in front of you that shows that you've made some progress. And I think that's an important thing when you're writing anything. In some cases, you may already be inspired for your entire script. Maybe the shape of the object inspires some sort of story or idea behind your add. Other cases, not so much, but at least you've got all this information written down and you've started, there really is gold to be found here. So take the time to do a little digging. 5. Finding Your Idea: If the big idea for your script hasn't come to you yet, that's okay. Ideas are elusive and they can't really be relied on to come to you when you need them. But we can kinda coax them in with a few different methods. I find inspiration can come from literally anywhere, a cool shot and interesting technique or edit or cool lighting or music or Video Games, books, anything, something will strike me in some way and it's usually a single nugget of an idea that hits me, that I just sort of build the whole script around. I think I'm a pretty visual person. So for me, it's usually a shot or a painting or something that kinda just inspires the whole thing. And I built the entire script around that one shot idea. Maybe it's an interesting composition I saw in the painting and I just think that that's perfect for what I needed. And I just build the whole thing around that. So just the lighting or the composition can do it for me. And it might do it for you too. But if it doesn't find the mediums that you are most drawn to. So when you're trying to come up with an idea for a script, I'd like to start by searching YouTube or Vimeo or Pinterest or browsing art station. I'm not looking to rip anybody off by any means, but I'm just looking for something that will inspire or spark the idea that I'm looking for, it may not strike right away, but sooner or later something will. No idea is 100% original. And I believe it's the accumulation of all these other thoughts and ideas that other people have made that lead to your light bulb moment. And whether you know it or not, sometimes your final product is an amalgamation of a bunch of other ideas like the music and video game really stood out to you, or a few different shots that you've found on art station or Pinterest or something like that, they kinda come together to form your new, brand new idea. And just by virtue of your circumstance, it will be different than the things that you were getting, the inspiration from. It, sort of like a collage or a mosaic. All of these different ideas kind of come together to form the big picture. More ideas that you can feed into it, and the more inspiration you can gather, the more likely you are to start seeing that play out in your head, and the more unique your final product will be. I just believe that ideas come from consuming other ideas and fractions of all of these different things that you found while eventually inform your wholly unique piece, the film. But it's a little bit from $6 million man. And it's a little bit from one of the mat home movies. So I'll often start with a Pinterest board. And I'm just searching for things that relate to my products. So if I'm doing something construction based, like a new tool, power tool or something like that, whatever it is, I'll search for commercial construction photography and then I'll just look through these shots and just start to get the ideas turning. Maybe, maybe this shot you can kinda see how you would lead into that. Or maybe you would see what would come after that. So you can start to build the pieces around that and use that as the nugget that generates the idea. We'll get to this in a moment when we start doing our class project and I'll show you how to actually put this to practical use. But for now, if you're already searching for inspiration online, just make sure that you're saving these things because you don't want to lose them later. So anything that's grabbing, you just remember to save the link or copy it to your computer, whatever it is, Just don't lose them. 6. Project: Create a Moodboard: This is kinda similar to the initial note-taking process that we did in the beginning in the sense that you're gathering information to be used later to inspire your script. I like to think of it like stoking the fire. So that's what we've been doing and that's what we're going to continue to do here. So in this stage, it's a little bit less about the product itself and more about the end result that we're going to be creating. So start looking for things like graphic design, illustration, typography, photography, cinematography. You look at other ads, all these things you can grab, take a screenshot of and we're going to copy them to our mood board. A mood board is essentially a collage of inspiration. Sometimes you will use a mood board to inspire the vision that you're seeing for your client. But in this sense, we're just really inspiring ourselves. And we're just trying to keep ourselves sort of visually thinking about the end product. So you can bring this stuff into Photoshop, canva Word, online services like melanoma doesn't have to be fancy. We're just collecting all of these things and we want to put it into one space that we can refer back to later. So just are finding some inspiration and let yourself really gets sucked into this because it's kinda fun. Google and Pinterest are great for this because once you click on an image, it will bring up all these other similar related images. And you can really dive deep into this process. You can start, for instance, with maybe you know, the brand colors. Maybe they're, let's say, earthy tones. So you've got your greens, your, your browns, and your yellows. So start looking for photography or fine art that kind of follows that color palette. And that will start getting the wheels turning. And once you find an image, bring it into Photoshop, save it to melanoma, whatever you're using and continued to build around that. You might not use these at all. These are not necessarily things that will be used in your final product, but you can start to get the inspiration moving and start to get the gears turning in your head. 7. What Ideas Work: "The Three Appeals": Next I want to get into what ideas actually work. Basically, everything you need to know about writing any script. Aristotle probably set it first. There are rules. They were written over 2 thousand years ago by Aristotle. A young rider would do well to learn those rules. We're not going to talk about Aristotle's poetics here, though that's definitely worth studying, especially if you're writing a feature of any kind. But now we're going to talk about aristotle as the three appeals, which are ethos, pathos, and logos. These are what Aristotle proposed, where the most important factors behind persuasion or convincing somebody of something as an advertiser, you're essentially trying to persuade or convince somebody that your product is worth buying. So those are the three principles that we'll be covering here. And then we'll get into how you can apply these to your own work. The first one we're going to talk about its ethos. 