HOW TO SHOOT A PERFUME AD

My life has always been a mush of different creative parts. From music to visual arts to photography and videography among others.

But recently, I have been more in the videography and cinematography space.
I have been shooting videos for clients, event videos, product videos and much more.

Shooting wildlife

But much more recently I have explored doing product ads more than any other type of visual work. These product ads have ranged from products sold to services rendered by people.
Asides building my portfolio, they have also helped me explain cinematography is a much more easy way, such that creating sets for shoots come easier to me.

In this video I show one of the ads I made for a perfume brand. It was a simple but yet engaging idea especially, when I came up with the final shot.

I had no initial idea for the shot. So I came up right on the spot with the idea on how the video could be constructed. I had an assistant with me, who was apparently the client. She helped with getting the shots right.

So how did we get the scintillating results you're watching?

First, you need to understand that there are 3 things to consider when shooting a product ad:

1. THE STORY: Every product conveys an idea of some value. With stories told through visuals, one should be able to tell it to the audience without losing them one bit. The story should portray the essence of the product as perfectly as possible.

With this perfume product, the scent carried this vibe of "the freshness of nature". And this was portrayed in the ad, especially where we show the product on a prop tree covered with mist

2. THE ENVIRONMENT: One can either create or modify the environment and visuals around what you want to shoot. What is visible however dictates to a large extent how the end result will look like.

This video was shot in a living room. A table was used for displaying the product and the products were underpaid with linoleum sheets.

The table was placed centrally in the room faraway from walls, so that the background can be blurred. We couldn't do anything magical to make a suitable background for the shoot that would beat blurring out the background by making the product standing out within a depth of field. That blurred out background was just very needed. It keeps attention on the product sustained.
And so we just made use of a prime lens to achieve that level of optical blurriness.

Also, we made use of a prop tree as earlier said.

The Environment

3. GEAR: Gear is obviously an important factor to consider, not necessarily because the best gear do the best jobs, but so that one can work within what one has.

The truth is that content is always king over gear. If you can capture people's attention with a smartphone-shot video, you might not need a cinema camera to sell out your idea.

However, the better the gear the more options you have.

I use a 2014 Panasonic Lumix GH4 for most professional work and that was what I used here. The camera in itself is very capable even in 2023, but it still has some shortcomings.

The Lumix GH4

The biggest shortcoming for me in shooting videos generally are the lack of In Body Image Stabilization (IBIS), poor autoficus and a bad low-light performance. An averagely priced smartphone today has some form of stabilization. So to have a camera without one can really be a pain. However, I'd learned how to get stable shots with body movements and sometimes use the camera with a dolly tripod.

I pretty much shoot most of my product ads with manual focus, so that was not a problem here. Otherwise, the autofocus is very tricky with staying in focus consistently.

After all I was using a manual focus prime lens - a Meke 35mm f/1.7 lens. This cheap small lens is the sharpest lens I have in my camera set up and it always comes in handy for the crispy shots and beautiful blurry background it gives.

The Meke 35mm lens

Once I had these factors in place, the shooting of the video was majorly just cinematic moves to depict the story.

Shot 1: The Intro
This was simply achieved by telling my assistant to push the product from one side to the other.
Alternatively, one could put the camera on a tripod and do it if you're alone.

Shot 2: The Reveal
Here, the product is opened up and revealed.

Shot 3: Show off
The product is displayed using cinematic moves and the fine prints of the product are shown also.
Also note the intentionality with the music. At some point the visuals depict some vibration in sync with the music.

Shot 4: The Bridge
At this point the music comes to a calm. The product is displayed on the prop tree, covered in mist (depicting natural freshness).

Shot 5: The Wrap Up
The product is then sprayed and the musical vibe resumes fully, with the mist of the spray spreading all around (mist was added in post).
Then the product is displayed all opened up and the brand name is shown.

All through each of the shots, texts were also added with sound effects to carry the idea of each shot and make the ad more relatable for action.

EDITING:
All editing was done in PowerDirector for Mobile with little 3rd party ad-ons... perhaps I can do another video at a later time on PowerDirector as an editing software

Not everyone would have access to a pro-camera. In fact, many aspiring videographers only have their phone to start with.
But whichever situation you find yourself in there are take home points from how I shot this ad.

Take home points:

• Always have a storyline, no matter how cliché. It informs how you shoot your videos and makes the process easy.

• Use your gear to it's advantages

• Improvise, improvise, improvise if you'revery constrained. When you have the capacity to create expensive sets, you can then do "REAL stuff" from A-Z.

• A good depth of field more often than not looks good for product ads.

BONUS POINT

• Post your works!. It's the only way you can ever get discovered. It's how I got the majority of my clients. They saw what I could do, and got me hired.

It's a long read, but I hope you got some good stuff from it.