Short Form Advertising

Producing a great piece of advertising is a mixture of precision planning, stellar direction and a whole lot of technical expertise.

A man with dark hair and a beard looking into an open refrigerator, with canned drinks, lemons, and vegetables inside.
A man with glasses and a beard, wearing a gray jacket, stands outdoors in front of a modern building with vertical wooden panels. He has a brown backpack on his shoulder and appears to be looking to the side.
Young woman with curly hair holding a smartphone on a balcony overlooking a cityscape with hills, water, and cloudy sky.
Nighttime rendering of Climate Pledge Arena with illuminated exterior and surrounding walkway, featuring a modern, pyramid-shaped roof and glass facade.

What’s the process?

  • Woman leaning on a wooden countertop, writing on papers with a pen, near a large window with outdoor greenery visible.

    Pre-Production

    Easily the most underrated part of your shoot. Plan the Shoot, Shoot the plan.
    We do everything from complex scheduling, storyboarding, scriptwriting and prep meetings galore.

    *Note: It is imperative that you know the purpose of the video. Where does it live? What do you want it to do? This will help us give context to how to shoot it.

  • A woman sitting at a round dining table using her phone, with two other women using their phones in the kitchen area behind her, and one sitting on a window ledge in the background.

    Production

    Lights, Camera, Action - that old cliché.
    Everything you plan in pre-production shows up here. All the lighting, crew, crafty, fancy gadgets. This is where our team shows up to shine (in person, instead of behind the scenes, like in all the other stages).

  • Four women exercising on stationary bikes in a dimly lit room with purple and pink neon lights.

    Post-Production

    The crew is wrapped, the camera is broken down - now what?
    We offload our dailies and let our editing team get to work. Everything editing, colour and sound will be polished here, ready for delivery.

  • A woman in blue athletic wear sitting on a stationary exercise bike in a room with a gray wall and a potted plant.

    Delivery

    The video is done. Now what? That old adage about putting it online and it “goes viral” doesn’t hold weight anymore. You need to put advertising spend behind it for it to go anywhere. Remember back in Pre-Production when we were asking you where this video lives at the end? This is where that component shows up.

    *Note: Please do not forget this stage. It’s absolutely crucial to get eyeballs on it.

FAQs

  • This question is by far the most common question we get. Even a 15 second ad can be as complicated and time consuming to make as a 2-3 minute explainer video.

    For example:
    If you have a 15 second ad where a character is running perpendicular to camera, and the backgrounds change every second, that’s 15 locations we’d need to find, and go to each of them on our shoot days.

    vs.

    1 Day shoot in a studio with one character speaking to camera for 2-3 minutes. Much simpler!

    The more complex the concept, the more expensive the video will be.

  • Of course we can just make a video. We’ve done this so many times in the past that we’re making a point to say it at the beginning:
    A video that’s planned nowhere, goes nowhere.
    It also helps us in production to know if we’re shooting for a 9x16 aspect instagram ad or a 4K cinema ad. These are two different formats, and we have to shoot them differently.

  • We shoot our projects mostly on our own RED Gemini (5K). In specific circumstances we’d always consider on shooting with ARRI if possible.

  • This really depends on which market you’re in and what time of year you’re posting and which platform you’re using.

    For example, during holiday time in December, large corporations hold up most of the bandwidth on what you see on advertising. So much that your money won’t go as far as you hope because your spot won’t be seen as much. If you’re looking into this as a way to amplify your content, speak to us early on so we can devise a game plan on how to approach this.