8. Ethos: The Trust: Ethos is essentially playing up the credibility or character of your speaker. Your speaker being the person delivering the message. To give you one example, ethos is essentially the driving force behind influencer marketing. Skincare project is just another skin care product until it's in Kim Kardashians personal skincare routine. Now all of a sudden you feel like you have to have it. That's ethos, the influence of a person or brand's character that we ultimately trust and will take guidance from. You can establish this in a few different ways. You can do it in both fictional and non-fictional storytelling. Aristotle says there's three ways to establish trust in your speaker. I should mention that he wasn't necessarily talking about videos when he said these things. But in the sense that we're persuading a viewer to take a certain action. I think there's a lot that we can learn from his theories. The three ways to establish trust in your speaker are displaying competence, strong morals or virtues, and positive intent, meaning we're more likely to consider something if the source has these three qualities that are good at what they do, they're morally sound, and they want to do as good. They mean, well, those are the three things that we want to consider when we're establishing trust and our speaker. A good celebrity endorsement basically comes with this built-in. Fans of that celebrity are more likely to trust and respect to that speaker because they're familiar with them. And if they have positive morals and judgment and character, we are more likely to take influence from them then some random person, but not all of us have ALS celebrities ready to go for our next project. So there are a few other ways that you can establish trust in your speaker without having to fork out for Kim Kardashian. If we take into account the three ways Aristotle says trust is established. You can build up an actual character in your ad in this way, whether fictional or real. In this example from Budweiser, it's dramatize, but it's building up the character to be a good, honest, hard-working and moral person. And we eventually find out it's one of the companies for fathers. So the aim is to build a level of trust and the speaker and in turn, for the brand. 9. Pathos: The Emotion: On the surface, this one might seem almost obvious. We've all seen ads that make us laugh or make a sad. Hi, I'm Sarah McLaughlin. No, we're not gonna go there, but we can understand the use of different emotions. Why you might want to choose a different type of emotion and how advertisements that stick with you the most tend to be the ones that hit an emotional chord. Often if you're making a brand focus to advertisement as opposed to a product specific, a brand film will often focus on the emotional side because an emotional response often triggers a memory that top-of-mind awareness is generally the goal of a brand film. Don't get me wrong. You can certainly do this with product specific as well. I'm just saying if you're making a brand film, this is often the one you want to focus on most, more often than not, you want to leave the viewer feeling positive, joy, hope, relief, amusement. Comedies do well. Of course, everybody loves the funny ad, but that happiness can come in different ways. Maybe it's a feeling of inspiration or pride or gratitude. Aristotle tells us that the emotion that the audience is feeling will inform how they judge our message. Or in this case, our ad. Think about it like being pulled over by a cop. If a cop pulls you over and he's in a bad mood, he's more likely to judge your actions more harshly. Whereas if it's in a good mood, he may let you off with a warning or be a generally a little bit more lenient on you. So think about that with your viewer. Your viewer is your cup. You want to leave them feeling positively so that they're more likely to make a positive judgment about your ad. Most of us don't want to see any ads. Generally speaking, we're already on guard when somebody shows us an ad. So if we can appeal to them emotionally, they're more likely to think favorably about the ad and not judge it so harshly at the ad is cringy or just generally leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We're more likely to judge that product very harshly, which is why I worry about comedy sometimes. Again, comedies are great if you have a comedic mind, Go for it. But if you feel like you're not the strongest comedic joke teller, you might want to search for ways to elicit a positive response without necessarily going forward the comedic route. And you can do that in a bunch of different ways and often are very effective. Yes, comedies are awesome. But if it's cringy, might hurt your ad. So this is actually one of the more complicated of Aristotle's rhetoric, even though on the surface it might seem simple. So how do we use pathos? We can use pathos through an experience called catharsis. And I think this can be done in two similar but slightly different ways. Catharsis basically means a release of pent-up emotion. You might think of it like this. If somebody says they have a joke for you, you're ready to be amused. And then as they tell that joke, your amusement level starts to rise. And when they get to the punchline, you laugh and laugh is the release of emotion. They release of that amusement that had been pent up throughout the joke. That's just a simple way of putting how catharsis is achieved is a buildup of emotion and then are released at the end. So you can structure your commercial in the same way, no matter what emotion you're trying to play too. A bit like a buildup and a release. Think of it like a joke, buildup, punchline. Any emotion, whether it's a sad emotion and happy emotion, fearful emotion, buildup and pay off is how we achieve that cathartic moment. Aristotle defines a little bit more specifically, and he says that catharsis comes from empathizing or identifying with the character on stage, or in this case onscreen, feeling the same emotions that the character is feeling. We're mirroring their emotions, mirroring. In advertising, this is where knowing your audience can be extremely effective. If you know your audience, you can have them sort of empathize with the character in your video. Think of an ad that plays at the height of summer and you have a character who is sweating and just having a bad time, and then he buys a Pepsi and cools down. Well, we can empathize with that character through a shared experience because it's hot out and we can feel like that character. And now we're sort of left desiring the same relief that the character felt when they bought that Pepsi. A reaction shot is literally putting the character's emotion and feeling on screen. And we can identify with that. There's a great example from Volvo which actually sort of sets up a more dramatic ad based around a conversation between a mother and a daughter and they're going over the future expectations at both the mother and daughter have for this young girl's life. And they're talking about what she's going to be when she grows up and all these sort of hopeful and inspiring things. And it takes a few twists and turns along the way. And then suddenly we're confronted with this sort