Audiovisual advertising production in 2025: “Greater demands and lower budget”

Jaume Jardi, general director of the production company specialized in advertising spots Bloody Mary, conveys his vision of the current state of the advertising audiovisual production industry, a sector that, far from being at its best, continues to be sustained thanks to creativity and great professionals.

Audi, Nestlé, Port Aventura or Damm are some of the brands that have trusted the services of Bloody Mary, a “traditional” production company as it continues maintaining production resources such as technical equipment or its own set instead of opting in its daily life to rent solutions and production spaces. Specialized in the field advertising, operates in a sector in which the redefinition of audiovisual windows, far from doubling the opportunities for this type of companies, has led agencies and advertisers to diversify your budgets, subtracting resources for its realization along the way.

The prototypical campaigns, previously composed of a standard package of 20-second spots, a 5-10 second booster and an extended piece on special occasions, become triple aspect ratios, vary your completion to adapt to the television and/or digital medium, and even do without traditional filming relying on graphic resources created with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In the process, as is usually the trend in other areas of the industry such as the world of post-production, a higher performance with fewer resources.

Given the readjustment of the viewer's gaze, overwhelmed daily with hundreds of visual impacts, advertising requires excellence in its execution and of creativity in its conception to remain relevant; Technology continues to drive excellence, and the opportunities are as vast as the challenges. James Jardim opens the doors to the particularities of his production company and conveys his vision of the industry as a whole, claiming in the process human labor in the face of those voices that point to its replacement by new artificial intelligence tools.

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Bloody Mary: the right tools for advertising + equipment

Jardi is proud of the identity and structure of his producer. Self-defined as “atypical”, the Catalan company has taken shape “from the point of view of director" "Producer by accident", the creative decided to promote this project after accumulating frustrations on the filming sets after unfruitful pre-productions in which adequate resources were not invested in each production.

“You have to look for what are the fundamental resources for each production. We have that advantage: by having the means that we do not have to rent, we can invest in the most important points of the productions”.

“A cook is not a cook if he does not have a kitchen,” explains Jardi, claiming that production companies must “investigate” and know as much as possible about your technical solutions to provide the best possible service. “We have a set, cranes, lights, motion control, cameras… It is a format that I like; a little expensive to maintain, but it allows me and the other filmmakers to shoot with the right tools,” he points out.

Jardi is accompanied, beyond a broad portfolio of filmmakers and directors of photography, from an internal team dedicated to the day-to-day life of the production company and post-production work. However, it considers that the advertising sector requires such disparate resources in each production, that it is essential to have the suitable professionals for each project: “It is clear that for a beauty spot you need a makeup artist top, but if you do a family one, you can count on a makeup assistant if you don't have the budget. In the end, you have to look for the fundamental resources for each production. We have that advantage: by having the means that we do not have to rent, we can invest in the most important points of the productions.”

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The state of advertising production companies in Spain

Bloody Mary operates in a certainly competitive market that, as Jardi recognizes, is not at its “healthiest” moment. The diagnosis of the general director of the production company is that it is working ““below actual costs”, a well-known trend for an audiovisual that operates in a context of extreme competitiveness.

“Many times the productions are made with budgets so tight which turns out to be very difficult maintain businesses”.

“For a company to advance it has to have some benefit, and many times productions are made with such tight budgets that it is very difficult to maintain the companies,” says Jardi, pointing out that, despite everything, there are companies that work “very well.” Given this context, for the director they are the “great professionals in the sector” those who support an ecosystem of audiovisual production that, currently, “is not a big business”: “It is a type of job that is done out of passion. You either love what you do or leave it. It is very demanding, there are many hours and tension arises. You do it because you like it.”

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The diversification of advertising campaigns

The budget war in the audiovisual services sector responds, to a certain extent, to an industry of advertising agencies and brands who seek to rethink their investments in production, redistributing budgets and, in many cases, rethinking them. Jardi invites us not to generalize, highlighting that there are clients who invest even more than a decade ago in production, but he does recognize that there are others who, due to the diversification of windows and the ephemeral of content, focus the spots under new perspectives.

“If you watch television, the productions are more simple. The creativity has adapted to the budgets”.

According to the person responsible for Bloody Mary, this reality causes more pieces with different formats, which makes the decision to invest less resources in production. "But this is a mistake. Producing things well has a cost," he points out, indicating that this reduction in budgets has also affected creativity: "If you watch television, productions are simpler. Creativity has adapted to budgets. (...) Creatives present an idea thinking about the budget that they have. But it also serves to exercise your mind and look for solutions. In the end, there has always been good and bad publicity. It depends on the talent of each one.”

It is self-imposed limitations make the general trend tend towards a simplification. This is how Jardi analyzes this situation: "At the production level, the scripts were thought of differently, with more capabilities. Now, as there is no budget, the tendency is to simplify. Sometimes more is requested than what is being paid and this has meant that it has sometimes become a final year project. But it cannot be. This is an industry and things cannot always be done beautifully and cheaply. In the end, everyone complains and the industry suffers. It is complicated."

