How do production companies renowned for their TV work do broadband video advertising? How does the work they do differ from TV, how do the production requirements differ and how can they maintain their creative voice in the new medium? To answer these questions, iSPOT spoke with David Herbruck, co-founder and director at Loyalkaspar, a creative shop in New York that recently designed “Anthem,” a spot promoting the latest version of Adobe Acrobat.
iSPOT: Give us some background on the production work you’re best known for.
Herbruck: We do TV work and we have two areas of focus: we work with ad agencies to do commercials and we also do network branding, which is when a TV network wants a graphic identity they do IDs. We also do show packaging, when a network wants a look for a new show we do a show open and a full package so they can brand a show.
iSPOT: How much broadband video advertising have you done?
Herbruck: The first job we did for the Web was a commercial campaign for the last version of Microsoft Windows with McCann. We did six spots over a year that were strictly for the Net. They wanted us to stick with the style that had been established with print work, but they gave us total flexibility. (To see work: go to Loyalkaspar and click Work –> Recent Work –> Microsoft Start Something) Because it was for the web, we couldn’t follow the same rules for TV spots because the mediums are different. With content airing in a 320 x 240 window, you can’t have the subtlety of TV because it doesn’t show up on the web. When you’re doing it for the web you know it’s not going to play back at 30 frames a second. To get it to play in real time you have to compress it so much so you lose subtle detail and gradients and any subtle graphic line work. You need to work full frame so the animation is flowing in a smooth way, colors are blending and the typography is working. Then you’re going to have to render it out and compress it for the web, because you lose 20 to 30 percent of the detail. You go back and take off some of the color gradient and typography is one of the biggest things, because once it’s compressed it’s illegible so you have to go back and adjust the type so it’s specific to 320 x 240.
iSPOT: What kind of cameras do you use for broadband video ads?
Herbruck: When we use cameras we’re typically shooting people on green screen, which allows us to composite people into an animated world, a computer generated environment. For a 320 x 240 screen, you’re not shooting on location and you’re not dealing with real color because people are getting composited, so there’s no reason to shoot on film. We shoot on HD because we produce the job for broadcast and then it gets compressed for the web and we want it to look good at full resolution.
iSPOT: Do you use adapters to make the video look more like a film shoot?
Herbruck: Not usually, but for a longer form more traditional narrative we’d do it. HD is not film, but it’s perfect for digital effects shooting, you can add a little noise or grain in post. There’s no other specific camera or shooting technique because the end product is going to show on the web.
iSPOT: What types of videos have you done and what’s been your biggest challenge?
Herbruck: There’s two types of web campaigns: where a marketer buys air time on different sites and those movies play at 320 x 240 resolution in different reserved ad blocks; then there are ads that only play at a client’s website, where the size can vary based on the client’s discretion and technical capabilities. That’s what we did for Adobe, which is very different from Microsoft, because the client wanted the Anthem spot to play full screen on their home page browser. A full screen web browser is 800 x 600 so it’s produced larger and wider than a TV spot. We had to shoot it in HD for higher quality than standard definition. But it didn’t play well on the Adobe website. We delivered it in full resolution and weren’t involved with the backend compression. There’s a problem with pixiliation and colors bleeding, on top of it not playing well in real time. It’s a judgement call. What’s more important, do you want it to play in real time and not look as crisp and sharp or do you want it to look crisp and sharp but stutter. That’s the problem with playing full frame video on the web. The medium isn’t ready for it yet and you always have to keep in mind the end user with the lowest common denominator in terms of bandwidth and technology.
iSPOT: With the production limitations, how can you produce broadband spots in the style you’re known for?
Herbruck: Our style is pretty versatile, it depends on the job. People have said that our style is very lush and organic. It depends on the campaign. Microsoft was a little bit flatter, less lush, the shapes were more solid, there was less transparency, it was a little bolder. You try for the web not to compromise your design aesthetic. The aim is to minimize the layers because the more layers you have on top the more data intensive each frame is, then you get into large files that have to be compressed and don’t look as good or they don’t get compressed and don’t play in real time. But you don’t have to compromise design, you can do it being a little less delicate.
iSPOT: How do you work with agencies to start a job?
Herbruck: You get a brief from the agency client, which is a hand drawn rough, an approximation that sells the idea. We’re designers first so we design a full blown out color board, a certain number of frames that describe what the spot will look like once it’s produced. The story board is the first thing. Once they see the board they know what we’re after and the whole job is making it look as good as the story board or better. It doesn’t always end up looking like the board because the agencies have their own production crew, so it’s a collaboration.
