CATNIP is a young production house that creates music-oriented content. Started by Reema Sengupta an award winning independent film maker and a Kunal Punjabi, a former brand marketing professional, they specialise in conceptual and experimental video content.
Their style has attracted brands like Tissot, Hotstar, Flipkart, Red Bull, Fastrack and more to take up their services. Festivals like Bacardi Nh7 and Vh1 Supersonic have used them to create promotional videos. Let us take you through their video production MasterClass with IndieFolio.
- Brief.
It starts with a brief. Most companies will want content that is ‘quirky’ or ‘edgy’ without knowing what that means for themselves. It’s important to deconstruct the brief to understand what a potential client is actually looking for. You may have to tell a brand manager if parts of a brief contradict each other. Be bold in deconstructing the brief, it may be changed and this could result in the brief you can actually work with.
- Budget
Ideas are infinite but budgets are not. Clients can ask for your charges or what you think their budget should be. Agreeing to this is sure to waste your time and you could even lose your potential client because of it. If you have to create a budget for a client, you will need a master checklist. Every single cost you can imagine encountering needs to be on your list. Otherwise, you find yourself going at a loss because you pay out of your pocket for things that are required but not budgeted for. Knowing the budget allows you to begin thinking about what can be done and what can’t.
- Bring people together.
Certain roles tend to be at loggerheads with each other. Here’s an example in film production: A director is thinking about ideas that are over budget and the producer is thinking about how to utilise as little of the budget as possible. Bringing these people together and getting them to be best friends creates an atmosphere where each professional is proactive in acquiring the maximum, they can within the budget.
- Conceptualise.
Feel. See. Think. That’s the CATNIP conceptualising way. Example: If there’s a music video that needs a concept, listen to it and first think about how it makes you feel. Note your feelings down. When listening, again, focus on those feelings. Separate the stronger feelings from the weaker ones. After doing this a few times, you start to see the video for yourself in your head. When you’re most convinced about the idea, stop and give yourself a reality check and ask yourself honestly if you have everything in place to produce your concept.
- Write the script.
Remind yourself here that what you have is a concept but it’s very different when you write it down. It will need a beginning, a middle and an end. It needs elements, it needs actions and reactions, it needs conflict. It needs every detail written down in a way that everybody can understand. Audio, video, voice-over and sound effects of every frame of every second needs to be in one document. With a script like this, the work is half done and your project flows smoothly because everyone uses this and knows what needs to be done.
- Make and never stop.
Once it’s done, criticise yourself. Ask if it satisfied all the objectives it set out to satisfy. You can’t please everybody but if you become your harshest critic, you can at least aim to please yourself. In the beginning, don’t be too hard on yourself or get too attached. If you didn’t get it all at once, it’s fine. There’s always the next time. Just create it then analyse it and finally move onto the next one. It’s how you’re going to learn to make better films.
If you need proof of the merit of their ways, these are the films they showed us.
Naina Bawre :: Mithoon x Maati Baani :: Music Video from CATNIP on Vimeo.
Bacardi NH7 Weekender 2016 :: Official Promo from CATNIP on Vimeo.
A Tiny Planet :: Bacardi NH7 Weekender 2015 :: Official Promo from CATNIP on Vimeo.
Heterotopia :: Official Concept Promo :: The Lost Party 2016 from CATNIP on Vimeo.
Abode of Clouds :: Bacardi NH7 Weekender 2015 Shillong :: Official Promo from CATNIP on Vimeo.
Following the wise words of CATNIP, Reema and Kunal decided to play everybody a song by Sid Vashi. While we don’t have the same song, here’s one that’s definitely worth a listen or two.
Everybody was divided into groups and told to come up with a script for the song that was played. In 20 minutes, strangers got together to conceptualise what they could see.
Most of the scripts from the groups involved children because of the voice of children they heard in the song that was played and the last piece of advice from CATNIP was, ‘What you hear doesn’t always have to be what you or your viewer sees.’
And so ended our MasterClass with everyone’s mind being closer to being as agile as a cat on Catnip.
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