TV commercial

What this is about

Broadcast changes the rules. A TV commercial runs at fixed lengths, passes through agency and client approval at every stage, and cannot be patched after delivery — the airing date is a hard wall. Compared to an online commercial, which can be re-versioned and re-uploaded, the TV spot demands that every frame is decided before the shoot: storyboard, offline timings, legal supers. Productions are typically mid-sized to large for their duration, with art department, styling and often casting on top of the camera crew, and a video village where decisions are made while the clock runs.

The format determines scope, crew and timeline — before the first location has been scouted.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• The storyboard is a contract: every board frame maps to a setup, and the schedule is built backwards from how many boards fit a day
• Fixed spot lengths mean the edit is timed before the shoot — a scene that runs long on set has nowhere to go
• Agency and client are on set, so the schedule needs approval moments built in, not discovered when the room disagrees
• Cut-downs and format variants should be planned as their own shots where framing differs, not left to the edit to crop

What the plan has to deliver

A production plan is useful to this role when it provides the following:

• A board-by-board schedule with setup times, so everyone sees which frame is being shot when
• A shot list that marks which setups also serve cut-downs and alternative aspect ratios
• A call sheet that includes agency, client and casting alongside crew — the set has more voices than most

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Scheduling by scene count instead of setup count — one board frame can hide four lighting changes
• Leaving the packshot for the end of the day, when light and patience are gone
• Treating the 6-second cut-down as an edit task although its framing was never shot

With TillyGen

TillyGen breaks a spot script into boards, setups and a timed shoot day, and keeps cut-down variants attached to their master shots — so the broadcast versions are planned, not improvised.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.