Tom Mackellar.
I’m Tom. I make short product ads — five, ten or fifteen seconds — and I run each one myself from the first conversation through to the graded master. There is nobody else on it, so you are talking to the person doing the work the whole way through.
How I work
I decide the film before I produce any of it. What it is for gets agreed first — what the product is, who it is aimed at, and what the piece actually has to make happen — and then you see a still of every scene and approve them one at a time before anything goes into production. So by the time the ad exists, you have already signed off what it looks like.
The point of it is that nothing arrives as a surprise, and that the expensive end of changing your mind never gets reached. 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.
Every one of these happens on every project, however short. A five-second piece moves through them in a couple of days rather than a week, and none of them get skipped, because each one is what stops the next one going wrong. At five seconds especially, there is nowhere for a weak shot to hide.
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. 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, and the cut is where the timing you agreed at previz either survives or gets fixed — on the Pepsi Max piece that meant cutting 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 — which is why you hold the pen on that one rather than seeing the ad at the end. The other six are decisions and hand work. The FAQ sets out exactly which tools do what, stage by stage.
Background
Four finished films so far, none of them commissioned: a product ad for an invented skincare brand, a coffee ad for an invented roaster, a technical showcase built to demonstrate what the format holds at ten seconds, 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.
That is all of it. I am not going to pad it out with a client list I do not have.
Motion is the main thing, and it’s what the rest of this page is about — but I also design and build websites and logo & brand identity, run the same way: one person, real prices on the page, nothing dressed up.
Got a project in mind? Get in touch