Tom Mackellar.
I’m Tom. I make short product ads, and I design and build websites and brand identities. I run each job myself from the first conversation to the finished files, so you are talking to the person doing the work the whole way through. Most of this page is about the ads, because that is the part with the longest process behind it.
How I work
I decide the film before I produce any of it. What the product is, who it is aimed at and what the piece has to make happen all get agreed first, then you see a still of every scene and approve them one at a time. By the time the ad exists you have already signed off what it looks like.
Nothing arrives as a surprise that way. If the look is wrong it is wrong on a still, where fixing it costs an afternoon, rather than in a finished cut.
“You sign off the look before anything is produced.”
Eight stages, one person.
All eight happen on every project, however short. A five-second piece moves through them in a couple of days rather than a week, and none get skipped, because each one is what stops the next one going wrong.
Research
What the product actually is, who it is for, what the competition’s advertising already looks like, and what would make yours not look like all of it. This is also where I tell you if I think the idea you arrived with is the wrong one.
The brief, locked
One idea, written down: the world, the light, the camera moves, and the exact wording of any on-screen text. Agreed while changing it is still free. Nothing after this point starts until this is signed off.
Storyboard
Every shot in order, with what it is doing and how long it holds. At these lengths the running order is the film. A fifteen-second piece lives or dies on which four seconds you cut.
Previz
A rough, ugly version of the whole thing at the right timing, so the pacing gets judged before anything expensive is made. It is meant to look unfinished. Its only job is to prove the structure works.
Look development, and you sign it off
A photoreal still of every scene, approved one at a time. This is the stage that decides whether the ad is any good, and it is the one you hold the pen on. Nothing goes into production on a guess.
Production
The shots get made to the approved stills, generated or built in code, whichever the piece called for. Takes that miss the brief get thrown away rather than talked into being fine.
Post
The longest stage, and the one that is entirely hand work. Frames that need fixing get taken into Photoshop and cleaned up individually, and everything else is assembled, timed, retimed and colour graded in DaVinci Resolve. The grade is where a set of separate shots stops looking like separate shots. On the Pepsi Max piece the cut meant losing the best-looking sequence in the film, because it broke the rhythm.
Delivery
The master at the length and ratio the brief called for, in 4K where the placement supports it, plus the 16:9, 9:16, square and 4:5 versions and one that reads with the sound off. Files handed over, yours.
A machine makes pictures at two of those eight stages, 05 and 06, and 06 only ever builds what you already approved at 05. That is why you hold the pen on 05 rather than seeing the ad at the end. The other six are decisions and hand work. The FAQ sets out which tools do what, stage by stage.
Background
Four finished films so far, none of them commissioned: two product ads for invented brands, a technical showcase for an invented product, and an unofficial Pepsi Max spec test that PepsiCo neither asked for nor has any connection to. I have not made an ad for a paying client yet, and I would rather you heard that here than worked it out later. All four are on the Work page, shown in full with how each one was made.
On the web side there is one real client, a physio practice in Devon, plus two concept builds. That is all of it, and I am not going to pad it out with a client list I do not have.
Websites and logo and brand identity run the same way: one person, real prices on the page, nothing dressed up. Got a project in mind? Get in touch.