With the fresh experience of creating television advertising for a nationally televised channel, we wanted to publicly share the creative process, realization as well as technical moments. Each of these processes is important for the final goal.
The client is PaySpot – a payment institution, specific for being the first, in addition to “Post Office of Serbia”, to receive a payment licence. The agency has been cooperating with them for some time, so it didn’t have to be detailed. To clarify the “payroll licence”: With PaySpot agents it is possible to pay all bills as a natural person, transfer money at home and abroad, even receive tax refunds for goods purchased abroad. Legal entities can also pay for purchases in these locations, there are incentives for technical ironing of cars. A very large and serious palette of services. PaySpot’s slogan is “Your good neighbour”, which communicates perfectly with their business because they are currency exchange agents, smaller shops, technical examinations – over 1,300 locations.
Buyer Persone & Creative Mapping
When you look at the description of the services, it’s clear that these are people who don’t pay their bills online. It’s mostly our elderly fellow citizens. In internal communication, we mapped them as: those who premiered the popular series “Better Life” (we wrote the premiere because there were so many reruns that we probably all watched once). In creating the message we wanted to convey to the target group, our way of thinking, from a client’s perspective, went in the following order:
1. Why are we doing this?
2. How do we do that?
3. What are we doing?
(see the excellent PrimeBox Production. Below you can read their view of this project.
In technical terms, recording a TV commercial for about 30 seconds requires extremely detailed planning and selection of technical equipment (cameras, lenses, lighting, microphones… ). Choosing a recording location is very important because it can make it significantly easier; but even in the case of the wrong choice, it makes the whole process difficult. Equally important are logistics and technicians. Here’s a less interesting part where we list the equipment:
- Cameras and accessories – Sony PXW-FS7 XDCAM, Xeen Cine set, Easy rig, Gimbal, Slider, LILLIPUT monitor-Directing (colleague from Retro Digital Agency insisted on having insight into the complete process), Vaxis-video transmitts.
- Lighting and accessories – ARRI lighting, Skypanels of different sizes, tendencies and T-bars, Zilber, kino flo, ND filters and foils.
- Tone – Sennheiser shotgun microphones, fishing rods, DPA lavalier omnidirectional microphones and Pro Tools for recording sound.
The whole process of shooting advertising is based on quality and well-placed lighting which brings the best result with the appropriate cameras and lenses. We were tasked with simulating a nice sunny Saturday morning where 80% of the lighting was placed on the outside of the space to simulate the sun illuminating the space in which the action takes place.
Technical team consisting of 10 people – director of photography, cameramen, camera assistants, masters of light, masters of tone, microman was at the height of the task even though we were in this composition for the first time. Professionalism, extensive experience, good project management but also excellent atmosphere on set enabled us to record all the necessary personnel in a relatively short time.
In the end came post-production, editing, color correction where we managed to put everything together in one whole called advertising – “PaySpot – Your good neighbour”!
On behalf of the whole team, we thank the actors: Biljana Markovic Pušić and Ivan Živković, who contributed with patience and professional relationship to the final result.
Trivia:
When grandpa leaves the apartment, he enters the black canvas because the location for the shoot was the ground floor house
The original idea was that the blanket on the table had a folded iron, but the screwdriver that was on set couldn’t unscrew anything.
The advert heard on the radio at the start of the video is a voice from another PaySpot advert.
Goofs:
The moment grandma sends grandfather off, his collar on his coat is lowered, as he leaves the apartment the collar is raised.
We can’t wait for the next opportunity.
