So, in your opinion, what makes a great commercial?
I have seen some very good commercials. To me though, most of them are repetitive noise, with very little thought behind them but to be so massively quantified into your subconconcious. For me, as a filmmaker, I am always looking to create something that people connect to on an emotional level. Even if they just watched it for 40 seconds.
Now, we connect to characters that we can relate to. An emotion in their expression. Their eyes. Body language. Can we effectively capture this in under a minute? I think we can, but we have to be able to take a chance that people will watch the picture even though it is repetitive for 15 seconds. Which might be a stretch, since people have the attention span of a gold fish in todays society. We are attacked with ads everywhere.
Another approach could be to create something so beautiful, the viewer is caught by that. I do believe it is hard to keep attention with cinematography alone though, except for those especially interested in such.
What are your thoughts, and what is your favourite commercial? I think this could be an interesting discussion.