of shock moment and the screen cuts to black. And then we get a positive message that says Sometimes it's the moments that don't happen that matter most. And then we cut back, see the girl that she's perfectly fine. And we feel a moment of relief. So we felt this buildup of tension and then to shock moments, one negative when we think that the girl might've been hit. And then one positive when we find out that the girl is okay on the positive surprise, they finally reveal what the ad is all about. It's about this car. A slow build with the release of emotion at the end, that ultimately leaves us feeling positive. Now we feel positively about this car. This is a very strong add. It has a lot of complexity to it, so it's obviously really well-crafted. And a lot of time and work went into making it such a strong ad. But we can feel how that buildup and then emotional release at the end can have such a strong impact on us. So think about ways that you can have us identify emotionally with your character and mirror the emotions that your character is feeling and build up that emotion and then released at the end with a positive impact. And that will leave us feeling favorably about your ad and the product. 10. Logos: The Logic: Next we have logos. Logos is an appeal to the logical part of the brain. So you may be interested in that Kim Kardashian and skincare product because of her. But it's not until you see the results or maybe find out it's a 100% chemical free or whatever the case may be, that you go ahead and actually buy it and we want to see the proof. We want to see the facts of why we should logically make this purchasing decision. Aristotle basically considered this the biggest of the three because, I mean, if you can prove something, you can't really argue against it in advertising, it's kind of difficult to definitively prove something since most people are aware that you can kinda deceive with movie magic and camera tricks, which that's false advertising and not something you want to do. But still there's a level of skepticism that people have when they're watching an ad. So to kind of get around this, there's a few things you can do. One common method is to speak directly to the facts or features or statistics of your product or service. If you're trying to sell a cell phone, you might say it's ten times faster. Battery life is 50% longer, it's bigger, it's new colors, whatever the case may be. You're speaking to the facts specifically. It's not necessarily the proof behind your argument. It is telling us all of the data that we need to know to make a rational decision, whatever it is about the product that you can backup with facts, statistics, or features. If you're not focused on a product, you could consider a surprising statistic or fact about the brand or the message that you're trying to convey. Maybe you're making an ad about a brand that's contributing something to society, like cleaning up our oceans or something like that. So you might have a fact or statistic about how much waste ends up in our oceans. An estimated £16 billion of plastic enters the ocean every single year. Or maybe how much waste that the company has cleaned up already. You're proving logically that this is a problem worth solving and this is a company that can do it. The Arctic is warming almost three times faster than the rest of the planet. For your video, you can do this in a few ways, but one really great method to use is to display this factor statistic with text on-screen. Eighty-five percent of Facebook videos are washed with the sound off. So displaying this fact visually can be crucial. Also, did you see how engaging that was? So onscreen texts is great because it can be easily digested no matter how the viewers watching. So if you can boil down your fact, feature or statistic down to a few words, even the most casual viewer can digest it and easily understand the key messaging that you're trying to get across. We'll talk a little bit more about all of this in a second when we start to structure our ad. But for now, just remember that the Logos is the facts and the data backing your product or service, the proof. So think about ways that you can include this in your video. It can be subtle, it doesn't have to be the main focus in that Volvo commercial that can be boiled down to the one-shot of the car coming to a complete halt. The video isn't focused on facts and data and statistics, but it is giving you a moment of proving its effectiveness. So whether it's a subtle shot like that or with text graphics, data, statistics, charts, graphs, whatever it is, give the viewer the facts that will make them rationally choose to buy your product. 11. For Your Consideration: Kairos & Telos: So those were considered the three most important rhetoric in Aristotle's theories about what goes into a convincing argument. But there were two others that I want to talk about, kairos and telos. I don't know if I'm saying this right, but it's something like that. Telos means a couple of different things, at least in the context of advertising. It's essentially the y, the end goal for why we're convincing you to, in Aristotle's time, to think differently or to persuade you. It's sort of our end goal of the final outcome. It's the why we're telling you this and what we want to achieve by telling you this, maybe a percentage of sales of this new product is going to go into planting more trees. So that's your why and you might make a whole ad about the why. And you're telling the audience what the goal is. For every item we sell, we pad entries. The other side, The Telos is maybe more for you as the writer. The why you're making this ad for you and your client. The end goal for this ad is to drive sales. Well, you wouldn't say that in the ad to the audience, but it is what the goal is for this ad. As a writer, it is important to define what that goal is. I mean, do we want to drive more traffic to the website or drive more sales or just boost brand recognition. You want to define your why. You wanted to find your end goal and then achieve it with ethos, pathos and logos. Or Cairo's. Kairos is kinda broadly defined under the concept of time itself. And then two slightly different ways. The first way it could be the Act Now approach or the sale ends tomorrow or column now and you'll get a second one absolutely free that urgency. But it also serves as a concept for the timing of the ad itself, the topical relevancy or the timing in which this ad is taking place. Maybe you're making an ad about a grand opening or a grand re-opening. Or it can be a statement on a particular movement or something that's happening right now. And when done well, it can be incredibly effective if the timing is done perfectly, It's amazing. But the flip side of that is it can also be limiting. Once that time has passed, your ad is really no longer relevant, but it can be used to great effect in a short-term boosts strategy. So now that we've talked about that, Let's talk about ways that we can combine them together to really make our adds shine. 