EVERY STEP of Commercial FILMMAKING Explained: in 10min

Hi, I hope you're doing well. If you're having a bad day, you know what? It's totally okay. If you're having a stressful day, that is normal. Life can be very stressful. And speaking of stress, I don't know if you saw this, but the director of Squid Game, it's a small TV series, no one's really talking about it, but he lost six of his teeth from stress. And that incredible stress that the director from Squid Game experienced is common just even on shooting TV commercials. Every TV commercial ad that you see has dozens if not hundreds of people who've worked on it and has gone through months of planning, pre-production and post-production just to get to that 30 second block. Commercials, it's not that simple. So I wanna give you guys the whole process. Maybe you're a director starting off, maybe you're not even in film, but you'll find this interesting about all the steps that go from coming up with an idea to getting it on TV. So let's talk about that. Home is about advertising. The reason I'm here is because I feel pretty strongly about the contribution advertising makes to the strength of our country. Oh, hi there. So let's talk about this process. First, there is a client and this client has a need. They wanna sell a product or get some exposure. They want their message out there. So they first approach an ad agency. And well, technically, they actually go through a whole pitching process. There's multiple ad agencies all bidding for this client's work, but let's just say that this client and the ad agency already have a partnership. So the client has the product and they wanna sell it. This is when the ad agency comes up with different ideas for the campaign. They pitch multiple ideas. You're gonna find out in commercials, there is just so much pitching and so much approval. Once the ad agency has pitched those campaigns and the client is comfortable with one solid direction, this is when they begin to decide what commercials they wanna shoot, what needs to be print, what should just be a web ad, an annoying banner that pops up on a website for you, and what actually needs to be seen on TV. You've always watched your favorite YouTuber. Now's your chance to smell like him too. Once this happens, this is when the ad agency puts a brief out to all the production companies. And if it has a lot of money, they'll put the call out to all the biggest production companies around the world. This is when the production companies, this is the people who actually make the film, begin presenting different directors to the ad agency. And the creative teams at the ad agency have to look at hundreds of reels as directors. This is why for you as a director, if you can find a niche, if you can find a style, and you can set yourself apart from other directors, this is really helpful. It's why copying everyone else's work won't set you apart and won't get you chosen that often as a director, because ad agencies are looking at hundreds and thousands of directors reels every day. And once the ad agency has gone through all of those directors reels, they whittle it down to their three, their top three choices. And this is when the ad agency will brief those directors. And well, that's when I finally come into the picture. And so as mentioned, this is when I come in as a director. Once they briefed us, they tell us what the campaign is about, what they're looking for. And then me as a director, I usually get hopefully a couple of days. It's getting crazy sometimes. So like tomorrow, you have to build what you call a director's treatment. And here's mine that I built. This is for that spot I did. I'll put the link below. It's the Molson Canadian one that we did for the NHL and the Stanley Cup. This is a brief. And this was a relatively small one I put together here that was just a couple of pages long, but it explains here how I'm gonna direct it, what I think it's gonna look like, the vibe, you know, talking about shooting inside a beer place, the memories of Canadian hockey, the brand, all of that. This is what I build. And then I go back and I pitch that ad agency how I'm gonna shoot this, why I'm the right director, and why I'm gonna make a different commercial than everyone out there. Then the ad agency takes those three pitches from me and two other directors who I don't know who they are, and they choose the best one or the one that they think is the best fit. And they present that to client. So then usually after a long nervous weekend where me as a director, I'm waiting to hear back. Did I get the job? Did I not? Well, usually at that point, I try to forget about the job, move on to other things. I get a phone call from my agent and they're usually talking very slow when I haven't got the job. Hey, Mark, I have some news for you. Or they're talking very fast when they're excited about it. Hey, Mark, great news, we gotta get moving. And that usually means that I've won the pitch. Then you get on a call with the agency and you go through all the pleasantries and a bit of BS where we're just so excited to be working with you, Mark. And this is when you gotta come up with your script. Usually in your director's treatment, you have a brief script, but this is when you really begin to nail things down. Once you've written that script, you present it to the agency. Once they sign off on that script, that's when all the pre-production begins. So first comes the location brief. Me as a director, I have to write what I want in the locations for this job. And that goes to a location scout. And he begins scouting around the city, around the country, around the world for the specific locations that I'm asking for. Then comes the casting brief. I have to put together a brief explaining what I'm looking for in the cast members, who we wanna put in this spot. How old are they? What race are they? What do they look like? What are their skillsets? What sets them apart? Once I get back all these digital photos of locations, and