Season 1: Episode 4

Matt Silverman and Kathryn Bodle talk about storytelling and the importance of planning

No matter what size of client, whether doing live action video or animation – a successful project is based on a powerful story.  The process of uncovering that story and conceptualizing the approach for telling that story, is the same.

Today Matt Silverman, Executive Creative Director of Swordfish, and Kathryn Bodle, Executive Producer, share their processes and best practices for story development that can be used for commercial projects as well as social change messaging.

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Key Takeaways

To uncover your story – ask why
– What are you doing
– What are your goals
– Who are you trying to reach
– Why is this important

Planning process – developing the story
– Interview to uncover the story
– Pair down to the essential narrative
– Script
– Visualize
– Storyboard
– Style, create mood boards
– Produce

This whole thing is a process. And just like we were saying earlier, when we were discussing our process of interviewing, and outline, and script, and storyboards, and mood boards, and style frames, every bit of that takes time. We’re digesting that entire time and we’re starting to understand over time what they need more and more and the vision becomes… We all start sharing our vision together, but we’re not gonna be able to just say, “Go” and make that. It’s not gonna happen. And if it does, it’s not gonna be good. And we don’t wanna make bad stuff.  Matt Silverman, Swordfish

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Check out Swordfish San Francisco

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