Three new commercial spots

[Spencer Houck]

While in production of our new short "Greasy Lake", par-t-com found itself in need of some funds. (how unlikely, right?) Well thankfully our buddy John Swartz was able to line us up with a few commercial gigs from businesses in the Columbus, Ohio area.

The first 30 second spot is for Tennis Ltd. and can be downloaded here:
http://business.par-t-com.net/TLTD_spot.mov
right click + save as

The second two spots were created for Kohr Royer Griffith Real Estate.
Spot One:
http://business.par-t-com.net/KRG_spot_1.mov
right click + save as
Spot Two:
http://business.par-t-com.net/KRG_spot_2.mov
right click + save as

Please let us know what you think of our virgin voyage into commercial production.

Thanks,
Spencer

[Spencer Houck]

It seems as though the post got buried fairly fast, does anyone have any comments on the spots? We're hoping to secure more of these commercial opportunities to fund our narrative pieces.

Though the businesses were pleased with our work we would love to know from fellow videographers what we can do to up our quality level that extra notch. We trust the experience that many of the posters here at DVinfo have over us "newbies."

Any and all comments, concerns, or questions please post.

Thanks,
Spencer and the rest of par-t-com

[Linda Schodowsky]

Hi Spencer...

I just checked out your 3 commercials. Here is my take on them. Now, I am not a professional unlike most of the others here, so I am speaking mostly from a consumer point of view. I can comment, however, on a couple things here and there (I got some photog background). Here goes:

I did not like the first commercial... kind of gray looking. It did not capture my interest at all and I wasn't able to relate it to the product being sold.

I liked the second one... too gray looking though. I liked the narrative and how you kind of panned from each shot of the apartments/houses. The music too. It really captured my interest and I thought it was the type of commercial that would stick in my head (a good thing in this case!).

I liked the third one... not as gray looking. Same thing with the 2nd one. Good narrative... I liked the panning between each of the houses/apartments.

Hope this helps! Did you use a VX2000 to film these?

[Josh Brusin]

the tennis one could have been funnier... less slappy and the audio at the end at the very least didn't compress very well.

I liked the guy eating in the leaky apt. very cool. The finished basement needed to be lit better to appropriately see the shabbiness...

overall very nice!

[Rob Wilson]

Good work, might want to consider different fonts that would look better once the get on the tube.

[Nicholi Brossia]

I liked all three, but do have a couple suggestions.

commercial 1: I like the idea and found it humorous. However, it went fairly slow. By speeding up the edits, you would make the commercial quite a bit funnier yet still effective. Definately keep the part when the ball gets lodged in the racket... that was funny.

commercial 2&3: Usually repeated beauty shots are extremely boring, but you made it more interesting with the whip pans. I also like the intros. One thing I noticed is that the first newspaper ad shots were almost too quick to read. Leaving this shot up for a beat or two would give the viewer a chance to read it before jumping into the story.

Overall, good job.

[Rob Lohman]

Pretty neat! As others have pointed out (and I think I did on one
of your other shorts as well) there is something very wrong with
the contrast ("gray" as someone else calls it). Black is gray and it
just looks very "milky".

[Spencer Houck]

Thanks everyone for your responses,

To the reoccurring gray comment I will have to blame our web delivery. We have been rather consistently told that our stuff has been too dark, so we bumped up the gamma so that maybe the video doesn't look the best, but at least everyone with any monitor settings should be able to see it. Same goes for Devin's web compression of End of The Line.

Linda: A Panasonic DVX100 was used to shoot these spots, and I believe a PD-170 for the whip pan car mount shots of the various properties.

Josh: Thanks for the response; yeah we've gotten some mixed comments from whomever we show the first spot to. In Devin's credit, who edited these spots, for what footage we had he pulled off the best cut of his ability.

Rob Wilson: I believe we checked them all out on television, and we're ok. The final tennis spot's graphics are actually minorly different than the ones seen in this web version. The white has been made a pale orange, and the green has been toned down in order to avoid major bleeding issues.

Nicholi: I agree that the first card is up and gone a little too fast for my liking.

Rob Lohman: Yeah, my Greasy Lake trailer was criticized the most due to people not being able to see the project, so I bet Devin just overcorrected the issue in Cleaner.

Thanks everyone, we all appreciate your comments and concerns!
-spencer and all of those par-t-com ppl