The Pre-Production Process
A great video is all about attention to detail. Watts firmly believes that the pre-production process is the critical juncture where business challenges meet head-on with creative solutions. Sure, it’s not the sexiest part of the process, but the information gleaned in early conversations will help us arrive at a tone of voice; while establishing a manageable set of communication pillars. By “manageable” we mean not ultimately forcing the viewer to ingest too much information in one sitting.
Once a thorough understanding of the brand goals for the project have been established, the visual ideation begins. One of the ways Watts communicates visual intent is to present our clients with the assembly of a Tone Board. Seems pretty straightforward right? Well yes - but only if a client knows what they’re looking at and why?
The Purpose of a Tone Board
The purpose of a Tone Board is as it sounds. To show a very abstract collage of imagery made up of archived or ‘found’ still grabs from other videos we find inspiring. But this exercise really only benefits live-action productions; where you don’t quite yet know what you’ll be filming and where.
Tone Board Essentials
01 an abstract color palette
02 subject framing and lensing
03 mood/emotion of the lighting
We like to think of it as “if you blur your eyes” tell me what feeling the blob evokes? Does it feel light and expansive or moody and intimate?
One of the things we hear most is – ‘so is this literally what the video is going to look like?’ The answer is generally “well-kinda.” There is nothing literal about a Tone Board. It’s really just the emoted visual feeling the video gives off in its most abstract form. That means that we don’t generally show type-treatments because it would take the spirit of the Board from abstract to literal. This is often a process we’ll provide gratis - even before the statement of work is signed.
Taking it Further: The Tone Edit
Once the project is underway, one thing we like to do for added clarity is to create a Tone Edit. So, if a client is still guessing how the video will feel, this clears it up fairly quickly. One good example of this was when we presented a creative approach for Microsoft’s Surface Dial. We had initially presented multiple concepts and the client liked bits and pieces from each. Once we were able to ‘fuse’ the concepts, there was still some ambiguity as to how the production would manifest itself into what we were pitching. We created a Tone Edit for our client and the style quickly became clear.
Here’s the final product!
*Shout out to Sanctus Audio for composing an amazing piece of original music.
Storyboarding
The next step in a live-action production is the creation of storyboards. These are a few examples of our work in progress storyboard for the Dial production.
For animated and motion graphics work, Style Frames are unlike a Tone Board in that they are used to show a more literal representation of a finished project. In animated work, we generally have complete control of the aesthetic from the outset (as we are not dealing with dynamics like talent, location, and weather.)
Until next time,
The Watts Team
P.S. - head over to our live action page to see examples of our work.