12. Combining The Appeals: So in this example, we're gonna look at a really great ad from tied. It was aired during the Super Bowl. It's got ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. The logic is pretty simple. It's that tide would clean your clothes. What makes it a tie there, there are no stains. The trust is put into David harbor, a recognizable figure from Stranger Things, likable person. He is the one kind of leading us through this ad or a hilarious beer ad or whatever this is. But it's a tide add. The emotion that they're going for is just amusement. It is a comedy add. It's very clever and well-written from start to finish. But the clever part Really comes at the end with this sort of surprising punchline that any ad with clean clothes must have been because of tide. So this is make every Super Bowl ad tie down watching. So playing this at the Super Bowl, which is known for having great ads, you're gonna be watching for the close and thinking about tide when you're watching other ads with clean clothes, watching this ad during the Super Bowl, as it talks about other Super Bowl ads is really what pushes this ad from being really good to being great. It's using its specific circumstance to its advantage, as well as ethos, pathos, logos, all these other things, even if it's only really relevant during the Super Bowl, tied, stole the show, they hijack the entire Super Bowl. James, you've loved the type commercials was the best ad is revolt. And I'm wearing a white shirt making this. You wouldn't really air this again now, but that's okay because the purpose of this ad was to get you thinking about and talking about Tide during the Super Bowl. And because they did that so effectively, you'll probably remember this ad. So we've covered a lot and you might not be able to include every single one of these in your ad every single time. And that's totally fine. So in the next lesson we're going to talk about how we can effectively use this information and hone in on just one, maybe two of these elements and then add other things as we go to go from having a good ad to having anti that. 13. Project: Focus Your Rhetoric: So now that we've got a pretty good idea of what these rhetoric are and how you can use them. Now we're going to talk about how to really apply them to our own work. And it's not really practical to try and think of ways to include all of these things at once. So instead of trying to think about all of them happening at the same time, I like to make a little tear list and kind of go from most to least important, then I can build my script around that. If you're looking at your mood board, you might see that these images are warm and inviting and friendly. So maybe happiness is what you want to really build your ad around. So at the top, you would put pathos because that's your number one. So looking at what you've already collected with your notes and your mood board and all these different things. How do you foresee these rhetoric playing a part of that, as we saw in that involve or commercial, it's almost entirely emotionally driven, which is pathos. So their number one would be pathos. And then we see other elements kind of sprinkled throughout the ad, but they're not at the forefront. So that's what we're doing here. We're focusing in on one and we'll be supporting with the others where we can. Maybe your first one is pathos. You want to appeal to the emotional side of the viewer. So you would want to write that one in your first place and maybe include what type of emotion you wanted to play too. Because there are a lot below that. You might think it needs to be a bit more timely with an act now sort of approach or you want to support it with a few facts and data or whatever the case may be. Build your list from most to least important for your idea, your first choice is the umbrella that everything else will fall under. So when we come to right, you want to write to your number one. And as we go through the writing process, think about ways that you can add to our script with our second, third tier to strengthen the ad. They don't all have to be there, but you may see an opening for a piece of dialogue or a shot that strengthens the trust of the speaker, for instance. So while it's not the focus of the ad, it is there and look for ways to pepper these other ideas into it. Sometimes you may realize that one of these could play a larger role and that's fine. You can switch stuff around and move stuff. But for now this gets us focused on a strong rhetoric first. And as we go through the writing process, you'll see how things can change and morph as you go. So prioritize these and as we get into the writing process, you may find ways of including other elements on a smaller scale to really strengthen your ad. 14. Structuring Techniques: So next we're going to be talking about how to structure your ad. There are tons of ads out there. There's infomercials, branded narratives, product demos, all these different types of ads. So there's no real one-size-fits-all structure for every single video. But we will be talking about some of the common techniques that are used to structure and add. And in the order they would most likely be used. And then we'll be talking about how to execute them. It's not a matter of following this structure every single time. It's more a matter of understanding the core principles into what structuring an ad looks like. Sometimes an ad is just a simple story that promotes the brand or service. So in that case, you might want to be a little bit more creative with your structure. Some ads follow. We're kind of condensed three-act structure, and that's great. Other ads are just a joke like a setup and a punchline. That's great too. All of these can be incredibly effective. So I'll be covering the common techniques behind structuring and add. And then we'll be talking about how to implement them into your own project. 15. The Hook: So up first we have the hook. The hook is really the first impression. And if you're not hooked in the first five seconds, you will probably skip the ad. You've probably heard this before and even done it countless times yourself. In fact, more than 65% of people skip the ad. The first chance they get. Reality is as can be kind of annoying. But if you can captivate your viewer enough in those first five seconds, they may hang around a little bit longer. It's difficult to nail down exactly what makes a great hook. There are many different approaches that people have used and there's really no right answer. One of the reasons we use celebrity cameos so much is because a recognizable face is an immediate attention grabber. As soon as we see a face we recognize we're engaged, but we don't all have access to these ALS celebrities to use and all of our projects. So we gotta get a little bit more creative with it. Like I said, there's no one correct answer. But I think engagement comes from making the viewer think, if you're thinking about something, you're engaged, if we're making them think they're already hooked. Here are a few examples that I found and pay attention to the first few seconds, think about what you're feeling and more specifically, what thoughts you're having as you're watching them and how those thoughts that you're having can be used to