How to make a commercial

We've worked on a few commercials around here over the years.  Here's a great breakdown of how Wes Plate from Automatic Duck created a Home Depot spot back in the day.  A little inspiration for getting away from VO with Broll and a whooshed on logo.  

Home Depot How-To from Wes Plate on Vimeo.

Avoiding mestakes and errrors in design

This article is in two installments so it kinda long but there is some good stuff from Steven Bradley. I like how he defines errors and what happens to cause them and how to limit them.
Part I
Part II

Visual concepting design by Neville Page

Neville has been doing some amazing work on big flims. In this clip you get a preview of JJ Abrams new movie "Super 8" and some insight on what it is like to work with JJ.

This Doesn't Work Chula Vista

It almost works, but if you stop and think about if you have never seen a Chula Vista Resort commercial or anything from them, this spot makes them look like crap. To put 25 seconds of that out there and to only recant in the last 5 seconds is risky. A better approach is to show your 'joke' material for 15 sec, then say "People don't come here because of the commercials" and end with some kick butt footage.


I mean, I get the concept, but the first time I saw the commercial, I was so appalled by the quality that I wasn't even paying attention to the message. You probably don't even remember it either, now that you are reading this. 


It's clever, by a half, but if you are a new family moved to Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee, is this the first thing you want them to see?

Social Media Revolution

It's always good to have a reminder about what direction Media is going - whether it's websites, video, text, or anything else.

Welcome To Macintosh

If you haven't seen this documentary on CNBC check it out. It covers Apple's difficulties as a company as well as its successes. I really like the desire within Apple to create aesthetically pleasing products.

Previs How its used

This is a very well put together video on how Previs is used in modern movie making.