Pre-Movie Slides

[mjrbaseball]

Hello all.

Recently, I have been called upon by the little movie theater in my town to design advertising slides that appear on the screen in-between movies, while people are filing in. (I know a lot of people hate these, but it keeps ticket prices down. Our tickets are still $5 [uS] a show.)

Anyway, I just wanted to show you some of the recent slides I've done, for your opinions. These are the final versions, after some of the advertisers saw my originals and wanted changes to what I thought was a good product. (Oh well.)

Also, remember these appear on the screen for maybe 15 seconds to an audience that isn't quite paying attention yet.

Anyway, here goes:

[mjrbaseball]

[mjrbaseball]

[OB33]

These look solid.

Good job

[quantum]

Nice job. I'm not sure if I'm a big fan of ads preceding movies, but that's a discussion for another time.

[Pixelboy]

Have you projected any of these on the movie screen as a test? They all look great - my only concern is that you've designed them with important info (phone numbers, etc.) too close to the edges of the image. Some movie projector systems have uneven light and there is considerable drop-off in candlepower at the edges, as well as distortion. Some projectors even overshoot a bit, so the image is "cut off" at the sides of the white screen backdrop. You might want to work within a sort of "TV Safe" region (although adjusted for movie aspect ratio of course), creating say a 90% region of the image using guide markers. Stay inside that inner 90% for all text info and critical visual elements.

The important part is to check out a few prototype images on the actual projection system before you discover that you have to re-do everything later.

[slapshot]

These remind me of all the yellow page ads I design at work all day.

But yours are prettier and not printed on toilet paper

[Pixelboy]

Although you can never convince clients about this next point, it's true - Too much information on a slide is worse than not enough. Clients want to jam far too much detail onto a screen for most viewers to absorb in just 15 seconds or whatever length, figuring that they aren't getting their money's worth if they don't fill every pixel with data. Honestly, phone numbers, addresses, etc. are a waste of time; who is sitting in a darkened theatre with a pen and paper ready to jot down numbers in the fleeting moments a client's ad is flashed on screen? It's better to punch just the name, the most memorable product or service and just one bit of locator info (ONE phone number if at all, a website address if it's catchy and memorable, or a "check your yellow pages for our ad" notice).

I sometimes edit TV commercials, and local spots are the worst! Clients jam 60 seconds of copy into a 30 second spot, bombard the screen with dozens of supers and scads of product shots. At the end of it, there's so much stuff flying by it's impossible to recall anything once it's over, not the least of it being the client's name! KISS always applies in advertising. One or two pieces of key information is all a viewer will absorb in just 15 seconds. I guarantee you that if two pest control companies placed screen ads consecutively - the first with a long list of pests it eradicates, their phone number, pager number and street address - the second with just their company name and service on a placard held by a sexy model in a bikini - I guarantee that you know which ad will be remembered even just one minute later.

[mjrbaseball]

Have you projected any of these on the movie screen as a test? They all look great - my only concern is that you've designed them with important info (phone numbers, etc.) too close to the edges of the image. Some movie projector systems have uneven light and there is considerable drop-off in candlepower at the edges, as well as distortion. Some projectors even overshoot a bit, so the image is "cut off" at the sides of the white screen backdrop. You might want to work within a sort of "TV Safe" region (although adjusted for movie aspect ratio of course), creating say a 90% region of the image using guide markers. Stay inside that inner 90% for all text info and critical visual elements.

The important part is to check out a few prototype images on the actual projection system before you discover that you have to re-do everything later.

Thanks for the advice, and I did exactly that. Actually, before I started making actual ads, I did some test grids and projected them to see exactly where the safe area was. I use the grids as a template for the actual slides, then delete the grid before they are converted to film.

By the way, the aspect ratio for slides is 1.5:1. (Compare with 1.85:1 for most films, 2.35:1 for wide-screen movies 1.37:1 for pre-1950 movies, 1.33:1 for standard television and 1.78:1 for wide-screen TV.)

[mjrbaseball]

Although you can never convince clients about this next point, it's true - Too much information on a slide is worse than not enough.

But I don't do the selling, just the artwork. I print a mock-up and the salesperson comes back and says they want this and that changed, and so I change it. Not always the way they want it changed, but I try to accommodate them while preserving the appearance.

Tell me about it. Many of these are compromises -- the advertiser wanted everything in it, and I wanted to do something simple and clean.

[Pixelboy]

I hear you! At the local level most ad reps deal almost exclusively in print advertising. Print (and static website advertising) is viewer-controlled exposure; the reader determines how much time to spend examining an ad's information. In screen advertising, the viewer has no control. It's virtually a "flash card memory test". Print salespeople have no idea about the distinctions between the different media. All the designer can do is make suggestions and then give the client what they ask for.

[Broken Record]

Although you can never convince clients about this next point, it's true - Too much information on a slide is worse than not enough. Clients want to jam far too much detail onto a screen for most viewers to absorb in just 15 seconds or whatever length, figuring that they aren't getting their money's worth if they don't fill every pixel with data. Honestly, phone numbers, addresses, etc. are a waste of time; who is sitting in a darkened theatre with a pen and paper ready to jot down numbers in the fleeting moments a client's ad is flashed on screen? It's better to punch just the name, the most memorable product or service and just one bit of locator info (ONE phone number if at all, a website address if it's catchy and memorable, or a "check your yellow pages for our ad" notice).

I sometimes edit TV commercials, and local spots are the worst! Clients jam 60 seconds of copy into a 30 second spot, bombard the screen with dozens of supers and scads of product shots. At the end of it, there's so much stuff flying by it's impossible to recall anything once it's over, not the least of it being the client's name! KISS always applies in advertising. One or two pieces of key information is all a viewer will absorb in just 15 seconds. I guarantee you that if two pest control companies placed screen ads consecutively - the first with a long list of pests it eradicates, their phone number, pager number and street address - the second with just their company name and service on a placard held by a sexy model in a bikini - I guarantee that you know which ad will be remembered even just one minute later.

Definitely agree. That's why I think the one for the education association is probably the most effective of the whole group.

[Brass]

Wicked good!

Could you do one saying "Help support the fight to bring back the Hartford Whalers?"