yourself to engage your viewer. You can pose an interesting question. Have you ever thought about the other you, are you that you felt true or two? What would you say if you saw your life wasting away? You can build anticipation. In this ad by Google, you're already anticipating what the answer is going to be and you're anticipating what direction this ad is going to take. It's important that the payoff to the anticipation is satisfactory. If the payoff is lame or uninspired, you could lose. Your viewer. Would not be as beautiful as it is we want. You could provide new information with a factorise statistics like we talked about earlier. You don't have any friends. Or you can subvert an expectation. We love our new home. There's so much space. We have a guest room now, but we have aunts. You're slouching again, Ted. Expired, expired. Expired. Thanks anthony. All of these are really great ways to intrigue your viewer and engage the mind a little bit. Again, not every single video is built around having a great hook, but when you're writing your next script, think about ways that you can have your viewer think the hook is a little bit deeper than waving. A big look over here sign, you want to hold their attention and engagement comes from brain activity. So stimulate the mind and they're more likely to hear you out at least for another five seconds. 16. Problem & Solution: Number two is your problem and solution. For over 100 years we'd been scrunching and folding toilet paper. Finally, there's a better way. It's fairly self-explanatory, but the formula is to present a common and relatable problem and then show how the product solves that problem. This is a great place to start because it gets you thinking about your end consumer and not just as a filmmaker and all the fun, cool camera moves that you've always wanted to try. It gets you thinking about the audience that you're speaking to, why this product would help them. And now you can work backwards to present those solutions to your end viewer in an interesting and engaging way. Infomercials kinda gave this a bad rap and really abused this idea or this store, hard to handle, heavy hoses always end up tangled and cake. What a mess, but you can still do it with a bit more subtlety and a bit more taste. You can deliver in a few different ways. The infomercial way or slightly less blatant like this crest commercial. Clearly my whitening toothpaste is not cutting it. Time for white strips. Chris glamorous white white strips are the only ADA except, or you can take a more cinematic show, don't tell approach and build a problem and solution in a more narrative driven story. Tyler desperately wants Anita to like him, but doesn't want to sound unsure of himself. This time, tyler is determined to find the right words, the ones that will connect best with Anita, Grammarly helping you connect. 17. Remove Doubt: The next section is the removal of doubt. This is the section where you address any problems or criticisms that your field, that your market, your product might've had in the past and effectively debunk them in the ad. This is often done in a way that simultaneously promotes a feature. You might hear a telecommunications company say something like AT&T fiber delivers a faster Internet experience with 20 times faster upload speeds and cable. This is promoted as a feature, but we as a viewer are also painfully aware of how slow Internet speeds have been in the past. A common problem in the telecommunications field is having slow Internet speeds. So by addressing that problem and saying it's much faster, we've debunked that issue and we as a consumer, or a bit more likely to be persuaded into buying that product because they've addressed a concern that we had. So think about things that may concern a viewer about the space that you're in. And then look for ways that you can debunk those by setting your product apart and giving the viewer as little doubt about the product as possible, no matter where you go. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Your call goes through. Can you hear me now? Good. 18. Call to Action: Next is the call to action. The call to action is generally the last thing that we see in the video, but it's not always, the call to action is basically what we want from the viewer in the ad. So by saying, check out our website for more information, that's a call to action. We're asking the viewer to take an action, and that action is visiting the website. The biggest thing about your call to action, as it needs to be easily digestible. If your call to action is written in text, it needs to be read and remembered within two to three seconds. Or if your call to action is in voiceover or some sort of on-screen action. It needs to be delivered as simply and concisely as possible. Try to make sure you pick just one call to action instead of several. I've had situations where clients have wanted to have their phone number, the tagline, the website, their store location, all this information all included at the end of the video. And that might seem reasonable to some, just having as much information as possible and let the viewer decide. However, more information tends to hinder response. It's a little bit confusing for the viewer because there's so much to digest and usually you have just a few seconds to actually communicate this stuff. And if you are actually interested in the product, It's kind of difficult to figure out where it is just supposed to go to get more information. Not to mention, it's also harder to digest, which is ultimately less memorable to anybody who just saw your video. Here's an example from grammarly, the call to action as blunt and straightforward, go to grammarly.com to download. It's telling you exactly what to do. The text shows you the website only, no secondary information or options, just the website and the voice-over also tells you what to do. Go into grammarly.com to download this as clear and concise. And so if you actually are interested in the product, you know exactly what to do to get it. So consider the objective and the simplest way to communicate that information and don't be afraid to speak bluntly. 