Beware of Client

Clients can be the strangest animal on this green, blue and brown earth. I had a client who came to us with a very simple concept for a 30 second commercial long ago. He asked us to add a bit of innovation to the spot and I thought we were well on the way to a good experience.

The spot had to do with an animated line which would transform and change creating new images as the voice track narrated. We came up with several new line styles (in the design stage) trying to give the line some character and texture. We felt good about the direction we had provided our new client and felt the style was cool and innovative.

REACTION: Client just wants a simple inked line, nothing fancy.

Okay, so we continued and began laying out the spot to the scratch track and began creating interesting image combinations and image sequences choreographing the line in a lyrical dance. The line would float above a ground plane casting a shadow of the various images the soundtrack illustrated, houses, cities, a couple dancing, etc.

REACTION: Client wants the line to just represent a graphic mouth talking. No morphing or changing images. Just a happy mouth.

Okay, so we have a simple graphic lined mouth lip syncing. This is getting boring but we will do our best to give it life. We finish the spot and present it to the client. We weren't thrilled with the end result, there was no shadow pass, no textured line, no transitioning animation dancing its 30 second story, only a simple mouth talking (on a white background, we had planned a graphic panel as a background)

REACTION: The Client thinks the spot is boring, nothing is really happening but a graphic mouth talking to you.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't work with idiots for clients.