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The relevance of technique in advertising

Looking back, Jardi recognizes that the advertising spots were marked by the technological cutting edge. The type of budget allowed us to shoot “in 35”, but today, the “formats have changed”. This is how the general director explains it: "Advertising is no longer just the 20-second spot. There are other formats and ways to advertise with special audiovisual actions. Cutting-edge technology has reached series, advertising, films, video clips... It is becoming easier for you."

"The advertising It's no longer just the 20-second spot. There are others formats and ways to advertise with special audiovisual actions”.

Thanks to this democratization of access to professional technology, as well as a culture of audiovisual production extended to all types of professional profiles, the top-level audiovisual finish: "The environment is becoming more and more demanding and that seems good to me. One of our main premises is that things have to be done better than what you know how to do; you have to always improve it and, therefore, you have to invest in media."

To respond to this self-demand, Bloody Mary currently shoots with cameras RED in format 8K, which is cropped to aspect ratios of 1:1, 16:9 o 9:16 according to the needs of your clients. Likewise, the production company has a wide variety of lenses to adapt them to the needs of each of the advertising spots.

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Virtual production: far from the needs of advertising

“We have to change the chip with virtual production,” says Jardi, who claims that this type of resources exceeds, in the vast majority of cases, the particularities of the Spanish advertising industry. Beyond the expensive pre-production phase, the price of set rentals “still not worth it” due to the limitations of these techniques and the type of budgets it handles, both for large and small clients.

There are exceptions, yes. The person responsible for Bloody Mary finds this type of production interesting for the filming with children in which there is a time requirement such as a night shoot, or for those spots that require multiple outdoor locations that can be solved “in just one day of work.”

Despite everything, Jardi confirms that a future reduction in costs allows the capabilities of these systems to be fully explored and use them regularly in different productions: "We will have Unreal banks with funds that we can apply, which exist, although they are still scarce. But we all know that a good virtual set with a quick refreshment has a purchase cost. It is very expensive."

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Unified post-production in DaVinci Resolve

Jardi, who in this search for excellence chooses to work with archives RAW R3D NETWORK without proxy in post-production rooms, is committed to unifying its entire workflow with the software DaVinci Resolve, integrating editing, effects with Fusion and color correction into the same system. "I started editing the spots with the Moviola. I started editing with the Avid and one day Apple's Final Cut appeared," he recalls, explaining that in 2015 he made the leap to the editing tool. Blackmagic Design, a tool that he defines as “fantastic”. Additionally, Bloody Mary benefits from the capabilities of Nuke Studio y Adobe After Effects, while for the sound they decide to outsource it to a company specializing in the matter.

Beyond the essential color correction work, an area addressed in depth in this report, the Catalan production company's team works intensively on the adaptation of parts to all types of windows, whether television or digital: “You have to adapt the overlays to different languages, they ask you for 5-second versions for the digital sphere and you have to make adaptations with subtitles for YouTube, to which you have to add the seven or eight broadcast copies.” Additionally, the production company works in exclusive formats for the internet, in which case filming images are often dispensed with in favor of archive images. "I like that there are more formats. I was very bored doing just the 20-second spot... and I like challenges," he says.

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AI: opportunities, unpredictability and future

In this context of reduced budgets and greater production and post-production demands, many companies are committed to bringing to IA to the foreground of its nature to promise to respond efficiently and profitably to large volumes of work. Bloody Mary, without rejecting its benefits, uncheck of this trend: AI is not the solution to everything, but rather a tool to achieve certain objectives. In Jardi's words: "The talent is here. You have to know how to ask, be aware of what for, know what parts you use with AI, what you integrate, and what improvements. It is true that, given that budgets are increasingly tight, it can be a trend for advertising. But I recently saw a campaign on the Internet for a product that I don't remember now and it was horrible."

“You have to know how to ask, be aware of what for, know what parts you use with IA, what you integrate, and what improvements. It is true that, since the budgets they fit more and more, it may be a advertising trend”.

Until the consolidation of these tools, the production company explores all its possibilities and uses elements created with Midjourney o Runway for your models. Plus, start exploring developments built into your favorite programs, such as the improvements built into Nuke version 16 or the AI-assisted rotoscoping tools in DaVinci Resolve. "They are tools and we have to use them as such. Changes are always good. I don't think AI is going to sink us, but rather it can be used to do surprising things or not," he comments.

Even with all the efficiencies it can produce, A yard You don't understand these tools without the people who use them. For the general director of Bloody Mary, behind these solutions there will be “someone who has known how to take advantage of this.” He talent, in his own words, “will endure and be valued”: “We will have to shoot, with improvisations and errors. It's nice to capture all that. In the end, it is that symbiosis between technology and the human part that we cannot lose.”

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez