Corals and Blues - Art Direction for a Commercial Pt 1

A few weeks ago I finished a commercial I was Art Director on. I was very excited about it because not only was it a cool app (which I will share in October when it comes out!) but it had an awesome color palette. The client mentioned the movie "Her" which really does nail production design. I went along with her suggestion and was inspired by those similar colors, but a little more youthful and something I felt was appropriate with the app. 


I went with sea-blues and corals. The colors are close to complimentary and play very well with each other. I spread this color palette across each scene in the shoot. 

3 of the scenes took place indoors and were walk-in's, meaning they were already furnished and at items inside. In cases such as these I look at location photos and from those I judge what I need to purchase and what I can use from what's already there to create the best possible looking set for the client. 

Note that the sets are going to look very clean. Normally for films I like to add a lot more items to make it more lived in. However, because this commercial is for an app and we're mostly never really seeing the set because we're punched in very close to the product, it's minimalistic. However, I focused as much as I could on color, because that's most likely what we'd be seeing on camera out of focus in the background. 

BEFORE

AFTER

On the left are before and after photos of the sofa. In the scene, this apartment belongs to a young female college student. I was able to utilize one pillow, the blue one on the far left. The rest of the pillows I brought in as well as the blanket thrown on the right hand corner. 

BEFORE

AFTER

On the right - the mantle originally had a lot of personal items from the owner of this apartment. I removed them and replaced it with items that fit the color palette as well as items I felt represented the character well. Unfortunately, this mantle was never seen in the shot, so I'm sharing it here with you! 

 This location to the left was a bit of a challenge. As you can see, their bookshelves were very full and I had a big bright yellow couch to work with. This is where we were going to shoot the living room of a well-off elderly woman. So, this is what it became:

   I took out a majority of the books and knick-knacks from the book shelf and replaced it with my own. I did use a couple of their items, such as a big white shell that helped break up the black shelves a little. As for the big bright couch, I just threw what's actually a scarf over the top to break the color. Also, with the talent sitting on the chair, it ended up not being so scary! 

Stay tuned for Part II !