By Gavin Knight
Filmmaker Gavin Knight shares his top tips for writing a great script for brand and corporate film.
Gavin Knight is on a mission against brand gobbledegook and applies this clarity to every brand film he makes. He started his career at the very bottom as a runner and never stopped running or learning. At first he helped broadcast journalists make documentaries but then switched to advertising & TV commercials. Currently, As a freelance Writer/Director, he’s won over 30 industry awards. He’s worked in many countries and made films for some of the world’s most well-known brands such as Microsoft, the FT & Yeo Valley.
Check out his work here: https://buxtonknight.myportfolio.com/projects
- Every film needs a script and the more time you spend on the script the better the film.
- It does not matter if your brand film is 10 SECONDS long or 10 minutes long, it will be better for a script.
- A 10 second film is like a moving billboard online. Would you buy any billboard space without planning the images and words you’re going to use? No, so write a goddam script.
- A few nice shots & a logo are not enough – it’s just digital wallpaper, because there’s no thought about how you want people to react.
- If there’s no thought to what you want to communicate people will ignore it.
- Once you start thinking about the purpose of your film, you’ll come up with some ideas that inform the script.
- The script is written in response to a brief. A good brief explains why the brand needs this video in the first place – research this information to death!
- What really annoys writers/directors (like me) is how little budget or time is allocated to the script compared to the rest of the production.
- The script (or a storyboard) is the smallest cost of filmmaking. Yet it is the only area where a small investment can reap huge rewards…
- Eureka: a plan with a good idea is the script! Writers like me love the moment we crack the script.
- It’s why many agencies get very well paid. Coming up with great ideas requires effort, research & time (but it’s still cheaper than shooting stuff).
- Even a fly-on-the-wall documentary requires a script because somebody (usually the director) knows how the story should unfold.
- If you want to make great brand films, my top tip is to learn how to write a script.
PS Or find a writer who avoids jargon & gobbledegook, the corporate world is full of it.