AND THEN IT STARTS WITH...
by Chris Donovan

After you’ve worked out a conceptual direction or framework for your piece you then need to assess the material that you have at your disposal to execute the “big idea.” Say your idea is to do something that’s big and cinematic. You have to ask yourself “do I have the shots?” Or, if it’s a character-driven direction “do I have the scenes in the script?” You can have a great idea but if you don’t have the footage, dialogue or music you’re screwed!

Well actually you’re not screwed at all. This is the elegant part of what we do — we evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in the material against a given concept and we work with them. Don’t have music that serves your concept? Go find a track that has the feel you want to convey. The dialogue doesn’t say what you want to communicate in your idea? Then fill the spot with voiceover copy or title cards. You can also slip dialogue from one scene into another — that does the job!

This thought process is truly the next important step after you’ve decided what your concept will be. You are working out how well you can put your piece together. This helps you understand what can or can’t be done with the material in front of you. It’s also at this point that you ask yourself broader creative questions like, “hey should I go shoot something? Do illustrations? Visual effects? Compose a piece of music?” These are the kind of questions that help you understand what makes the concept executable and what creative choices must be made to get there.

CHRIS DONOVAN is the Vice President/ Senior Creative Executive of On Air Promotions for The CW Television Network. He likes long slow walks on the beach, Guitar Hero 2 and the collected works of Chow Yun Fat. He doesn’t like people who talk loudly on cell phones in restaurants and is constantly worried about the well being of Lindsay Lohan.

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