11/17/2021
New blog post out on the Hidden Woods site! We dove into one of our favorite topics for this one, creative development. It’s where every great project AND nightmare project is conceived. It’s the secret sauce every filmmaker wishes we were better at cooking up. Excerpt below!
“Have you ever laid in bed the night before a shoot you’re responsible for, tossing and turning, wondering if everything is going to pan out the way you hope it will? “Will I know how to communicate my ideas to the cast and crew? Will we go over-schedule? Is my script even good!?” It feels like you’re a skydiver about to jump out of a plane - because once call time hits, there’s no looking back, and you have to jump. Will the parachute deploy? Does it have holes in it? Do you even have a parachute? Are you going to flail around and make a fool of yourself? These restless nights are the worst, and apart from taking your sleep aid of choice, there’s only one thing you can do to get those much needed zzz’s - have a rock solid plan.
Picking up a camera and shooting has never been cheaper or simpler. The barrier to entry into commercial video production has been lowered, and while this presents a ton of benefits to the filmmaking community, it’s made it easier to overlook one critical stage of the production process - creative development. The “shoot it now, figure out the rest later” attitude is deadly, and inevitably leads to shortcomings in the end product. To be fair, oftentimes most of us DO think we have some semblance of a plan. Throughout my career I’ve fallen into this trap more times than I care to admit. I would be convinced that I had a solid approach, but either on set or in the edit bay I would stumble upon a hole in my preparation. Maybe the story is convoluted, maybe the edit has a pacing issue due to lack of content, or maybe the b-roll doesn’t illustrate the dialogue like I thought it would. Time and time again, I would come back to one, simple realization that separated my good projects from the great ones - your video will only be as good as the creative development you put into it.” [continued on site]
https://www.hiddenwoodsfilm.com/blog-posts/creative-development
We elevate our video productions by doubling down on creative development in the pre-production phase.
