The story of a storyboard or Why Do We Need Them

As you may recall, we recently shared the results of our little survey on our newsletter, where creatives shared their opinions on the role of storyboards in advertising production. If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out!

One of the colleagues told us a whole story about his experience and how he changed his attitude towards storyboards. We really enjoyed the story and decided to share it with you.

Take your seats, grab your popcorn – here it is!

To be honest, I always hated it when we did storyboards. At the stage of selling the idea to a client, it was superfluous and resource-intensive, and in the process of preparing the shoot, of course, it no longer played a big role, because you knew every shot and every scene way more detail than any of the illustrators could have drawn it.

It is widely believed that storyboards are a resource-intensive and unnecessary step in selling a script and ideas. Of course they are vital for the shooting itself, they are usually prepared by DoP and Film Director, but now it is about the creative agency.

I happened to work with a company that was preparing a brand launch on a colossal scale. And it was their first commercial that they ran on all channels. I'm not a big believer in?"safe?tried-and-true solutions plucked from competitors", so my team brought in frankly insanely stand-out, absurdly comedic and daring scripts from all over the media airwaves. Given the conservative nature of this industry, it's fair to say that selling such concepts was only possible at marketing manager level. All the upper management didn't want to go into the details of the scripts, but wanted to approve something that would definitely work. Even if it was bad, at least it was an average result.?

That's when I became an advocate of focus groups. Yes, it was I, the same test critic, who advocated for the potential audience to be involved in this sensitive issue. Our audience consisted of people who were not the most educated, rich, sophisticated and advanced. They were typical Russians who only smile once a year at a tired joke from the Soviet past. So it was vital for everyone to find out if they would understand the kind of humour that characterises me, a lover of Monty Python, Australian absurdity, black humour of the United Kingdom and generally a jester.

To convey the idea of a mockumentary, to evoke the same kind of excitement as I feel about the script, to evoke a desire to buy the product, to remove barriers to purchase, to explain the essence of a completely new brand in 30 seconds was practically impossible. Everyone was convinced that we were going to fail the tests.

I remember that in those days I approached the issue of storyboards more scrupulously than I approached the key visuals. We didn't just correct the editing and dynamics, but every detail in the illustrations. Choosing the right studio, which understood the task and fought with us for the result, was one of the most important moments of the whole project for which we had been preparing for almost a year.?

When the focus groups and demonstrations of animation came, I was literally sweating with excitement and already began to make excuses to myself, knowing that I had originally set an unrealizable task.?

All 12 people who came in the first wave laughed. Then the next ones laughed too and said that this was exactly the kind of advertising they were missing. Then we looked at the questionnaires and realised that everyone was positive about the brand and willing to buy it. Even those who had no idea that there was such a genre as mockumentary at all.?

We got the budget. We won. Since then, I have changed my attitude towards the importance of the storyboarding process.

Artem Filimonov , Creative Director?at Cheil Germany

Special thanks to Tom for sharing!

And if you are looking for cool storyboard artists, contact us [email protected]