Hope Restored
Documentary Promo
Director's Treatment
Written By Taylor Robinson
Sandra and everyone else at Focus,
I hope you are all doing well. Sandra, first off, I want to thank you for giving us a seat at this table. I am very excited about the possibility of getting to help you guys tell such a beautiful story of redemption. I do not take it for granted that you trusted us enough to give us a shot at creative for this project.
I’ve spent some good time thinking about this project, as well as the goals you explained to us in our phone meeting. I really believe that Six Foot Five will make a great partner for you in creating all of this content.
Below you'll find my "director's treatment."
Narrative approach
At Six Foot Five, we are fascinated with storytelling. How it works. Why it works. What works best. Why people respond to stories the way they do. Etc. This fascination has caused us to become expert storytellers. When you explained the bones of the story you're wanting to tell, I couldn't help but be excited about the possibility.
This is our wheelhouse.
As we set out to tell a beautiful story of how God redeemed and restored a marriage, there are a few things that I will be trying to bring to the surface first and foremost. Every story is different, but there are rules to storytelling that you can always count on.
1. Relatability - We want the story we tell to be as relatable as it can be. I want our audience to see and understand "what it was like" and "how they got there." Our audience will only truly connect with this story as much as they can see themselves in it.
2. High Stakes - 100 times out of 100, the higher the stakes, the better the story. With a story like this one, the stakes are pretty high...Family. Marriage. Stability. Trust. Happiness. These are all things that are at stake in our story. Furthermore, with high stakes comes high vulnerability. It will be my job as the storyteller to really dig in deep and help our audience understand how vulnerable our hero is AND how much is at stake.
3. Transformation - It's in the transformation that our story will take wings. As storytellers it's important to remember that transformation isn't just the good part at the end...rather it's the contrast between the good and the bad that make the transformation powerful. We will fight hard to make the "bad" as bad as it can be, that way the "good" can be really good.
To effectively knock our story out of the park, I will spend some good time prior to the shoot to get my head all the way around all of the ingredients we'll be working with. And the above 3 things are the 3 key ingredients I'll be hunting.
Documentary Non-fiction
I agree with you that the best possible "style" we can use for this particular story would to shoot a very cinematic documentary style video.
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We love this style of video, and over the years we've become precision artists in this style.
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Professionally, there's nothing I enjoy more than talking to someone about the "thing" they are passionate about. I love the interview process, more specifically I love guiding someone to do a FANTASTIC job in their interview. Every person is different, and some shells are harder to crack than others. With a story as delicate as this one, it's incredibly important that our "heros" are carried confidently and gently across the finish line. That's what I do, and in the process I'll find the most emotionally compelling story-line to draw.
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My gut says that our final (longest version) of this video will be somewhere between 3-5 minutes long.
beautiful visuals
Telling a story well and making it visually beautiful is where the magic happens.
We bring the highest level of production value to all of our shoots. We’ve become masters at stretching budget dollars as far as we can, while at the same time keeping the quality as high as possible.
Over the past decade, we've become experts at shooting beautiful, cinematic, live-action content all over the world. Most of the time this has to happen in situations less than optimal for high-level production. The secret is having an experienced, talented, and versatile crew. Sound. Lighting. Camera. Direction. Etc. We have a stable full of talented, experienced crew personnel that as the director I would pick from to help us tell our story.
We want to tell the story AND we want it to be beautiful while we do so.
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the ultimate goal
Yes, this video will be beautiful. Yes, we will tell this incredible story of redemption extremely well.
But, ultimately, we want viewers to understand that there is HOPE for any marriage, AND that Hope Restored Intensives are designed to bring in that HOPE (obviously with the Holy Spirit's help and God's provision).
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We don't want to JUST tell a story well, we want to do it in a way that shows our audience the kind of impact a Hope Restored Intensive can have on their own personal marriage.
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Keeping all of this in mind, we will also create a few ancillary videos to compliment the "long version." I can see the need to create a shorter 60 second version for distribution on social-media or at live events. There could also be a need to create a few even shorter versions (30 or 15 seconds). We would need to talk through all the different exhibition formats to really nail down the full list of versions.
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Proof for the pudding
So far, you've read a lot about our ability to pull this project off, but our previous work should speak for itself. Below are a few spots we created for other clients in the past.
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Each project is different, and I can foresee that this content should be at a slower pace, and a little more "syrupy" than most of the videos below. But I compiled this list of videos to prove we'd knock this project out of the park.
This is a documentary style video we created for Compassion featuring one of their graduates. This video's target audience was pastors of US churches.
This is a live-action narrative piece we created for a local ministry here in Alabama. This spot was designed to give the general public a good idea of what Big Oak is all about.
Another documentary style story video we created for Compassion. This video was created to play at Beth Moore's Living Proof Live events.
We have many more examples of narrative storytelling that we've done for multiple organizations all over the globe. If you'd like to see more please let me know and I'll send it your way.
Thanks for your time
Again, thank so much for giving us the opportunity to pitch on this project. I believe our team is uniquely positioned to step in and knock this specific project out of the park for you.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to either me or our producer, Audra Whaley.
Thanks again,
Taylor Robinson
205.215.9288
Audra Whaley
940.395.1330
