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

  1. Every film needs a script and the more time you spend on the script the better the film.
  2. It does not matter if your brand film is 10 SECONDS long or 10 minutes long, it will be better for a script.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. If there’s no thought to what you want to communicate people will ignore it.
  6. Once you start thinking about the purpose of your film, you’ll come up with some ideas that inform the script.
  7. 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!
  8. 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.
  9. 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…
  10. Eureka: a plan with a good idea is the script!  Writers like me love the moment we crack the script.
  11. 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).
  12. Even a fly-on-the-wall documentary requires a script because somebody (usually the director) knows how the story should unfold.
  13. 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.

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