Creating a 30-second commercial

On the internet, your commercial can be as long as you want. However, on TV, you mostly have 30 seconds for your commercial.

What can you do in 30 seconds? What should you pay attention to creating this kind of video? In the following video, Dave Dugdale talks what he learned creating a 30-second commercial for his daughter’s swimming center, out of pure curiosity.

Since he is mostly idly sitting while his daughter is at her center practicing, Dave came up with the idea to shoot a short commercial for the swimming center. Inspired by the 2012 Olympics commercial produced for Kellogg’s that featured swimmers, Dave try to recreate that, but with much less budget and gears.

For such a short commercial, he chose to come up with a core message – the thing that the swimming center wants to convey through their commercial – and build the commercial up around that message.

The commercial he did was not considered “fancy” by all means, but it is well made considering the conditions that he had (only 10 minutes at the end of the swimming practice for shooting).

Watch the commercial, and how Dave Dugdale talks about making it, here: