Planning the Commercial

Planning For The Commercial

It's officially day one of planning for my commercial project, with eleven days left until filming day. Today me, Emily, Jaheim, and Andrea sat down in a circle to brainstorm everything we needed. The main idea is that we're going to film on a field, the employee actor will hand the tired student a coffee and a donut. The student will sigh as the employee walks up and says "It looks like you need a pick-me-up". The student will proceed to drink the coffee, and appear again in their second costume as a runner. They will move on the track to stand alongside another runner, and the employee will suddenly blow a whistle as if they're starting a race. With the help of the coffee, the protagonist will end up outrunning the other runner and win the race. Everybody will celebrate together with donuts. The protagonist will look at the employee and say: "How did you do that?" and the employee will follow up with "Don't you know? America runs on Dunkin'." The commercial will close.

• Props: We've decided that we're going to have the regular cup of coffee from Dunkin' (empty, of course) alongside a bag which is gonna have some kind of donut in it. Not exactly sure what, maybe something really aesthetically pleasing so that it can draw the attention of the audience to look straight towards it rather than the actress. We'll use a whistle to commence a race, and bring a dozen donuts in a large box as well. These will be part of the commercial alongside all the other food containers.. but admittedly we'll get to eat these donuts once everything is said and done. All of these things will come into play over the course of the 30 seconds. 
• Costumes: One of us will have an apron with the company logo on it, and a standard work uniform. The main actor will have track gear on, since their main purpose is to start running at a certain point in the commercial. Before that actress puts on the track gear though, she'll have pajamas on because it's important for the plot. The main characters will be a (very tired) student/runner, a Dunkin' donuts employee, and another runner acting as a side character for the main character to beat.
• Schedule: Each class has a different goal starting today. The planning phase takes place now, then next week on the 14th we'll create our storyboards so that we can have a more vivid perspective of our idea. We'll present our storyboard to our teacher and have it approved and then move to the next phase. We film on the 21st, bringing all of our equipment and grabbing our camera. We only have one chance to film, so we're gonna have to squeeze it all in by the time the class period ends, and hopefully no unexpected weather comes. Finally, on the 23rd we'll edit the film in class as we envisioned and turn in our project. 
• Location: We have to film this at school, so we're going to do it on the track field. Because it's a field to run on, it'll kind of be a play on the whole "American RUNS on Dunkin'" joke. The lighting is mainly going to be natural, so hopefully the sunlight will set the way we need it to so that the contrast can show up properly onto our objects and our actor's faces.
• Back-up Plan: If the weather fails, we'll do a school setting. Student #1 will be walking down by the stairs close to our library, looking visibly tired. The bell will ring and the student will be startled, accidentally tripping and falling. They'll fall in slow motion and a pillow will be placed (very conveniently) for their head to fall on. The camera will cut to their face laying on the pillow, and a hand will come into the shot holding a bag with a donut inside. The smell will wake the student up, and then the hand will offer them a cup of coffee. This is the part where we say "You look like you could use a pick-me-up". The camera will then show the two walking away together, laughing happily.