Let’s Make a TV Commercial!

Now that you have studied character marketing, it is time to come up with a product, a character and a commercial!

Guidelines for your TV Commercial Project

Your assignment is to create and produce a TV commercial using at least one character. Your commercial will promote a product using your character.  Remember, your character should exemplify your product in some way like the Energizer Bunny does.

energizer bunny
The Energizer Bunny is a great example of a marketing character exemplifying the product. The bunny is used to sell batteries, which are little bundles of energy.

Your finished video should strive to be professional quality and should be around one minute long.  Since you are still learning, we will make it a bit easier on you by not requiring your commercial to be an exact, precise time but please keep in mind that professionally done commercials have strict time requirements.

You can use a teacher-supplied item as your character or you can come up with your own. If you wish to dress up and be your own character that is fine too.
You can sell any product, real or imaginary. To make it a bit easier, here is a list of products if can select if you wish.

  • Insurance, for car, home, or medical
  • Restaurant or other food vendor
  • Travel destinations
  • Toy or toy store
  • Shoe or shoe store
  • Beauty products like makeup, hair care products, etc.
  • Clothes, wearing apparel of any kind, company or individual item
  • Cars, trucks, boats, other luxury items
  • Space travel adventures

You can use green screen if you wish but it is not mandatory.
You can (and should) use video clips out of the royalty free library. You will also videotape actors from the class if necessary.
Music MUST be royalty free

  • Pre-Production Phase: (One Week)
  • Decide on product (remember that you can get ideas by looking at r.f. library)
  • Develop character
  • Write Script
  • Gather props, costumes, etc.
  • Production Phase: (One and a half weeks)
  • Video tape your character using stop and go animation technique This can be done with still images and not video
  • Video tape other shots you need
  • Record any audio voice over you will need
  • Upload everything to google drive
  • Post-Production Phase: (One and a half weeks)
  • Rename everything when it is still in google drive
  • Download everything into a desktop folder with your name on it
  • Create a new, well-named event and project in FCPX and put them in THE CORRECT LIBRARY
  • Post Production Phase: One week.
  • Edit
  • Convert to a sharing file and upload to its final destination point.

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Lorraine Grula


Lorraine Grula enjoyed a fast-paced, multifaceted career in the television and video business, producing, shooting, writing, and editing documentary-style videos in both news and corporate settings. Later, she got to teach media and video production in two high schools, which then morphed into instructional design and corporate training. Lorraine is now dedicated to sharing her vast knowledge with others who wish to learn the art of video making, with an emphasis on storytelling and creating professional-quality videos for the internet as simply, yet creatively as possible.

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