Course: Producing Commercials for Television in the 21st Century
April 15th, 2009 | Published in Education
Over the past few months, I’ve been taking a continuing education course at the School of Visual Arts in New York. The course title is “Producing Commercials for Television in the 21st Century”, and you can read more about it here. The professor is Dr. Robert Naud, a longtime advertising industry veteran and all-round class act. He’s especially given to the phrase “like nobody’s business”. It has been an exceptionally interesting experience because of the way Dr. Naud structured the course. Instead of a series of lectures, we frequently took field trips and had guest speakers come in to talk to us about the industry. The students got first hand knowledge of advertising and commercial production. We also made valuable contacts at leading companies.
One of my assignments was to contact the Screen Actors Guild and try to get a representative to speak to our class. Apparently SAG is in the middle of a tremendous contract renegotiation, so getting a hold of someone was tricky. I eventually spoke to a manager there that was very helpful. She sent me the SAG commercials contract, including their big book and updates, which gave me all the info I needed to put together a presentation for the class. Apparently Dr. Naud was impressed, and he asked me to come back during the summer session of the course to give the same presentation. It’s all a little dry, but it’s valuable to know if you want to be a producer in advertising.
Next week we have our last session, and it has been a very enlightening and enjoyable experience. If you’re interested in signing up, the course is open to everyone.