19. The Hero Shot: Lastly, we have the hero shot. I'm including this as the footnote here because it doesn't really fall into one specific spot in your structure. Sometimes it's the opening shots, sometimes it comes in with the problem solution section and various other times throughout the video, it's really your clients favorite shot to see. So what makes a great hero shot? Again, every technique or method we're talking about in this course falls within a range of complexity. You don't have to have the obvious hero shot or product shot in your commercial at all. Is it a good thing to have? Yeah. But it could be subtle. It can be complex. It really depends on the project, but there are levels to all of this. But if you do want a great hero shot, here's a couple of things to think about. A great hero shot is the one shot in your commercial that tells us everything we need to know about what you're selling. As you might guess, the hero shot gets its name from the movies where the lead actor stands tall or rises from the ashes in the movie trailer. This is one of the key shots to have because it tells us a lot about what to expect from the movie, who the actor is, the role they're playing, where they are and what's happening. This guy, Maria, that's essentially the idea here. Have your product looking great within the context of your scene. And if you can have the shot tell us as much as possible with the one shot. That's really what makes a great hero shot. The ability for this one shot to stand on its own and tell us everything we need to know. Again, there are levels to it and we'll talk about all of that in a moment. But if you're trying to make the best hero shot possible, That's what you would want. This makes the hero shot the anchor of your commercial. If you were asked to strip away 99% of the content in your commercial, this would be the one shot that you keep. One thing that really helps make your product look important is movement. So camera movement or product movement. It doesn't always have to be a big, sweeping camera, crane move. It could be a subtle push in or whatever works best for the commercial that you're trying to make. But having some motion really elevates your product who are looking, for lack of a better word, epic or important? Yes, we want to tell great stories and all these other things. But at the end of the day it is a commercial and we want to make sure that this product is getting as much attention as possible. And it shouldn't just be thrown in with whatever other B-roll you might be collecting on your shoot. Put some real thought into it and it can really be a good place to base your script on and kind of anchor your entire story. 20. Project: Bringing it All Together: So now that we have all this information, what do we do with it? These are really great methods, but trying to include all of this stuff all at once can be overwhelming. We've covered a lot here so far, but you don't need to think about all of these as necessities, but instead, think of it like building a toolkit. Once you've got all the tools, you can pick and choose the right tool for the job. The idea being the next time you speak to a client or whomever, you can now immediately start mentally preparing the tools that you're going to need, but you don't necessarily need all of them for every job. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. So we're gonna go back to our tier list here because there are so many different types of ads, not everything will fit every single time. So in our tier list, we're going to figure out exactly which things would work best for our idea or for our product. And again, we're gonna go from most to least important and we'll just include them with what we've already got in our tier list. Really, writing is hard. So the idea is to pick a focus and then pepper everything else in as you go further down the tier list, the less brainpower you have to dedicate to those things. Maybe you're building your whole ad around product shots. Maybe you're making something like an iPhone add. And all you have in your first tier is logos and product shots, and that's perfectly fine. There's no rule on how many can be in each one. Just think about what would best serve your idea, the brief, the product, the story, or the imagery that you've collected. Watch other ads and think about how the tier list might look if you were making that ad, is there a strong hook in the beginning or does it ignore that? Is it emotionally driven, or is it driven by facts and logic, or is it one of the others, or are there any that are missing entirely? Now with these ideas, you can start to study other ads and figure out how they've chosen or use different combinations of all these different methods to get their message across. So as we're going to talk about in a moment, writing is really just a series of passes. And with every pass, your script gets a little bit stronger. But think about what the core of your ad is going to be and that will be your first tier. And then as we go through the different passes, you can try to introduce and give more thought to what's in your second, third tier. 21. The Writing Workflow: So now that we've covered a lot of the theory on what to write, it's time to actually write it. First off, there's no real correct way to write whatever your process is, as long as it works, it's totally valid. If you're a brand new writer, take these ideas and try them out, but don't be afraid to look outside and find some other thoughts and ideas from other writers and how they write and what their processes. I think first and foremost, commit yourself to the idea that writing is rewriting. Really any, any writer of any experience can tell you this. So first off, think about writing as a series of passes. I think this is true for most art forms really. If you think about a drawing, you usually start with a few shapes and fill in the main features and work your way up to shading and lighting and et cetera, et cetera. Riding is very much the same. You start with your basic idea, your basic shape, and you fill in all the details as you go with each pass, your script gets a little bit stronger and a little bit more refined until you feel like you can't really refine it any further. I also want to stress that it's totally normal and honestly almost guaranteed that at some point you'll doubt yourself during the writing process. It's honestly true for any part of the filmmaking process. Often for me, I'll get an idea that excites me and my first draft. I'm excited and I'm, I'm inspired by it. And then maybe by my second, third, or final draft, I'm starting to doubt if the idea was ever any good to begin with. Just remember that there was something about the idea that got you inspired in the first place as you spend a certain amount of time with a project, there's nothing about it that can really excite you or inspire you anymore. So that's when that doubt starts to set in and you lose that sort of exciting feeling that you had when you first came up with the idea. Just remember that there was something about it that got you to begin with and it's worth finishing. 22. Bonus Lesson: Know the Lingo: As a quick little bonus lesson, you're going to want to have some familiarity with the lingo that we're going to be using as we write our script. You have to remember that this script is like an instruction manual for the director or anybody else that you're working with onset, I'll do my best to give you a brief overview of what each of these shots mean and what they are. But I won't be able to give you a in-depth psychology on when and where the shots are used and why. But I'll do my best to give you an overview for movements. We have the static shot, pan, tilt, zoom, role, tracking shot, dolly, dolly out, trucking shot, and the rack focus. For angles. We have the wide, medium, close, low angle, high angle, Dutch angle, overhead, aerial. In framing, we have the single shot to shot, three shot point of view. Over the shoulder. For other scripting terms, we have the establishing shot, exterior, interior, cut to match cut, smash, cut, insert shot, dissolve, and fade. These are the shots and angles that you need to know when you need to be specific in your script, you may want to have an over the shoulder shot of character a, but a single shot of character B. If it's not necessary to specify it, you don't have to, but when it is important to specify in the script are for the story. Make sure you do so, so the director knows what it is they're shooting. 