Lesson 2: Don't let the script bloat

15 years. 15 lessons.
By Matt Cooper

We’ve all heard of death by a thousand cuts.

In animation and video land, I think the opposite is true.

It’s death by a thousand additions.

The more stakeholders involved in a project, the more people understandably want their bit represented. Otherwise, what value are they bringing?! ;)

“Can we just mention this?”
“Could we add a line about that?”
“While we’re here, could this also work for onboarding?”
“And perhaps Marketing could use it too?”

Before you know it, a video that started with one really clear purpose is trying to do six different jobs. And generally doing none of them particularly well.

You've now got 'video bloat'

How to avoid bloat then...

1. Appoint one point of contact with authority.

That doesn’t mean one person makes every decision. There might be 10 people internally who need to have their say.

But one person gathers that feedback, resolves the contradictions and gives us one clear set of instructions.

2. Wrangle your stakeholders. Give them feedback windows, no more drip drip feedback.

If someone misses it, their feedback either doesn’t make this round or it could incur a cost (this tends to align people!). If the feedback comes in after we've moved forward with production it requires us to go backwards and redo approved work. Yikes, that can get pricey.

3. Keep the original purpose to hand. When you start getting feedback that doesn't align with the vision (e.g Let's add in a thousand tigers, I like tigers), you point them to the original plan, "This is a video about Lions, Alan, let's save the tigers for the next video"

So just keep that in mind when wrangling your stakeholders, one point of contact, windows for feedback, keep everyone’s focus on the single purpose.

That'll help you avoid the bloat at all costs, trust me, your audience will thank you for it.

Lesson 2 done. Only 13 more opinions nobody asked for coming your way.