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Taking a Label Maker to the Next Level

NJ Commercial Produced For Brother International

Global electronics company Brother International tapped Awakened Films to produce a series of web commercials in NJ for products ranging from printers to label makers. This case study focuses on videos featuring Brother’s CUBE Plus Label Maker – a product designed for small business owners and crafters.

A female actress in her kitchen label party supplies for a commercial video production

The Challenge

Hot off of a previous Brother commercial video project, we were approached with a difficult task: do it again – this time for the CUBE Plus Label Maker – and do it in half the time. We had exactly eight days for pre-production, two for production, and six days to deliver one full-length video and five social media snippets. We couldn’t wait to begin and had no time to lose.

The Solution

Our agency partner, full-service marketing agency Ridge Marketing, provided a script but the tight deadline didn’t leave time to produce visual storyboards. Awakened Films got right to work brainstorming with the marketing agency to plan the visual narrative and locations, and crafted a detailed shot list to document each scene.

The videos featured a small party planning business that uses the label maker to put a creative touch on a child’s unicorn birthday party. We labelled unicorn pops, a unicorn cake, candy jars and so much more. The party planner would shop for supplies at a local boutique that, wouldn’t you know it, also happens to use the Brother product to label items in its store. The two scenarios would give us the creative space to put the label maker’s full potential on display.

With too little time to tightly plan each scene on our end, Awakened Films stepped up big time and found creative ways to tell a complex story.

Ridge Logo

Rob Quincy, Partner, CCO
Ridge Marketing & Design, LLC

One full day was set aside to capture both of the main portions of the story. The boutique was first and, because it was a real operating business, we needed to get in and out before business hours.

A female actress looks at items in a store while being filmed for a commercial video production
A wide panorama of a store busy with lighting and camera crew as well as actors prepping for a NJ commercial film shoot

We then made the move to our kitchen and birthday scene locations.

Crew and clients are reviewing a shot on a monitor during a commercial video production in NJ
A female actress in her kitchen label party supplies for a commercial video production

Brother also requested that we demonstrate a variety of other professional uses for the label maker. With such a tight turnaround and mere seconds of available run time to work with, we constructed top-down shots of various props and tabletops to create the look of a teacher’s desk, a food store and a florist’s shop. This was a cost-effective solution, while still holding true to the pacing and tone of the video.

A hand model actor puts labels on a bunch of office folders in this behind the scenes image of a commmerical video production
A hand model actor puts labels on a bunch of office folders in this corporate video production
An African American actor puts labels on a bunch of office folders in this corporate video production

The corporate office scenes were shot ahead of time on a different set. This simple foresight gave us greater location variety while saving cost and time.

We hit the ground running with the edits, leveraging industry-standard editing software for the sharp animation and color-grading this video needed. While we remained focused on the video, the marketing agency produced a voiceover and custom graphics and sourced music options. The piece was coming together.

Two editors work on a mac computer for a commercial video edit

Results

The full-length commercial video was then broken out into five “snippets” – 15 to 30-second clips for social media marketing. Repurposing content for different platforms is a great way to gain visibility without much additional financial investment. The client only needed the commercial in HD format, but we had decided to shoot in Ultra HD 4K to future-proof it and giving us more control of the footage in editing.

 

We finished on time, on budget and proud of the complex story that we were able to captured. The client loved it, the agency was happy and we’re proud of the results. “I’m very pleased with how the videos turned out. If Awakened Films didn’t bring such a creative vision, patience and efficiency, there’s no way we could have pulled this off,” noted Quincy.


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