📓 QUESTIONS ABOUT CREATIVE FEEDBACK

(10 Minute Read)

To answer your question from the side over there about how to give better creative feedback, allow me to share a bit of cliffs notes and backstory. Here goes:

TLDR: Just click HERE to download the creative feedback cheat sheet and skip all the rest of this nonsense.

Or you know, go the long way…

Roughly midway through my days as an assistant to the “merchants of cool” at the un-existed THE WB TELEVISION NETWORK, my bosses started having me sit in on their daily creative review meetings. I’ve instantly dated myself old… but we all started somewhere sometime ago, you know? For humorous accounts of these days, click to read: “The Chronicles.”

Anyway, back on the “Ranch” in Burbank in a literal trailer with termite rotting wood entrance ramps, I would sit in an edge seat at a rectangular mahogany table in a windowless cramped west-facing conference room known as “The Cave”.

The room was always drab and stale, and folks would spend 4-6 hours a day in it, viewing a medium-sized television and constant shuttling of VHS tapes (and for a brief period – DVD burns). Some executives were better with the shuttle controls than others. The ones that were good were extraordinary in maintaining momentum in marathon review sessions. Silence was excruciating when cueing up the next spots.

But I digress. To stave off madness, I’d take notes on a half-sized yellow lined notepad. Oh, we have a visual aide for this? Excellent:

Handwriting could use some work, sir. Nevermind, right, so, where was I? Ah yes, to keep engaged, I started writing down key words in the margin that the bosses and senior staff would exclaim when responding to creative works.

And by creative works, I’m talking about On-Air Promotions. Sometimes called “Spots”, but mostly abbreviated to “Promos”. They’re video ads/commercials but for television shows. Usually on the even :05 increments – :10s, :15s, :20s, and :30s. Little mini movie trailers that tried to capture people’s interest in the commercial breaks. Like this one for SMALLVILLE by Chris Gattanella and Matt Valdez…

These little shorts have a lot that go into them. Condensing an entire hour drama into a few compelling seconds is no small feat. And with that melding of picture and sound comes a whole host of challenges and opportunities to critique and improve. Sound design, music, storytelling, graphics, transitions, pacing, announce copy and style, it’s all tricky. And promos are taking the place of valuable ad time, so they’re technically money-losers, adding incentive for some real scrutiny to always make them buzz-worthy at best, and unforgettable at worst.

Back to the notebook. After a while there were patterns that emerged in my word-collecting and I could build out a bingo card of sorts.

I bet you can sorta tell where this is going. Yup, it wasn’t my deliberate intention but I was inadvertently building a shorthand for being able to articulate feedback after viewing a piece of creative. You know that voice. That tingly feeling in the back of your neck that says “Something Feels Off” after watching a thing.

For folks new to the business or new to giving feedback, it’s not always easy to put into words that sixth sense about what’s wrong in a way that can be useful to another person.

So here it is, the full list of creative feedback buzz words. Reminder the context – It’s the early 2000’s, and we’re the #5 network, but with the biggest youngest audience demos of all the networks. It’s prime Dawson’s, Buffy, Gilmore, One Tree Hill, 7th Heaven, Charmed days. Take from that what you will as you peruse.

NOTE: Each keyword can be read as if filling the blanks in a sentence like “this spot needs to ____” or “not enough ____” or “can there be better ___”. Also feel free to drop in a curse word or expletive or two, and a modest amount of accompanying exasperated hand wringing and gesturing.

The words in Bold were most frequently given as feedback. Here’s a little more about each:

ATTITUDE: A feeling, a swagger, often driven by music.
CONFLICT: Head to head, toe to toe, sparks, fireworks between characters.
COPY: Not a Xerox term. It’s what the announcer says or sometimes what the text graphics say.
EVENTIZE: Often solved by adding some crowd cheers and a tympani roll.
PACE & PACING: The action of a spot over time.
SWEEPING: Rising emotion through music and visuals.
THEATRICAL: Big time music, action, emotion, impact.
TIMING: See Pace & Pacing, but more pointed towards jokes, reactions, and appearance/duration of graphics.
TONE: Comedic, Dramatic, again set by music.
URGENCY: Get ’em in the tent, stat! The youts call it ‘FOMO’

As an aside: you probably noticed how often music is mentioned. Music tells the audience how to feel. Get music right and everything else is stronger. It’s make or break 100% of the time. A good cue can save bad visuals, or stiff performances. It really is the best feeling to have a key moment line up with the beat of the music. You’ll woop out loud when it locks in.

So from these keywords, you can start to develop more pointed high level questions to ask yourself about the creative you’re working on or reviewing. Stuff like:

What’s the UNIQUE selling point?
What’s the HOOK?
What is UNEXPECTED?
What’s the CAN’T MISS opportunity?
What’s the DILEMMA to anticipate with glee?
What’s at RISK?
What’s the CARROT?
What’s the POV?
What do we want to LIKE about the character?
Do you CARE about the characters?
Is it FUN?

And also stuff that’s a little more business minded:

What’s the youth/teen appeal/entry point?
What’s the female appeal/entry point?
What’s the male appeal/entry point?
How would another network sell it?

And my favorite question that’s fun to test quickly:

Does the creative work on mute? (It should! If you can get the gist without sound, that’s such a win).

But by far the most confusing and least understood were these two, mostly given with frustrated fist-pounding after viewing a particularly weak comedy promo:

What’s the O HENRY!?
What’s the Negation Of The Negation?

