Energy Drink Commercial – 1 – PreProduction

So for my Senior Studio 1 Project I am planning on making a dramatic commercial for an energy drink. This provides a fun project to work towards while also being a fantastic conduit for displaying individual visual effects! Not only that but the idea is quite modular, allowing quite a bit of flexibility down the line should I need it when editing.

My initial inspiration was from a Nike Hyper Venom II spot. It turns out shoe commercials fairly match the dramatic mood I am going for.

After searching around a bit more I found a spot for the Nike Flyknits:

Both of these commercials have a very dramatic sense of awe to them when you watch them. The Hyper Venom II commercial shows slow, drawn camera moves, then juxtaposed by a quick cut or sweep, creating a very energetic mood which is precisely what I am looking for for an energy drink. The Flyknit commercial does an excellent job of inspiring awe in the user, provocative sensory afflicting imagery and shallow depths of field push you feel that these shoes are mysterious and powerful.

I found a few more commercials and pulled my favorite scenes and angles. I really like the dark atmosphere each of these shots are set it, it forces focus on the object and the dark backdrops pushes the contrast of any highlights, really furthering an already dramatic shot.

I quickly threw together some storyboards and complied from them a short and basic animatic to run with:

From this, I matched basic camera angles and basic movements to get a feel for the timing and work needed for this composition.

After looking at this cut, I started to worry about the work needed to put all of this together and the length itself. I was aiming for a 30 second spot but ended up with something closer to 40 seconds due to extra sweep shots and flavor reveals. Because this idea is so modular, I am starting to think about just outright cutting out the last shot of the “Fire Flavor” and instead sticking with the ice and lightning shots. This would allow for a little more space to focus on these shots to give them the time they really need. It would also cut back quite a bit on just outright simulation and rendering time, which is also quite incentivizing.

I will have to recut and retime some of these shots after some critique to make them flow better and come back to the editing.

In the meantime, however, I’m going to start on laying out the basic effects!