My First Commercial

It seemed so strange watching the other group’s TV commercial in my Video Camera and Lighting Techniques class. It was so similar to my group’s video except there was a completely different person in front of the camera going through the motions of entering the main entrance of MPTC, walking over to the wall of academic planers, and going through the Student Services doors.

The reason why the two commercials were so much alike is that the two groups we were split into for class were following the same storyboard. The purpose of this project was to learn how to read and follow a storyboard. We had to set up the equipment, figure out the lighting, and adjust the settings on the camera to get our shots according to what was written and sketched out on paper.

Even with following the same storyboard, there were still some variations between the two 30 second ads. The sketches give you an idea of what the shot will look like, and the directions will give you a pretty good idea what you should be doing, but it seems there’s always a little bit of room for interpretation. The lesson I learned from this is that if you are following somebody else’s storyboard and script, like one your client has created, you may need to get clarification from them to make sure you are getting the shot they want and portraying the story they wish to tell.

I think everybody did really well on this project, and I’m impressed how professional both videos looked, especially considering some of us are first-timers in video making. Check out my group’s commercial for Student Services at MPTC, created by John Lippold, Cody Repovsch, Barret Johnson, and myself!