"Williams Cleanup Day" mock up commercial

by **debngar** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:57 pm

This is a mock up of a commercial I have offered to do for the small town
of Williams where we own a hardware store. (We don't live in this town,
just have a business there.)

Last Sunday, I took pictures of people helping clean up things a bit. They
are planning on a "paint the town day" sometime later in September.

I offered to use my images and produce a very short "commercial" for the
Mayor Pro Tem, who is also president of a non-profit organization called
"Citizens For A Better Williams", to see if she was interested in trying to
get the cable company (Comcast) to put it on their local interest channel.
This currently consists of really boring (probably PPT) slides of words only
against a colored screen of current activities going on in the town or local
business advertisements, etc. No one uses photos, movement, nothing, nada.
They have piped in either copyrighted music from a radio show or just a CD.
(I wonder if they pay needle drop fees to use that music?)

Anyways, the dates in September are only a guess and may change. But this is
what I envisioned and will be presenting as soon as I can get in touch with
her. I pinched the general layout idea of the first slide from "Above The Clouds" intro segment
produced by Yahoo group member Regina.

Music is from Digital Juice.

I'm not sure but the photos seem more blurry to me since I edited them.
Maybe it's because it's almost midnight, I'm going cross-eyed and I should
have turned off my computer two hours ago! LOL

In addition, I may be getting at least one of the photos published in the
local newspaper. No one else was there from the paper to take pics.

Edited to update
---------------------
I DELETED THE SHOW - SORRY...

"Williams Cleanup Promo" - 30 seconds

Debbie

by **gpsmikey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 5:06 am

Morning Debbie !!

While I like the idea, I think you have a couple of possible
issues that may be a problem.

1) if people are going to watch this on a TV, I suspect you
will find about 1/2 of all the pictures will be missing of the
initial picture due to the "safe zone" issue - many TV's
(especially older ones) really do chop that outer 10% (or more) off.
If you turn on the "safe zone" grid, you will see what I mean.

2) I didn't think the music matched the transitions - the
music itself was probably fine, but the "slow smooth"
transitions don't match the fast paced music. I think it
would flow better with maybe 4 or 5 more pictures in the
same time frame and use faster / snappier transitions
between them. (maybe even some stock photos of
someone painting something up close where you just see
the board and the brush for example).

mikey

by **debngar** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 6:32 am

Hi Mikey,

Guess I'll have to rethink the format and design since I don't really have to use all the pics and save that slide format for some other show.

You are so right about the safe zone. I forgot all that - probably because I started this last night at 9:30 pm and was too tired in the first place. :shock:

Duh Good idea.

So you think it was too slow? Hmmm...I will see about better matching the tempo of the music in the next one then.

Thanks for watching and your critique. Good thing I have members here that will tell me what I need to know. I'd rather that than present this and have to go back to fix something so obvious such as the safe zone issue.

Debbie

by **gpsmikey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:25 am

I'm not sure the music was wrong, just that the tempo of
the slides too smooth. If you watch any other commercials,
you will notice you have about 2 seconds to get their attention
then for the other 28 seconds, you better be doing something
to KEEP their attention. This is different that a show where
the people want to sit down and watch it -- you are trying to
get their attention and hold it (when they have 35 other things
competing for that attention). I liked the music and depending
on the part of the country, may have been perfect. With a
regular show, you already have their attention, with a commercial,
you are trying to get and hold their attention.

As far as the "safe zone" -- been there done that

- very irritating
to work hard to put something together and then find the key
parts were chopped off when people watch it.

mikey

by **lisco** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 1:28 pm

Debbie-

Nice little spot. I have to agree with Mikey about the transitions. Good choice with the music. I like it. It fits!

I always wondered about the "safe zone" I always tried to stay inside of it. So, if I'm getting this right, if a person were to make a show entirely in the "safe zone" there would be some sort of space around the show when viewed thru photodex?

Scott

by **lostdutchman** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 3:02 pm

Debbie,
Good idea. Mikey is right--the presentation of photos
should "snap" like the music.
You have a lot of interesting photos of people cleaning
up. Think about cycling through them very fast with
a caption saying, "We've begun the cleanup of Williams."
Then go to a paintbrush, like Mikey said, with the
caption, "Will you help us with the next step--paint the town!"
The date, time and place need to be prominent on the
final slide or sequence of slides.
Ken

by **debngar** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:42 pm

Hi All,

I want to thank everyone who replied with comments and criticisms about this show.

The guy that runs the Comcast cable business in that small town can't/won't take any format except for a piece of paper. :shock:

There is no point in working on that project any further.

I decided to simply delete the show as result. But I still learned from the time spent on it.

Debbie

by **gpsmikey** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:27 pm

Well, at least you had fun working on it and learned something in
the process. I thought it had potential, however, if you had to
print each slide on a "piece of paper" to get it into their "high tech"
system, that is a bit odd. Oh well, I have run into those myself.

mikey

by **cherub** » Mon Sep 03, 2007 9:39 pm

Pity, I was looking forward to the final result.

It was an interesting project, and a good exercise.

by **lostdutchman** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:28 am

Just an idea, but perhaps you could expand it a bit (since you don't have the 30 second limitation) and play it on a DVD loop on a TV in your hardware store near the checkout line for a few days. I bet you'd generate some interest in the cleanup day.
Ken

by **debngar** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:38 pm

Ken,

You have a really good idea going. I'll run it by hubby and see what he thinks. I imagine if they have to listen to it for hundreds of times during the day, they will probably go stir crazy. LOL

As it is, we often have to hide the remote control from the employees to keep them from standing around doing little to nothing but watching TV all day. :shock:

Then they just reach up and turn it on anyways. It's so frustrating.

It's possible I'll design a flyer of some kind to post.

I was notified today by the editor of the paper that my photo(s) will run in tomorrows edition. It's not a large paper, only runs twice a week or so.

Debbie

"Williams Cleanup Day" mock up commercial

"Williams Cleanup Day" mock up commercial

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