I hate this part, because I have to sit there looking through hundreds and hundreds of photos of locations that I've never been to, I have to choose my top five, and we actually go scout them. We physically go to those locations to choose the right ones. Sometimes, like for the deli car Nikon piece that I did, I had to actually fly to Greece to begin looking at those. So I had to choose the ones that I thought were good before I ever got to Greece. And then once I got there, we started looking at them. After I go to that location scout, we choose our top one, and then we begin the casting. This is where we go to a casting agency, and we sit in front of lots of people. And for these O2 spots I did, I had to sit through like 150 in-person casting sessions over the course of two days, which it was crazy, and it was fun, but it was also very strange. I don't speak German. After all the casting, and usually at that point, my mind is a bit of mush, I give them my top choices, and the agency deliberates it, and comes back to you with their top choices. So once I have my top choices, the agency has their top choices for both location, and cast, and wardrobe, we go to the client, and we present all these choices. And they give back their feedback. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's completely insane and confusing that they're actually humans who have real jobs. So then we get together, and we have this sort of pre-pre-production meeting where we deliberate all these final choices, and we come up with our number one selects. That's when I finally get to go do my tech scout. This is when I take my crew, my cinematographer, my art director, I even take my lighting, my grip, my gaffer, and we go to the physical locations, and we begin to come up with a plan of when, where, and how we're gonna shoot this. And this is when the assistant director comes in the most crucial, because they begin scheduling out everything. Then you go do a wardrobe fitting, and you choose their clothing, you choose how their hair is gonna be on the day, because once you get to set, you can't really be making these decisions anymore. You gotta be shooting it. That's why there's so much pre-production. Then, finally, comes the PPM. This is the pre-production meeting. There's been a ton of pre-production at this point, but this is the final meeting where you go over this 180-page document with the client, and the agency, and the assistant director, and, and, and. There's usually about 30, 40 people on this. I was just on one recently for a big bank here in Canada, and there was about 45 people on the call. And everyone gets to give their two cents. Some of the comments are amazing, super helpful, and you're like, wow, we didn't catch that. Other comments, you actually wonder how the person got out of the bed, and put their pants on that day, and raised some children, because they're so insane, and so mind-boggling. You can probably tell that I'm kind of over commercials. The final thing is camera prep. We do some camera tests, we choose our lenses, we look at some of the wardrobe on camera, perhaps, see if it's all going to work for the final day. This is when I go over the final scripts, and I spend a lot of time with the assistant director. Sometimes we'll actually go back to the location once more, and plan it exactly where we're gonna be. We'll look at where the light's gonna be, and we come up with a whole plan. Meanwhile, there's like 30 other people working on this, getting location releases, paying for permits, making sure that the talent has somewhere to go, coordinating food, coming up with the schedules. There is so many people working at this in such an intense amount of time. It's incredible that this gets done hundreds of times daily. It's probably thousands of times daily by different film crews all around the world. Finally, you get to go to the shoot. Again, as my mantra is, it's better to be stressed than it is to be confused. And this is why you wanna do all those pre-productions so when you get to set, you can just make decisions. But this is usually when the client finally wakes up to what the commercial is actually gonna look like, and what they're actually spending their money on. And so they begin actually making some pretty crazy requests. I worked for a very large company that makes lenses, and they told me I could never show flares in their commercial because it made their lenses look bad. When in fact, I think flares are the best thing to happen to cinematography since color. But they're the ones paying for it. This is filmmaking, and there are so many people involved in the process. And ultimately, I kinda stumbled into this process. I didn't realize there were so many steps as a director. I had just been shooting on my own by myself with very small crews, and the next thing I know, there was tons and tons of meetings, and people asking me lots and lots of questions. And it can be fairly overwhelming and fairly stressful. I find commercials an environment where there's a lot of people who are afraid to lose their job, and so they're afraid to take risks. It's kind of why I more so prefer documentary, because there's just a few people who are willing to try new things, try some risks, and there's no clients who have to approve it. But this is not to disparage commercials. We need them, it helps the economy going, it gives a lot of people amazing work, and it's the chance to flex some of your creative skills when you have the opportunity. And if you wanna know more about the process actually on set, leave some comments below. I'm happy to break down all of this filmmaking stuff and give you guys everything that I've experienced over the past 10 years in this industry, both as a camera person, as a director, and even as an editor. But if you're interested in that, let me know, leave a comment below, and I hope that you've enjoyed this video giving you the complete process on how commercials are made. I'll see you guys on the next one.