7 blog posts in and my project is already finished. Who would have thought? Not me. But nevertheless, what happened over the past weeks, and how did my project change from the beginning?
The topic, a spec commercial for Carhartt, is still the same. Also, the message I want to convey is unchanged, but the method has evolved. From fast paced, energetic cuts to slow, long standing shots that tell their own story with no need for fancy, fast edits.
I was already pretty far into my research and had laid the groundwork for the treatment, but I changed a lot of things in the meantime. The text changed partially, and the images I think completely. And after a lot of feedback, the treatment now seems very understandable. What I wanted to achieve is a treatment that directly tells the story, sets the vibe, and provides a rough guide through the scenes. Just what a treatment should do but often misses.
My previous ones didn’t work so well in comparison, in my opinion, because I now had the time and resources to put in more work and really make my vision clear, even for people who had never seen the concept before. That used to be something I struggled with. For me, my vision is always clear, but others often didn’t understand it. Not because they couldn’t, but because I communicated it poorly. Or maybe not even poorly, but I left out things that were obvious to me because I already knew them. Others didn’t.
That is definitely the biggest learning from the past month: take your time and make it clear for everyone. The client doesn’t know what you have in your head, no matter how good the idea. It must be clear with a simple PDF, understandable even for people who are not filmmakers, not photographers, not designers, but people with different backgrounds.
