Screen Advertising for the Digital Age

We spend a lot of time with Phil Sayer and Elinor Hamilton, every morning and every evening on our way to work in fact. They keep us company, and always make sure to remind us not to leave our bag on the train, or fall through the gap…such lovely people.

The husband and wife team, amongst other things, are the pre-recorded voices on several of the London tube lines.

Former BBC North News presenter, Phil is the iconic “MIND THE GAP” and Ellie has recorded thousands of service lines like “PLEASE KEEP YOUR BAGS WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.”

They haven’t yet got a monopoly of the train lines, but they’re certainly working on it. Responsible for imparting information for both the underground and overground (and wombling free), they can be heard apologising for late trains and animals on the line up and down the country.

“We’re still at the point of it being a novelty where you want to rush up to complete strangers and say you hear that voice up there? That’s me! We went for a trip to London and we were on the station and every time the recorded announcement said something, I parroted it, deliberately close to people in the hope that they would turn around and go, hang on a minute, that’s you isn’t it? And nobody did…I was really disappointed.”

Launching our new series of features #BehindtheAds - your sneaky peek behind the scenes from the people who make ads and get them to air.

Kicking off #BehindtheAds is Director of Photography Ed Moore. 

DOP and Camera Operator, Ed has worked on shows including Atlantis, Poldark and Dr Who, as well as having several film and commercial credits to his name.

Visuals are extremely important in advertising. With only twenty or thirty seconds to play with, both your visuals and your voiceover have got to work hard to get your client’s message across.

On a commercial shoot, the DOP is responsible for deciding on camera positions, lighting the set, and ultimately translating the director’s vision into shots a viewer can understand.

We spoke to Ed about what being a DOP involves, some of the favourite items in his tool kit, and the influence of Jurassic Park.

Q) An oldie but a goodie…best thing about being a DOP?

A) The ability to achieve creative expression via technical means — the perfect fit for me! I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Q) With all the technical advances, is being a DOP today more demanding now than it used to be?

A) DOPs have always had to keep on top of a changing technical landscape so I’d say that element has stayed pretty similar, even if the details have changed. It’s all about translating the director’s vision into reality. If I’ve done my job right the director, agency and client get the exact (or better!) results they were after, the producer has everything within budget, and everyone’s happy. Sometimes it takes a lot of paddling under the water to achieve that but it’s very satisfying if you can make it look easy!

Q) Favourite camera to work with for a commercial shoot?

A) We’re spoilt for choice these days for fantastic cameras – often I defer to the VFX and post team as to what they would prefer. The Red Epic with Dragon sensor is superb and shoots 6K – great for VFX. And the Arri Alexa is incredibly robust and produces beautiful images.

Q) What is the most useful item in your tool kit, and why?

A) Probably a simple polystyrene board, painted black on one side. Can bounce light back or use the black side to remove light as necessary. Costs practically nothing and can deliver a fantastic look just on its own. Wouldn’t leave home without a few!

Q) Would you say you have a particular visual style?

A) I would like to think I respond to the demands of the creative brief and the director’s vision rather than stamping my own look on everything. Left to my own devices however I do lean towards a glossy, “better than life” look that often works really well for commercials.

Q) If you could invent one piece of technology that would make shooting easier, what would it be?

A) I’m always needing to diffuse the sunlight to make everything look beautiful but it often requires big textiles attached to huge cherrypickers and a lot of rigging. If I could have a remote controlled cloud that I could move around and resize at will I would be a very happy DP : )

Q) Favourite film, and why.

A) Without a doubt, Jurassic Park. It came out when I was ten and I dragged every member of my family to see it several times. It was the first time it dawned on me that films were something that people made, rather than just things you watched.

Q) Oddest moment in your career?

A) I do often find myself holding a camera in some very strange places… crawling backwards into the darkness of a WW2 submarine’s torpedo tube was one; another was being strapped backwards into a large plastic elephant attached to a theme park ride to shoot the actors in the following compartment.

Q) What would you save in a fire?

Sponsorship can be an effective and significant way for a brand to promote themselves through association, with the affiliation creating the effect that brands are known more widely than they actually are.

Studies have shown that the best results occur when bumpers create an obvious link between the sponsorship and programme content, particularly when the brand is introduced into the emotional relationship the viewer has with the programme.

Think you can't do much with stills? Well, watch this.

It's all made, by us, using just still images.

Yes...we've still got it... 

Now, time for some more puns. How about, I’m still standing, or still the one.

It's interesting to see how many people are opting for CGI in their adverts, and these days the graphics are so good, only a professional can spot what is real and what is generated.

So, who fancies a quick game of real or rendered? Answers at the bottom of the screen, but no cheating...we'll know.

Lately, we’ve had an increasing number of enquiries from clients wanting an ad with an animal character, and it’s not just because we’re called Koala.

There have been several hugely successful advertising campaigns with animals as the stars recently, and now, it seems, this tried and tested method is all the rage.

THE BRIEF

The style connoisseurs, Police Watches, fancied a rocking number that oozed cool, with a whiff of rebellion.

THE RESPONSE

The cost of affiliate marketing and display advertising is increasing.

Adobe Digital Index’s Global Digital Advertising Report for Q3 2014 shows that cost per click rates (CPC) are slowly increasing by 4% year on year globally, with average CPC growth for Great Britain now standing at 104%.