The Camera Comes Later
I’ve spent a large part of my working life behind a camera.
So what I’m about to say might sound a little odd.
I think we talk about cameras far too early.
Someone gets in touch because they need a film.
Sometimes they’ve already decided how long it should be. They might have an idea for the opening shot. They’ve discussed who should appear in it. Someone has suggested a drone would look good.
Occasionally there’s even a script.
And then comes the question:
“How much would it cost to make?”
It’s a perfectly reasonable question.
I’m just no longer convinced it’s the first one we should be asking.
“We Need a Film”
I’ve heard those words hundreds of times.
And for many years, I probably accepted them too readily.
If somebody wanted a film, my job was to help them make the best film possible.
I’d want to understand the audience. We’d talk about the story. We’d find the right contributors, locations and visual approach.
There was plenty of thinking involved.
But the fundamental decision had already been made.
We were making a film.
These days I’m much more interested in what happened immediately before that decision.
Why a film?
What has happened inside the business that has brought us to this conversation?
What’s not working?
That’s where things usually become more interesting.
I’ve written about this elsewhere because it’s become fundamental to the way I work: strategic video should start with what the film needs to change.
The Brief Behind the Brief
A company might tell me:
“We need a recruitment film.”
But perhaps the real problem is that they’re attracting plenty of applicants — just not the right ones.
Another might say:
“We need a film explaining what we do.”
What they actually mean is that potential customers keep comparing them with cheaper competitors because nobody understands the difference.
“We need some customer testimonials.”
Why?
Perhaps people understand the service perfectly well. They just don’t quite trust the company enough to take the next step.
“We need a company film.”
Again, why?
Maybe the business has changed enormously over the last five years, but the outside world still sees the company it used to be.
Those aren’t film problems.
They’re business and communication problems.
And until we understand which one we’re dealing with, I don’t think we can sensibly decide what to make.
Sometimes the Problem Is Invisible
This is something I’ve become increasingly interested in.
Businesses often create value that they’re terrible at seeing themselves.
Not because they’re bad at communication.
Usually it’s because they’re too close to it.
The engineer thinks the clever bit is normal.
The surgeon forgets that something they perform every week might be extraordinary to a patient.
The manufacturer sees a finished component while the customer never sees the years of knowledge behind making it.
A founder knows why the business exists, but somewhere along the way that meaning gets diluted into a paragraph on the About page.
An experienced team solves problems almost instinctively and then struggles to explain why their service costs more than somebody else’s.
The value is there.
It’s just invisible to the people who need to understand it.
I’ve seen this first-hand. A project involving an electric wheelchair and the story of Phil Eaglesham appeared, on the surface, to be about a product. But the wheelchair was the product. Independence was the value. Understanding the person behind it was what allowed us to see the difference.
Putting a camera in front of invisible value doesn’t automatically make it visible.
First we have to find it.
What Isn’t Happening?
There’s a question I’ve started using much more often:
What isn’t happening in the business today that needs to be happening?
I like it because it takes us somewhere different.
It doesn’t ask what film you want.
It doesn’t ask how many filming days we’ll need.
It doesn’t even assume communication is the problem.
It asks what’s stuck.
Maybe customers aren’t buying.
Maybe candidates aren’t applying.
Maybe patients aren’t understanding.
Maybe a sales team is spending half of every meeting explaining the same thing.
Maybe an organisation has changed direction internally but the people outside it haven’t noticed.
Maybe people know exactly what you do but don’t understand why it matters.
Once we know what’s not happening, we can start asking why.
That’s the bit I find fascinating.
Who Needs Something to Change?
The next question is usually about people.
Who needs to think differently?
Who needs to feel differently?
Who needs to do something they’re not doing now?
And what is stopping them?
This is where a brief can change quite dramatically.
A business might think it has an awareness problem.
But perhaps plenty of people already know it exists.
They just don’t understand it.
That’s different.
Or they understand it but don’t believe the claims being made.
That’s different again.
Perhaps they believe the claims but can’t justify the price.
Or they’re interested but frightened of making the wrong decision.
Or the person watching isn’t actually the person who needs convincing.
Suddenly we’re no longer discussing whether the film should be two minutes or three.
We’re trying to understand a human being.
And that’s a much better place to start.
Then We Can Talk About Story
Once we understand the problem and the people involved, story becomes useful.
Not storytelling for storytelling’s sake.
Not because every business apparently needs to “tell its story”.
Sometimes your company’s story isn’t particularly relevant to the person you’re trying to reach.
What matters is finding the story capable of helping them understand something differently.
That could be the founder’s story.
It could be a customer.
An employee.
A patient.
A product.
A moment when something went badly wrong.
Or the story might already be sitting quietly inside the organisation and nobody has recognised its importance yet.
That’s why I increasingly think my job begins with listening.
You can’t find those things by arriving with the script already written.
And Sometimes We Shouldn’t Make a Film
This is perhaps the strangest conclusion I’ve reached after years of making them.
Sometimes film isn’t the answer.
I don’t mean that as some clever sales line.
There are problems a film simply won’t solve.
If the proposition itself is confused, we need to sort that out.
If customers are leaving because the service is poor, a beautiful customer film isn’t going to repair the service.
If the website journey is broken, perhaps fixing the website is more important.
If nobody inside the organisation agrees what they’re trying to communicate, filming five different versions of it isn’t going to create clarity.
There may be a better answer.
And I’d rather discover that before somebody spends a significant amount of money making the wrong thing.
This Has Changed How I Think About My Own Work
For years, I would have described Autumn Films as a film production company.
Technically, we still are.
We make films.
I love making them.
I still get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from a beautifully framed shot, a great piece of sound or finding the moment in an edit where everything suddenly comes together.
I’m a filmmaker. I don’t particularly want that to change.
But I’ve realised that the most valuable part of many projects happens before any of those things.
It’s the conversation where somebody says:
“I’ve never really thought about it like that.”
Or:
“That’s actually not the problem at all.”
Or occasionally:
“Hang on. I think we’ve been telling the wrong story.”
That’s the moment something changes.
The film comes afterwards.
Narrative Architecture
I’ve needed a way of describing this shift in how I work.
The phrase I’ve settled on is Narrative Architecture.
It sounds grander than the reality.
In practice, it means doing the thinking before deciding what to build.
Understanding the problem.
Understanding the audience.
Finding the gaps between what an organisation believes it’s communicating and what people are actually understanding.
Working out what needs to change.
And only then deciding what story, message or piece of communication might help change it.
Sometimes that becomes a film.
Sometimes it becomes several films.
Sometimes the work uncovers something much bigger.
And occasionally the right answer might be not to make a film at all.
That’s fine.
The purpose isn’t to justify production.
The purpose is to solve the right problem.
The Camera Comes Later
So when somebody contacts me now and says:
“We need a film.”
I’m still delighted to hear from them.
I just might frustrate them slightly before we talk about making it.
I’ll probably ask why.
I’ll want to know what’s happening in the business.
I’ll ask what isn’t happening.
I’ll want to understand who needs something to change and what might be preventing it.
We may spend quite a while talking without mentioning cameras at all.
Because I’ve come to believe something fairly simple.
The better we understand the problem, the better chance we have of creating something that actually matters.
And once we know what needs to change, we can decide whether film has a job to do.
If you’ve got something in your business that isn’t working, isn’t understood or simply isn’t getting the response it should, tell me what’s going on.
You don’t need a brief.
You don’t even need to know whether you need a film.
The camera comes later.