My First Commercial (and my first post)

[Jackson Hager]

Hi all, this is my first post here, so I thought it should include some video. This is an ad for a chamber ballet here in Eugene, Oregon called Ballet Fantastique. It was for a show of theirs called "Visions d'Amour" that took place in November 2009. It aired on local cable (Comcast Spotlight) for two weeks, which was pretty awesome. It was shot with a Z1U in about two hours. Created very much on the fly (we had no idea what we wanted when we went in the door) but I like it.

I'm very interested in your feedback and comments. Please watch in HD, by the way.

I'm excited to be part of the dvinfo community and I look forward to posting more stuff as it comes my way!

Visions d'Amour 30 second TV spot on Vimeo

[David Barnett]

Really good for a local commercial. Why the big Comcast end tag the last 5 seconds though, was it a promo campaign you made for them?!

[Michael Ojjeh]

Welcome to the forum Jackson,
I think it was a good commercial, the only thing I see is when the dancer landed on the floor which I assume It was a green screen you can see some of the lines in the floor which can be fixed with some tweaking in post.

[Jackson Hager]

Yeah, the floor and backdrop were just this huge white sheet. I tried to get rid of wrinkles as much as possible with light and by stretching it tight, then I did what I could in post without totally blowing everything out (which was hard with so many highlights, but live and learn).

The large Comcast logo at the end is because Comcast donated the airtime (this ballet is non-profit) and Comcast's condition was that the last 5 seconds of the spot be their logo.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad to be here!

[Bryan Gilchrist]

Looks good. Seems a little more risque/vaudeville than ballet to me, though.

For the Comcast bump, I would have put "Brought to you in part by...", otherwise it seems that Comcast is putting it on.

[Sverrir Fridriksson]

I liked the visuals very much, not sure about the background "crackling", was the music maybe taken directly of vinyl? I'm sure many will like it, though.

Welcome to the forum, you will find that if you have any problems with anything, you can just ask and a few hours later you probably won't have any problems. It really is a fantastic community with everyone trying to help you out.

[Jackson Hager]

Looks good. Seems a little more risque/vaudeville than ballet to me, though.

Yeah, the performance was themed around turn-of-last-century French music halls and such, so can-can dancers and the like. Plus, who wants to see a commercial full of ballet moves? You can see that at the show. Now a commercial of cute dancers in corsets, that's something everyone can get behind.

not sure about the background "crackling", was the music maybe taken directly of vinyl? I'm sure many will like it, though.

The music is a mix of the real song "Whatever Lola Wants" as recorded by Sarah Vaughan (about the first 5 secs) then the piece without words as arraigned by the ballet's composer. The scratch was added, again to fit with the theme of the ballet, but I admit it might by too loud.

For the Comcast bump, I would have put "Brought to you in part by...", otherwise it seems that Comcast is putting it on.

Unfortunately, they were pretty strict about where and how their logo was presented. But since they donated thousands of dollars of airtime, I don't mind too much.