The Train of Thought commercial is now available for all to see!
We wanted to make a video/commercial that could showcase how the gameplay worked, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so we kept it to under 1 minute.
The Process
1) First we got approval from the publisher, Tasty Minstrel Games to make the video, which included them signing off the script we wrote.
2) I’m fortunate enough to work in a company that has a videography department, and so I asked both of the videographers – Darren Jones and George Coucopolous – if they could help film it, and they agreed!
3) I recruited a few actor-friends that I know and we shot the video in lat January, 2011. In the video: Xavier Cousin, Floyd Sandiford, Leslie Dancey, Joel Stephenson…and me!
4) Darren Jones then took the footage and started to edit it down and even was our voice over announcer!
5) We wanted a floating thought bubble to appear and found some online, but they cost a lot of money, so we asked our good friend, Errol Elumir, to create one from scratch for us. He did, and after a few requested tweaks we ended up with what’s in the video!
6) Once the video was final (at least the length of the video was final), Sen went to work and created the entire theme song that plays throughout the video. That’s even his voice singing in the background. Sweet!
7) Finally we go through 3-4 rounds of minor tweaks and adjustments and we’re done!
Thanks to everyone who helped make this commercial. It’s really amazing how many talented friends we have! And now without further ado, here’s the video!
-Jay Cormier
Inspiration to Publication 
I’m very pleased with how this all turned out! Man, we are blessed to have so many gracious and talented friends who support us and believe in us! Thanks, first and foremost, to all of them.
We’ve also received some excellent feedback that *NOW* people understand how the game is played and that they wish they could have shown this video to their friends who were a bit fearful of guessing wrong (when any guess is better than no guesses at all!), so as an instructional video – job well done!
We’re already plotting out our next few videos, so there’s much more coming down the pipe – stay tuned! (which, ironically, is the first movie Jay and I ever saw together – memories…)
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Given my experience, I have an idea of the answer to this question… but I think others would be surprised to learn.
Your description makes it sound easy, but I know otherwise. Could you talk about how many person-hours went into each of the steps above? It’s a very nicely done piece, and I can tell a lot of time was spent to make this high-quality minute.
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OK let’s see if I can remember it all:
1) Writing the script and getting approval was quite simple. That took less than an hour. Finding the right words to use took a bit longer though as we wanted a good example of how the game worked. Maybe another hour total of brainstorming. So far: 2 hours.
2) Organizing the videographers and actors took about an hour as some dropped out due to other commitments and having to reschedule for other reasons. Total time: 3 hours.
3) Filming the video took about 3 hours. Mind you, when we got to the location, the videographers already had it set up with lights and microphones, so an hour to set up and an hour to tear down. Total time: 8 hours.
4) Editing took about 8 hours. Total time: 16 hours.
5) We searched the Internet for a good hour or so looking for thought bubbles, but then decided to ask our friend to animate one. He spent about 2 hours on it, which includes him tweaking it a couple times to fit the screen better. Total time: 18 hours
6) Sen took about 3 hours creating the music and recording his voice. Total time: 21 hours
7) The tweaks took our editor another 2 hours. Total Time: 23 hours
Now of course all of these steps didn’t happen in a day, or even in a week – but over month, as there is time in between each step as we wait for approvals or communication.
So an interesting question – thanks Scott! To make a 48 second video like this one it took about 23 actual hours!
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Great question and an interesting answer. If you cost that all out at $50 an hour, you’re looking at over $1000 for the spot, give or take.
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