Filming Blog for McDonald's Commercial

The process of filming our Happy Meal commercial did take a lot of time and effort but we were able to complete the majority of it. In the commercial, I played one if the children that received a Happy Meal. However, I did help with camera angles before the scenes were shot. For example, before the scene where the children walk to the table with their mom, i was able to set the camera to a position where the camera girl would create a tilt shot. We were able to film more than half of our commercial in the time we had between lunches to film on the senior patio. My group member Jahrvia played the other child and was in charge of props and costumes. My group member Anishka was in charge of directing and shooting the majority’s of the commercial. She also played the McDonalds waitress. Lastly, my  group member Aaliyah played the mom. She was responsible for props also and the overall scripts and parts of each scene to add more excitement.

We started the process by gathering our materials to start with. This included our camera, tripod, SD card, and pass to be outside. Next, we headed straight to the senior patio area in the school. We had to be aware of the people eating lunch in an hour so we filmed fairly quick. We then put in our SD card and connected the camera to the tripod. We set the tripod up at a wide angle so the audience could see the table we were using for the commercial. We began filming the scene on our storyboard where we finish talking about what we wanna be when we grow up and then sit down at the table. We had to do a couple of these become we were worried about the sound on the videos being too low. Then, we filmed the scene where the waiter comes and asks what we would like to order. We were able to include a close up of the mom character ordering Happy Meals.

The next scene filmed was of the children showing each other their toys. Then they ask the mom to go play and begin a conversation on how their Barbies match the future career they want to have. We managed to incorporate over the shoulder shots to sho the girls talking to each other. The children then turn to the camera, which is now at a wide angle, and say “Barbie, You Can Be Anything” right before it fades to the McDonalds sign and jingle. Once we we’re finished with these scenes, we decided to head back to the classroom and dump our footage. Since we had it written down in our notes, this process only took a couple of minutes. Since we were complete so quick, we went back to review some of the shots taken. As stated before, we were very worried about the audio. However, the audio maintains sound that is perfect for the commercial and for us to put sounds on top of it. The overall filming process was definitely fun, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.