Research blog: Commercial Convention

For our commercial project Stephanie and I decided to chose Gatorade as our product. We chose to advertise the blue Gatorade flavors because winter is coming. Before we begin storyboarding we are conducting research on the common elements found in commercials promoting sports related products. We already have an idea on things we want to include in the commercial such as a close up of a person drinking the Gatorade and slow motion scenes. We made it mandatory that at the end of the commercial we are going to show the Gatorade brand as either an insert or a close up on the Gatorade brand on the bottle. We are also planning on filming mostly on the track at our school. In case we aren’t able to film there we chose our school’s gymnasium as a backup.

After watching sports related commercials we found many common themes in all of them. First, the characters in the commercials were mostly athletes. There were many shots of the athletes in action as well. Common camera angles we saw were close up and wide shots. The color schemes were mostly cool toned colors like blue and grey. Most of the commercials didn’t show the actual product until the end of the video. If there was dialogue in the scene they were usually voice overs. The background music instilled an intense, upbeat mood that correlated with the action going on in the scenes.

Sadly, some elements we aren’t able to include in our film due to limited resources. The commercials we watched sometimes featured a celebrity but we aren’t able to have a famous figure in our film. My partner and I also noticed that the filmmakers in those commercials had a lot of time for their productions. We are working under a very strict time frame so we don’t have that luxury which will effect our production process greatly. The commercial producers most likely had large budget and had a big crew to assist with filming. However, our budget is very small and we only have the help of each other. Hopefully we are able to make a great commercial despite our not so ideal conditions. I’m ready to jump into action!