Mock Coffee Commercial - My process and reflection

Giovanni Peresson, 23/05/23

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The Idea and pre production:

for this project I set myself with the goal of creating a social media style short format commercial which is one of the most popular types of commercial at the moment. The term used to describe this type of video is generally referred to as b-roll, not to be confused with the term b-roll which means extra footage used in between shots the give the viewer more information that doesn't directly follow to main narrative. In the future I plan on giving this it's own blog.

When going through the post production and creating shot lists and forming what I wanted the final project to look like I made sure watch of commercials in the same sort of style I am looking for for this project and one of the practitioners I researched was Daniel Schiffer who creates this type of content for business'

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Production:

For the production of this video I used my kitchen as the set, The table in the middle I used black

cloths which I ironed on the table to create a smooth surface to be the backdrop for the video. I organised all the props and equipment I needed for the shoot and made sure all the props where cleaned to make them look as good as they could on video. I set up my lighting which where 2 soft boxes and 2 led panels. I turned off the room lighting and also It was night time so daylight wouldn't affect the shoot. I shot during the night as I wanted the background to be as

dark as possible and have the products I was

showcasing bet the key focus of the video.

Another big focus I had with production was sound recording. I recently purchased a zoom h8 and I used it with a shotgun microphone and and an overhead microphone stand to capture the best sound I could so that I could create a solid sound design in post. On top of capturing the live sounds I also spent some time creating foley sound using plastic bags, kitchen roll and other items to create the tearing of the bag sound.

I had a premade shot list I made which was as follows: -Coffee being packet opened

-Overhead dolly in of beans in bag

-Overhead dolly out of beans in grinder

-coffee being grinded

-portafilter being put in the machine

-crane shot of when the coffee starts to pour down into the cup

-shot from under the glass baking tray of liquid being poured on top

-Dolly out of finished espresso on chopping board

-Tracking shot of the coffee being served

I didn't stick true to it for example the shot from under glass to show the coffee being poured as I didn't have a sheet of clear material like glass or plastic available to me at the time and also the dolly out of the chopping board I changed to a sort of crane shot of the espresso cup sitting on top beans. for the rest of the shots I generally stuck to my shot list which really improved my work flow and I was able to keep to a plan I made previously.

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Post Production:

There was a variety of different techniques I used during the edit for example, speed ramping, slow motion, pop up graphics, colour grading and transitions. For the actual edit of the video I had first organised all of media so that I could improve my workflow then began my rough cut placing the clips in the order I wanted them in.

I then began working each section of the video and for the shoot Everything was filmed in 1080 60fps so that in post I would be able to get slow motion. The final video was going to be exported at 24 fps so this gave me a lowest of 40% speed for my footage wasn't ideal for I wanted with the camera I have that's the best I able to do. The shot of the coffee bag falling over was slowed to 40% but preferably I would've wanted around 20-25%. For the shot of the portafilter I speed ramping, the technique of slowing down and speeding up the footage using key framing and for the base for it I used the tempo of the music to match it.

For colour grading of the footage my main focus was to blend out the background and have to viewers attention focused on the coffee and what was being done with it. I aimed to make the product stand out as much as possible.

When It came to sound design the first thing I done was find catchy and appropriate music, I didn't necessarily base my edit around the song but I did try to have a sort of synchronisation between them. I slowly added all the sound effects I recorded then edited using Adobe Audition and placed them onto my timeline and I did for quite a number of sounds and some I created using foley techniques.

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My Reflection and what I have learned:

The biggest difference between this project and previous videos I have created was the amount of time I spent in pre production coming up with shot lists and already have a structure for what I wanted the final edit to look and sound like. Before this I generally just had and idea in my head and sort of winged it on the day, with this approach to filmmaking I felt that my final video was much higher quality and you can easily tell the amount of planning that went into it vs my previous work.

This amount of time spent in pre production is something I plan on using for future projects and especially for my final project this time next year and this has inspired me to work on a remaster of a project I had done in first year "An Cloch Ban" a short documentary on a local photographer Seimi Ferry but this time create a plan and establish a shot list and have a better understanding of what I would like it to look like.

Over the coming months I plan on making a few of these "b-roll" videos maybe go to local business' and create some for them that they can use for social media and gain a reputation in my area and eventually be able to have a reliable client base as well as use the opportunity to gain more skill and improve my camera work.

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The Video:

Watch here