What is creative development?
Every great film, marketing campaign, and commercial starts at the same place: with the seed of a good idea. It’s amazing how a rudimentary concept can blossom into Star Wars or Nike’s iconic “Move” commercial.
But what’s even more astounding is wondering what the world would look like without these game-changing creative endeavors. Imagine a world where no one dared to ask “What if we took the battle between Good & Evil into space?”, or one where no one considered the uncanny similarity of various athletic movements. What if those ideas were spoken into existence, but tragically never went anywhere?
The point is this: no great idea is fully-formed from inception. Rather, it takes some very important nurturing, cultivating, DEVELOPING to transform it into something timeless. The process of taking a cool hypothetical and morphing it into an actionable, kick-ass concept is called Creative Development. Anyone can throw out interesting ideas–and that’s admittedly super valuable to the creative process! However, it takes a well-honed professional team to sharpen those ideas, poke holes in them, reconfigure them when needed, and mold them into the perfect product.
It takes a team like ECG Productions
Our creative development process
The core of our Creative Development process is this: good ideas can come from anywhere, and they should be fostered, no matter what. From first week interns to our agency’s Partners, we believe that everyone can contribute to the creative development process. Great ideas don’t happen in a vacuum, and the multi-step process of bringing an idea to life epitomizes the “it takes a village” mentality. Understanding that fact is crucial: we approach every creative development project with that as our guiding principle.
From there, we take the following steps to transform your idea into a ready-to-execute concept”
Analyzing
First, we dive into the particulars. What kind of project is this? Who is the target audience, and why would they care about this content? Are there any comparable projects that we’ve worked on previously, or that we know of? Is this a project that we believe in and that we’d, personally, love to see on a screen somewhere? We dissect and process, consider and compare, until we have an unshakeable understanding of the creative.
Workshopping
Whether we’re developing an internal idea or fine-tuning an idea for a client, we sit down in a room together (old school, we know) and hash everything out. It seems trivial, but meeting in-person meetings make a huge difference in the creative development process. Technology is a boon, but there’s just something about sitting face-to-face that really pulls the best stuff out of us.
Regardless, these workshopping sessions are all about making sure that every facet of the creative is vetted and approved. If the analyzing stage is for understanding the idea, then workshopping is for pulling it apart. No one, not even the greats, can concoct a perfect idea on their first pass. During our workshopping process we refine ideas — and re-refine them — until they have a glossy sheen to them, shiny and ready to present to the world.
Pitching
Sometimes we skip this step in the creative development process altogether; other times, it’s integral to selling the concept through. Once we have a fully-formed concept, we work hand in hand with you to pitch it. That pitch process might include writing a treatment, or giving a presentation, or even crafting a proof of concept. Regardless of what you need to sell your idea through, we’ll be there with you every step of the way!
Producing
The final, and arguably most crucial step in the creative development process. This is what we work towards with every creative development project: making the idea a reality! After working tirelessly to sell this concept through, we’re as invested as you; we’re eager to run through all the stages of production and get the resulting masterpiece out into the world. As a full-service video production agency, we can make any idea, big or small, come to life.