Oh the Writer/Producers and Creative Directors would throw up their hands when the O HENRY challenge was tossed out. What the f**k is “The O Henry”?

You could easily open up a rabbit hole here, but to shorthand – “O. Henry” was a writer who published a bunch of short stories that had surprise twist endings. Like – the husband sells his watch to buy a hair clip for his wife, while the wife sells locks of her hair to buy a chain for the husband’s watch. Ooop, that moment when they realize they’ve hosed each other’s gifts….

That unexpected ending is the O HENRY.

Seinfeld has O HENRY moments in spades. But if you’re stuck with a stinker comedy, it’s your job to fabricate the funny with all the tricks in your toolkit – music stops, stupid voice-over, editing tricks, out-of-context reaction shots, sound effects, whatever works to wring out some semblance of goofy surprise. That’s what academics theorize about where laughter comes from – the subversion of expectations. The O Henry. See now? No? Ah, well, it was worth a try.

Now the Negation Of The Negation. I feel like this is somewhat related to the O Henry, but starts to drift into brain-melting land. Shit like this: “If a statement is true, then it is not the case that the statement is not true.” I couldn’t care less. These kinds of double-negative logic knots have energy to them. Unnecessary complexity has a power when unraveled, I guess?

Yea, I still don’t have this one totally figured out to articulate it. I’m open to better theories here, but the closest I’ve gotten is thinking that kids these days could translate this with “Task Failed Successfully” memes. Those expectation backflips are reliable sources of laughter, chuckles, and even guffaws.

https://twitter.com/MichaelWarbur17/status/1612176945831084035

Along with these keywords, they also adopted screenwriting best practices primarily from Robert McKee’s “Story” book and seminars, condensed into a topline “Positioning Survey” particularly utilized for crafting new show launches. They’d discuss who’s the Protagonist and Opponent, and what’s the Need, Desire, and Inciting Incident. Even in a tiny span of time, it’s surprising how a good promo can hit all the highlights of a proper story arc.

Also on the subject of launching new properties, they’d split out into phases. Theatrical marketing is much better at formal stages, but Network folks struggle with a proper teaser phase. It makes them nervous to not want to give everything away or put stuff out that might make a focus group confused, so they’ll often skip or flip the first two phases – running the trailer, but then trying to go back to teasers.

PHASE 1 : DISBELIEF (The ‘teaser’ phase)
PHASE 2: ANTICIPATION (The ‘trailer’ phase)
PHASE 3: IMMEDIACY (The ‘tune-in’ phase)
PHASE 4: SUCCESS (The ‘stay tuned’ phase)

Beyond all that subjective stuff, there’s a bunch of technical flags you can start to key in on as well.

Turn these into questions by adding “Is/Are there ____” or “How’s the ___?”. For example… “Is the music fighting the moments or the jokes?” or “Are the tune-in messages clear?”

Content Issues / Standards Issues?

Graphics?

Backplate / Version / Tagging Issues?

Announce Performance?

Mix Problems?

Sound Effects Missing/Wrong?

Fighting Music?

And here’s some of the broader mantras that emerged:

Brand, Broaden, Believe.
Don’t attempt to be young… be young.
Don’t go to familiar, comfortable places.
Write for the personality of the announcers.
Create flashpoints of imagery, to remember the moments.
Battle the Network’s perception.
Play with the silence.

Occasionally there would be talk about the necessary roles for an optimized creative team, adopted from Roger Von Oech’s book “A Kick In The Seat Of The Pants”:

The EXPLORER
The ARTIST
The JUDGE
The WARRIOR

Pretty straight-forward translations – load up with research, try to make art, run the work through the gauntlet of review, and then champion the creative through all the gatekeepers.

Anyway finally, here’s some of the more frequent or memorable QUOTES:

“If they’re not talking about the shows, they need to be talking about the marketing.”

This expression was often the driver for networks to launch new branding graphics packages if there wasn’t much changing on the programming side. Quick, change the window dressing!

“Never service the shows, service the concepts. Transcend the drawbacks of the show.”

There were occasions where show producers would see a launch trailer and discover that they wanted to live up to the promise of the marketing by changing the direction of their episodes.

“It’s still new until EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD has seen it.”

This sometimes lead to odd choices like adopting the word “Fresh” instead of “All New”, much to the consternation of the talent. Chad Michael Murray reacts in real time:

Apologies for the language. Haven’t listened to that clip in a while. Anyway, back to the quotes:

“Avoid lame, lame, lame copy. Promospeak is death.”

People inside the business sometimes forget that the general audience has no idea what the heck you’re talking about. Alternatively, people inside the business sometimes assume the general audience is not as intelligent as they actually are. Rarely do we have that figured out, but err on the side of hope.

“If you work here, you’d be home by now.”

After three years on the assistant desk, the bosses took pity on me and gave me a shot at being an official creative writer/producer. No that’s a lie. They weren’t gonna let me do that right off the bat so I went into promo scheduling first to learn the ‘where’ and the ‘why’ of what I was going to be making.

Putting launch plan orders together for Pepsi Smash and SuperStar USA (I’ve dated myself again) helped me understand messaging and strategy in the context of a commercial break and the overall programming lineup.

Again, I didn’t realize it at the time but it became enormously helpful when actually making the creative.

On that note, it’s time to head home. Here’s another “Task Failed Successfully” meme for your enjoyment:

Pass failed successfully
byu/Absuridity_Octogon intaskfailsuccessfully

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📓 QUESTIONS ABOUT CREATIVE FEEDBACK

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