About a month ago, my friend Sandra Myers approached me about joining her in producing a commercial for the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. Doritos has been holding this contest for the past seven years straight. The competition for it is intense with over 6,000 entries last year all competing for the grand prize of one million dollars and getting their commercial aired during the Super Bowl.
Sandra and I had worked together last year on a video that I produced (my first one) that, ironically, was, also, for a contest. (I made it into the semi-finals on that one.) She had directed it for me and did a fabulous job. We work really well together, and in this business finding people you work well with is important.
But finding the right people is only part of the equation. You, also, have to have the right project. Fortunately, Sandra has the right project. Her idea is fantastic! I think it could be one of the top, if not the winning commercial. This made it easy to say yes to her.
I found out just a few days ago that the contest is definitely on this year. It startsSeptember 19th. I hear that there may be some new twists and surprises this year, so I’m anxiously waiting to read the rules and regulations and get more information about the contest. Hopefully, it won’t change any of our current plans but, if it does, we’ll make any adjustments as needed.
I received the script at our first pre-production meeting a couple of weeks ago. We reviewed it at the meeting and I made a couple of suggestions. We, also, discussed topics such as locations, props, wardrobe, graphics, contracts, actors, crew, etc. etc. etc. There are a lot of different aspects that go into creating a commercial, even if it is only 30 seconds long!
Even though we didn’t know for sure at that point whether Doritos would be holding the contest again this year, we had to get started so that we would have enough time to pull it all together, so we both walked away with to do lists that were so long we knew we wouldn’t get everything done before our next meeting.
I called up my entertainment attorney and got him working on an agreement between Sandra and myself, started looking at online production management programs, edited the script and made minor suggestions, and did some research on one of the props.
Sandra made changes to the script, wrote up two shot lists: one by location and one by story order, wrote up a to do list, and started inquiring into the cost of making one of the props, among other things.
More adventures to come...
Amanda blogs at www.shoomzone.com.
