“They’re fake!” “They’re actors” “They’re reading from a script!”
You hear these disparaging comments every time you play testimonial commercials in a focus group. Every. Single. Time. But after people talk about how fake it all is and how they can’t be fooled, something interesting happens. When they talk about the messages in the spots, they believe some of them.
The ones they believe? The testimonials shot with real people, saying real things that are important to the viewer. It seems that at some instinctive level we can sense the difference between actors and real people– between ad copy and … Read the rest
Steve Stockman is a writer/ producer/ director in Los Angeles. How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck, available in 9 languages, is the best selling video how-to book in the world. You can find the updated (2017) edition from Workman Publishing wherever you get books, ebooks or audiobooks. 
