Dream or Nightmare?
A ribbon of dreams. That’s how Orson Welles described film in the heyday of celluloid cinema. Almost a century on, and filmmaking and video production has helped brands turn their dreams of connecting with audiences into a reality. But what are the pitfalls? Here we explore how to stop your dream of campaign success turning into a filmmaker’s nightmare.
Pre-Production: Begin with why
The ultimate rule to live by when creating a film is to realise that most people, even those who fall squarely within your target audience, don’t have the time, energy or inclination to care about your project as much as you do. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you will begin to ask yourself the age-old question: why. Why should this film exist? Why will people watch it? Why would the world be a poorer place without it? Brutal honesty with yourself in the very first stages of conception can help hone your story, distill your goals, and remind stakeholders of what you’d like to achieve.
Production: Budget is crucial
Sadly, filmmaking is an industrial medium. It’s also a collaborative one. That means the more kit and people you have, the better your product will be. Essentially, quality means money. The length of time you took to get sign-off on your wafer-thin wad is not an indicator of the quality you can expect if that’s all you have in the end. By the same token, if you manage to sign-off a veritable landmass of bank-notes, but slice it in innumerable ways, you’ll arrive at the same underwhelming result. Spend more and target more. Your audience will thank you.
Post-Production: Streamline feedback
Post-production is a minefield. You should know going in that there will never be a more complex, painstaking, outright booby-trapped part of the video production process than this. So, when things get this tough, the very last thing you should do is send a link containing the unfinished film to everybody in the company to ruminate over. The most effective post-production processes, by a country mile, include few people in the loop and only one at the very centre. As we say in Wales – a camel is a horse designed by committee. Don’t let your project become a camel.
The Results of Listening
Campaign dreams are there to be achieved, but in an age in which multi-million-pound ad campaigns are routinely blown out of the water by a five-year-old’s video of their cat wearing jeans, brands need to reflect more on what their goals are, and how they go about achieving them. A good production company will not only help you do that, but make the process a creatively rewarding one as well.
This was recently epitomised in our collaboration with MED-El, a longstanding client of ours that worked seamlessly with us to create the below campaign film on the theme of listening. Not only was the creative process a dream, it has also since been nominated for Video of the Year at Prolific London Awards 2019.
4media group is always ready to turn filmmaking and video production dreams into results so get in touch.