foreign [Music] for this commercial how did Andre get the job what was the treatment that won him over with the client in the agency because inside of that document there are going to be major Clues on what he is expecting the style of the commercial what we need to bring to the table we need to be prepared for it can start to help answer questions about what crew are we going to get on what equipment do we need how long is the shoot going to be where is the shoot going to be all of these
questions can be answered in a document like the treatment and especially when you're reading it before you have an initial conversation with the director sometimes you'll just be booked by a production company are you available these dates yes I am okay we'll send through the treatment so you don't even talk to the director before you see the treatment so you want to get ideas together as quick as you can because you want to get onboarded as fast as you can you want to be as efficient as you can possibly be so we're going to look
at the treatment we're going to try and dissect some of the statements that are made in there and see if we can't get ahead of Ombre with a couple of different gear decisions couple of different crew decisions and scheduling things like that so that we can again so that we can present ourselves in the best light and hopefully get the best results on the day by getting this knowledge as early as we can so with that being said most treatments right there's going to be a lot of fluff in treatments it's a sales document so
we're not going to go over every single section uh every director does it differently every production company has a different treatment style some are a little bit looser more vague some are very specific depending on the job but for our purposes here we're really going to focus on two sections what I like to focus on two sections I want to look at the cinematography section of course because most treatments will have a specific cinematography section where they talk about the camera work the style of lighting the pace of the thing that's going to be very
useful to trying to figure out or decipher what the director is after and then also the the tone the mood the edit those are the those are the scenarios that I like to look at the sections inside of the treatment that I like to look at so with that being said let's jump straight into the document here you can see the treatment here it's called answer the call by Andre sabhoff right the great man and number one the first thing that you you should see here is the aspect ratio of the treatment this already screams
anamorphic so I know it's going to be anamorphic now I don't know anything about the job I haven't spoken to the producer they just said are you available these days yes we'll send through the treatment right I don't know what this is but right now it looks anamorphic and it looks Moody which is exciting right already I'm seeing framework stuff I'm seeing backlit stuff which is nice there's a little hello section thanks for letting me Pitch they all say the same exact thing and now if we just quickly scroll through right I probably wouldn't even
read it I would just look at the images already I'm seeing stuff it starts to make sense why they asked me to be on board this is I like this kind of uh this visual style I can do this stuff this is good it is definitely anamorphicy um and it's a little bit dark a little bit Moody there's some saturated colors there's some desaturated stuff in here a little bit of grain close-ups lots of car stuff and a thank you page okay so just on first glance right just the feel this is already My Vibe
of commercial right lots of backlit stuff lots of edgy dark stuff mixed in with a little bit of the saturated look right there's a little bit of that but I mean this is very very dark for a commercial so I'm going to be interested to see how Andre wants to play this so let's go back to the top and we'll start with our hello okay hello yes okay so this tone section right it's no secret that I love humor I've gotten a proven history of creating successful comedic spots comedy like drama thrives in the unexpected
without giving away my secret the most effective comedy is simply authenticity the Simplicity of this spot makes for a prime opportunity to surprise the viewer and leave them with a smile on their face we're not here to make another gag ad or an over-the-top Laugh Out Loud Comedy the more restrain the humor the better the end result okay so humor so it's a gag ad but the important elements there is that we don't want to show it so we're going to play it the opposite of a comedy right because none of these frames look like
comedy frames normally comedy you're going to be a little bit more High key think Will Ferrell probably not anamorphic because you want to get lots of people inside of the frame to have the jokes go back and forth between the cast members anamorphic is a little bit of a different take and this definitely doesn't screen uh light and bright a shot like that so immediately tone judging by the images it's dark it's down it's anamorphic it's muted okay approach and execution sometimes you find some interesting tidbits in the approach and the execution again this is
not going to be the same every treatment these headers are not going to be the same but it's basically rough ideas sometimes you'll see some interesting stuff in there that pertain to cinematography in the sandbox casting probably never right unless there's something very specific about people and or what they want to highlight in someone or in US group of people within the ad maybe there's a little bit of something in casting but really it's just these frames the starkness the desaturated nature this is dark this is backlit uh you know these people have seen the
real obviously and they they know what kind of projects that I want to be involved in so this is good I'm excited about something like this I'm excited about these frames let's get into the cinematography section obviously the key section for us going forward trying to figure out what Andre is looking for and just what we can do to be helpful okay we intend to shoot in a highly cinematic style while still keeping the look naturalistic now you got to remember these treatment documents there's a sales pitch so they're not used to seeing or using
these words as much as cinematographies are so highly cinematic style and you probably find that in every single treatment people that clients especially they want their thing to look nice what looks nice movies look nice so you're going to constantly hear cinematic style basically it's making sure it doesn't look like the Nightly News Right which none of this stuff looks like the Nightly News so we know we're going to be in that world we want the spot to feel accessible with a filmic style where the Grandeur can heighten both comedy and the drama okay so
nothing really yet just a little bit of Babble the spot needs to embrace the starkness of the location and situation okay boom I've got my keys startness of the location and the situation I know that this is happening in the desert I know the situation is a lady is stranded and a Gentleman has pulled over to help her okay so we're gonna play it Stark we're going to play it naturalistic we're not going to do anything too crazy right naturalistic means not too crazy doesn't mean Hollywood's slick we're not doing uh Avengers or something like
that we're trying to make it a little bit more like this to me would be naturalistic well this is even a little bit darker right naturalistic is more like this one over here those are the images that I'm Conjuring up in my head coverage needs to be simple with an emphasis on the omniscient camera being at the right place at the right time okay so not a loosey-goosey camera right the the camera already knows the scenario before it happens so we're going to place it in the perfect spot that's what it sounds like we want
the camera to feel grounded but some movement might help to draw the viewer in and raise the tension throughout think David Fincher meets True Detective okay I mean that pretty much sums it up right that one little line that we're looking for in this treatment process to okay when we talk to Andre on the phone what are we going to ask about where what direction are we going to take this what can we offer to immediately start to be helpful so that we can get the ball rolling well David Fincher meets True Detective slight some
camera movement to help draw the viewer in right little tiny pushes slow creeps that David Fincher movement idea where really the the camera is moving along with the characters as opposed to separated from them so that's telling me something right there the David Fincher look the True Detective look it's a little bit Starker it's a little bit more down we're we're definitely he doesn't want to play this as just a normal Comedy Spot he wants the images to look like the images in the treatment and that's something that we can easily deliver by shooting on
anamorphic lenses we can separate the feel of the ad from the majority of the comedy spots and this is always the best part of any treatment when they start listing some of the cinematographers that they want to work with or some cinematographers that spring to mind chances are you're probably not going to be on this list right this is this is the fun part about seeing these treatments so some talented dops that spring to mind are Billy backlight one of my favorites Sarah top chop Anna what is nag Aaron 4K and Kate mini LF so
all very talented cinematographers but oftentimes you will not find your name in this list and then you realize that they wanted to work with all these other people but you were the only one who had time in their schedule so kudos to you for winning the job alright so this is us we know basically looking this thing over is there anything else we want to add here I mean this is a little bit more colorful right I would just want to be starting to think do I have to ask questions about the starkness that will
probably reveal itself over the pre-production process of just how down we want to go how crazy we want to go on the contrast but already I know you know it's going to be Alexa it's going to be um anamorphic and it's going to be Stark and they want to embrace that and we don't want too much ropidopey camera movement so now if I'm thinking of crew okay who can get this done which grip do I know that has the ability to pull this off right lots of big things here once we come in here to
script breakdown I'll let you read this for yourself you can read some of the little things in here I'm just looking for those key elements what's important to our situation right we've already got a fantastic base to jump off of blah blah to maximize our payoff we need to go for openings in both cinematography and sound okay so cinematography is going to be big we're going to lean into that because the idea here now that we already know the basic premises for the ad the idea is that we are going to pull the old Switcheroo
on the audience they don't think it's a comedy ad but in the end we're going to surprise them and yes it is a comedy ad whoops the guy that pulls over the old man at first seems scary actually turns out to be the lady's dad that's the aha moment okay that's what we're going for so before that we need to delay that as long as we can so we're going to shoot this like True Detective we're going to shoot it with some drama keeping the drama while exploiting the comedic finish will play right into our
hands so you know that's the focus of what under is going for he wants to keep this thing very real very dark very down this is what I'm picking up again you can go into these little editing spots sometimes in the editing section it's a good clue to look for is just the rhythm and the pacing that they're talking about if they're talking about doing lots and lots of shots or if it's more slow and composed and building uh then you'll start to get an idea of just what that schedule is going to look like
how crazy is it going to get uh how composed can you be with the lighting how much stuff can you do the less amount of shots the more time you're going to have to help sculpt things also where the shoot is taking place right we know that this is in the desert so it's going to be an exterior location so we already start to know to plan for things to plan for any little things that might come up sound design probably nothing and then the thank you page right so we've gone through the treatment we've
seen anamorphic we've seen everything that fits in with the style that I like to do we know it's going to be Stark we know it's going to be embracing the situation and lots of steady camera movement that's enough for us to build on in our conversations with Andre next we're going to take a look at the agency boards how do they see this thing playing out in the most General way possible right because agency boards are so non-specific really they're just frames normally of people's heads and you you start to get an idea for how
they're building the ad inside their head and where you can jump in and say okay so this is important to you and this is important to Andre let's bring those two together and and start to see The Best of Both Worlds so that's our look at the treatment in the next section we will get into looking at the agency boards and trying to glean even more information before we spring into the real meat and potatoes of pre-production which is the location scout and the tech Scout process