23. Pen & Paper: Laying the Foundation: So now let's start actually writing our script. Aside from the note-taking and everything else we've already done, I always like to start my first draft on a piece of paper. You'll see why I do this. There's a bit of a reason behind the workflow, but it's also nice to just have everything out in front of you on a piece of paper. I think it's because it's tangible. Like you have something that you can see your process and all your thoughts and ideas. I used to write everything out on my phone and that was really great for awhile. But over time I've been more and more drawn to the pen and the page. I know we've been doing a lot of talking. So it might not seem clear exactly how this all comes together. But in real time when you're putting together a script, this stuff happens a lot quicker. Like you've done your background, you've done your research. You've started to gather some inspiration and some ideas. And when that shot hits you and you're thinking about all of these ethos, pathos, logos, all these different things. Those things are already built into your mind when you've been looking at, um, different inspiration and getting your mood board started. Eventually some idea will hit you and that's when I start to write on the page. So if I see a shot that inspires me and I can start to see the before or after. I'll immediately start writing that step down. And it can be messy. It can be all over the place. I like to use a little writing book like this so I can write out my ideas over here. And if I come up with something that needs to go in-between or whatever, I'll write over here with an arrow and all these different things. So it can be totally messy and totally disjointed. The idea is just to get your ideas out on the page and then start to connect those things as you go. So similarly to the mood board, this is like a collage of different ideas and directions that you might take. And the more ideas you jot down, the more you can start to move puzzle pieces around and fit them together. I'm writing everything here by the way, I'm writing cut too, and I'm writing dissolve, I'm writing pen tilt, whatever, anything that I do to communicate the idea to myself as I go, I can abbreviate or tighten up language later. None of that stuff really matters too much. I'm just literally telling myself what the shot is. Cut to. Camera, dolly in on Jane, looking out the window and wide shot from doorway or two shot of Jane and John looking at each whatever. I'm just making sure that everything is written out so that I can see it visually when I come back to my script later on, sometimes this stage just pours out of you and other times it can be a lot more difficult. That's why I'm giving you a lot of different examples or information. I do find for myself, like I'll have an idea that I saw somewhere on Pinterest or at some point when I was building my mood board. And everything will just come to me. I'll just think like, Oh, he should be in the forest. And then all of a sudden I just see everything built out ahead of me and I'll write all of that and then I'll go back and I'll revisit our tier list of like, okay, I want it to be a bit more statistically driven or whatever. And then I can start to introduce those things after I've already got the bulk of my work done. Once I've got all my ideas out on the page and I've built a structure that I can follow. That's when we get into our second pass and we start to really clean it up. Sometimes for me, I'll have a beginning or an ending in mind like a punchline or something and nothing to really fill in the middle. So if you have that ending in mind, make sure you get that out on the page. Because if you're just thinking about it, it sucks when you lose an idea. Sometimes there's a certain compulsion to write everything in chronological order. And if you have an idea for the ending in mind, do you think I'll get to that later? And as you start writing, maybe you take a break, you go for a walk or make a coffee or whatever. And at some point if you take a long enough rig, you are risking losing that idea and that always sucks. So make sure even if all you have is a punchline to a joke that came to you and you want to end your video in that way. Write that down right at the bottom of the page and then you have everything else to work up towards it. Try not to think just chronologically. Get your ideas out on the page. First. Try to follow your inspiration as much as you can, as far as you can. And if you get hung up on a connecting piece somewhere along the way, just write down whatever it was that you were looking for. However you can articulate it to yourself and move on. I'd like to follow my inspiration as much as I can. And if you lose that train of thought, sometimes it's hard to get back to it. So just follow that inspiration and come back and fill in those gaps later. Again, this is just the first draft. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is kinda like taking a paint roller and painting out your first layer of primer. You can come back and do the edges and corners later. For now, you just want to get as much of the wall painted as possible. 24. Writing Is Re-writing: Now after I feel like I've got a good first draft and the foundation has been laid and I have a beginning, middle, and end. I take that page out or those pages, move it aside and I'll rewrite it to a fresh page because I'm copying my work here. Rewriting it in this way allows me to break it down a little more and see it from a new perspective as I'm writing this line and knowing where I'm heading in the next line, I might realize, Oh, I need to transition in some way, or the dialogue is a bit clunky or whatever it is. Now I can focus on the details a little bit more and I have all of my ideas and my foundation laid and I'm not going to lose any of that. So I can now focus on the details and bridging the gaps as I need to. Any areas that I might have skipped over or things that I thought I'll come back to later. Now I can spend a little bit more time figuring out how those ideas are going to work because I can see exactly where it is ongoing. Now that you're rewriting this in chronological order, you can see where things didn't really make sense. Like, Oh, the screen direction here doesn't really match from shot to shot. So you can start to bridging those gaps a little bit and you can start to rework how the shots are done to polish up the video, maybe you'll realize like, I need a reaction shot here before I cut to this insert shot or whatever. And you can start to really flesh it out and strengthen your video. And now that we have our first draft written, I can refer to my tier list and I can build in these other things that we talked about into my second draft because all of my ideas are there and I know where I'm going so I can start to punch it up a little bit and elevate the story. This is the draft where the puzzle really starts to come together for me and everything starts to click the first draft. It's really about figuring out the structure and getting your beats together and beating the path that your story is or your video is going to take. This one is where we really get to craft our video. And you may still move things around considerably. You might move a chunk from the beginning to the middle or, or whatever. That's totally fine. This is just taking your first draft and really polishing it up. So have fun with it and start sculpting your video. 