Spot Pet Insurance
How I Created a Pre-Production Workflow and Directed An Adorable 30 Second cTV Ad for Spot Pet Insurance.
Spot Pet Insurance was in need of creating a 30-second cTV ad for a quarterly campaign. I took the call immediately, given I’m the pet parent of Basil, who has more followers and acting credits than most people I know. Working alongside Carlos Dominicis, we pitched a few concepts to the Spot team, which they seemed to enjoy. We ultimately landed on “The Golden Year” concept, where the audience is taken on a journey watching the relationship between a woman and her pup growing up together, culminating in a birthday celebration.
One of the things I sold Spot on was the transition from puppy to adult dog. We agreed we should start with a puppy because that’s when most people purchase pet insurance but were unsure of how to visually show that. I thought of the idea of having a puppy run left past a tree in the foreground and an adult would emerge on the other side. I demonstrated how it would work on my phone and the Spot team loved it.
Since this needed to be exactly 30 seconds, I produced an animatic by shooting stills of myself and a prop dog and edited it with a VO set to music.
The client had some notes, but it was useful feedback in guiding production where it needed to go. I proposed different room and backyard setups and thought of ways the dog mom could interact with her pup. Once the client approved the creative, we moved on to planning the production.
Carolina Sabrina Caruso joined the team as our production coordinator; she hired the talent, onboarded the crew, and facilitated communication between our production and the Spot Team. She was crucial in the days leading up to the shoot day because I was working on another production and was unable to talk to the client. I put my trust in her and it paid off.
Art Nobo was the DP for this shoot, with Chris Campa tagging along as AC. These guys are used to working 12-hour days of heavy production labor. Given we only had 3 hours with our puppy talent, and 3 hours with the adult dog, they got to film adorable puppies and leave early. A chill production enjoyed by all.
I used a shot list from my animatic to ensure we were on track. We ended up shooting way more than we needed due to the efficiency of production, leaving the Spot team with a drive full of media assets for future campaigns or social media posts.
All-in-all, this was one of the most stress-free productions I’ve been on, despite the complexity of animal talent, thanks to the amazing team we put together.