black pencil awards 2014 - 1185 films … · visit britain // case study 01 1185 films the brief to...

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D&AD BLACK PENCIL AWARDS 2014 CASE STUDY

V I S I T B R I T A I N / / C A S E S T U D Y

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W H A T I S T H E ‘ D & A D ’ ?

Since 1962, D&AD has been inspiring a community of creative thinkers by celebrating and stimulating the finest in design and advertising. A D&AD Award is recognised globally as the ultimate creative accolade, entered and attended by the best from around the world.

A panel of leading industry professionals.

D&AD’s Black Pencil, the Oscar of the creative industry.

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D & A D / / C A S E S T U D Y

V I S I T B R I T A I N / / C A S E S T U D Y

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T H E B R I E F To capture in a 10-15 minute film the D&AD judging process and showcase the shortlisted works nominated for a Black Pencil award.

’During our initial production meeting we realised that while the D&AD were generally happy with the existing films, they were disappointed with how they had performed online. We dug a little deeper as a team to establish why that might be. We re-watched the existing films closely, whereupon we realized that they lacked engagement and imparted no defined message other than documenting the judging process. The challenge arose - how do we fix this?


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“ IT’S GOT EVERYTHING. IT’S GOT A BIT OF LANGUAGE, IT’S GOT CRAFT, IT’S GOT CULTURAL IMPACT.”

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We suggested that our team collaborate with theirs, to refine the brief and to set definite goals. From our research we believed that an organization such as D&AD, which champions such extraordinarily high quality work, should itself embody similarly high levels of quality and direction in both its presentation of the work and the judging process. These standards should then be clearly broadcast as part of the film’s message. They agreed.

We discussed the meaning of the Black Pencil award, what it stood for and the criteria required to win the award. This had been explained in previous films but the one resounding ‘sound bite’ we heard again and again was – “I wish I’d done that.” This resonated with us and the D&AD team, and became a core element of what we sought to capture in the film.

“ IT’S NOT ABOUT COMING UP WITH A FUNKY AD IDEA. IT’S ABOUT SOLVING SOMETHING AND ADDING VALUE TO THE BUSINESS OF YOUR CLIENT.”

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“ I WISH I’D DONE THAT”

T H E P R O C E S S C O N T I N U E D . . .

We then asked the question - “is the black pencil elitist?” The resounding answer was, “Yes it is. It has to be.” Whilst recognising this, we pointed out that elitism can risk alienating a generation of creatives who may feel that the prize will always be out of their reach. We decided to address this issue by humanising the judges; asking them about their aspirations, their vision for the awards and their advice for aspiring creatives, believing this would increase engagement and serve to make the awards both aspirational and realistic.

Deciding on a Black Pencil winner; a difficult choice.


A F I L M I S M A D E I N T H E E D I T Condensing and organising 16 hours of footage into informative explanations on the nominees and the winning pieces of work, whilst creating categories of appealing sound bites requires dedication. However that’s just the beginning of the process. The challenge is making an 8-minute engaging film involving twenty contributors whilst creating a story arc that informs, educates and inspires the next generation of creatives. Working with a director, editor and research assistant editor, we also aimed to create an audio that matched

Using the information gather from the meeting we developed the following criteria for the film:

INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF CREATIVES BY INSTILLING THE IDEA THAT ANY HIGH QUALITY, WELL-THOUGHT OUT AND WELL-EXECUTED WORK HAS A CHANCE OF WINNING A BLACK PENCIL.

REVEAL SNAPSHOTS OF THE EIGHT WINNING PIECES AND THE PASSIONATE SELECTION PROCESS.

MAKE THE FILM ENGAGING FOR ANY VIEWER, WHETHER INVOLVED IN THE INDUSTRY OR NOT.

EXPLAIN THE ESSENCE OF THE BLACK PENCIL AWARD SELECTION PROCESS.

INFORM, EDUCATE AND INSPIRE.

the film, so that even without the visual aspect the monologue could be heard independently and still deliver the process of deliberation by the judges whilst demonstrating the objectives of the Black Pencil award. To do this we ignored the footage and embarked on a radio edit (sound only). Only once we felt we had created the perfect narrative did we then introduce the visuals. Our core principle was that we needed to respect the work. From this perspective we kept each piece at its original aspect ratio, so as not to detract – but rather enhance - the overall flow of the film.


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T H E R E S U L T

A film that the D&AD are particularly proud of - “It’s the best film of the judging process to date”. Of course, the fact that the client likes the film is not a true indicator of the its success, so we created a graph which revealed the following:


views per month

views per month

views per month

Likes per month

Average

282

Average

147

Average

639

2

1

4

2012 Black Pencil film



“ IT’S THE BEST FILM OF THE JUDGING PROCESS TO DATE”.

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Likes per month

Likes per month

THERE ARE STORIES EVERYWHEREW W W . 1 1 8 5 F I L M S . C O M


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black pencil awards 2014 - 1185 films … · visit britain // case study 01 1185 films the brief to...

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