25. Formatting Your Script: So now that we have our first, second draft written out on paper, by this stage, I'm usually feeling pretty good about my script. But not only do I want to have a digital copy of it, but I also want to have something I can present to a client or a director or whomever might be reading my script. This is another reason why I like to start on paper because it forces me to rewrite a third time when I write it onto my computer. And almost every single time I will end up rewording things are changing lines here and there again because I now have a much clearer image on what the final product is going to be from our first two drafts. That now when I'm rewriting it into the computer, I'm able to take a further step back and see the broader picture and change things as I go. And it forces me to rewrite it the third time, even if I'm just basically copying my second draft, there's always something that trips me up. There's always a piece of dialogue that I think that doesn't quite sound right or, or whatever it is. And the more times I can rewrite it, the more kinks I'm working out as I go and the smoother it becomes when you're presenting a script to a client, having a properly formatted script is both easier to visualize for the client and also gives your work at professional touch, the format you use may change a little bit depending on what it is you're making. You've probably seen a TV or movie script before. But in advertising, the industry standard is the AV script or the audio visual script. In an AV script, you have your audio and your visuals broken down into two columns. So in the audio, you might write down your voiceover script or a dialogue, sound effects or music used things like that. And then the visuals you can write down where and when things are taking place on screen as the audio is playing. This just gives you a really easy, concise way to break down how the timing of the ad is taking place and what is happening when. Whereas in a traditional TV or movie script, it can be a little bit more difficult to figure out what's happening exactly when and in advertising are often working with a minute or less. So the timing is really important. To write out an AV script will start from the top with a project description. Usually it looks something like this. We'll write in our client's name, the date, the project. This can be a working title or even a project number than who it was written by what version of the script. This is the duration or total runtime. From there, we can start writing and breaking our script down into the visual and audio columns as we talked about earlier, when you're writing, you want to be as clear as possible in terms of direction, but also concise. So if there's a specific angle or shot type involved, we need to know those things. And there are a few standard abbreviations that you can use to save yourself a little bit of space. V effects. If you know the shot needs visual effects, you can simply write VFX ahead of the description. And this lets us know what's happening and informs us what we need to think about. We have V0, which means voiceover, O S, which stands for off-screen. This is for when there's a character in your scene who is speaking, but we're seeing something different onscreen. S f x, which means sound effect. And lastly, montage, which is basically as it sounds, we can include several shots in one block of text rather than breaking it down shot by shot. This is for when you have a voice-over playing or an off-camera dialogue happening. And we see several shots back to back to back. Just write montage at the beginning and then just write out everything else that you're seeing. There will often be a couple of drafts done of this audio visual script because you've got notes from clients and et cetera, et cetera. But in terms of what we're doing today, this is generally my final rewrite in this audio visual script. Now you can see how everything lines up and make sure everything is timed out perfectly. If there are any gaps or overly congested areas, maybe you realize that your voice-over is a bit long. You can start to tighten that up and, and condense that as much as necessary. 26. Conclusion: So that's about it. We've covered how to come up with an idea. What ideas work, how to find inspiration without ripping somebody off? The different methods that go into building a engaging commercial. All these different things. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope you found this course helpful, whether you're brand new or someone with a bit more experience. I hope I was able to offer some insights that maybe you hadn't considered before. Or if nothing else just helped break down what kind of workflow I use. And maybe something that you can incorporate into your own workflow. Marketing is an incredibly complex and nuanced world. So by no means is this the end? There's always more to learn. So I encourage you to keep looking for more information. Follow advertising agencies on social media. That's something that I do. It keeps my feed fresh with new content and ideas. And just keeps you up-to-date on what's happening in the marketing world. Above all, just keep practicing, keep writing more spec scripts for different objects that you have around your house or brands that you see on line that you're just a fan of and work on incorporating a lot of these ideas that we've talked about today. Even if you're writing things with no intention of ever having them produced, the more you write, the more you have to refer to later on. And I almost guarantee you you'll write something that sticks with you and later in a paid project you'll end up using. So just keep writing. Please feel free to send in anything, whether it's your drafts or a mood board or your final product, maybe before and afters of your first draft and your final draft. I'll be giving some feedback or offering critiques and trying to help as much as I can. Or if you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a message. I hope to have more filmmaking classes coming up soon, specifically in advertising. What goes into filming and add or editing, color grading, all of these things. So I hope to have more out for you very soon. I often work as a one man band type of filmmakers. So a lot of my content will be geared towards that. And I hope that I can give you some more information on how to actually get what you've written here today. Produced. Thank you again for watching and I hope to see you all again soon.