SCABs

Mopumentary (with an outtakes video) – By @dj_sbex

By Sophie Becker

Mopumentary (with an outtakes video)

 

 

Marta and I had a ‘mare last Friday. Despite our best efforts and some serious lack of time management, we didn’t manage to get a real case study video together. Instead we ended up chatting to a webcam and uploading it. No visuals, no executions. Not even props. Pitiful.

 

To all that had to endure those 80 seconds of pain, I do apologise. I hope never to show my face in a case study video ever again.

 

We made several mistakes along the way – the biggest being that we couldn’t let go of one very pervasive idea. That idea was, my friends, the Mopumentary. A twelve part Netflix original series about the trials and tribulations of eco-friendly cleaning, where four protagonists grapple to overcome their environmentally damaging habits. Truly Bafta winning stuff.

 

Marta and I desperately tried to sell the idea to any mentor that would listen. Eventually, after twenty minutes straight of me cornering Mike and screaming “GET IT?! DO YOU GET IT? IT’S LIKE A MOCKUMENTARY ONLY WITH MOPS” I managed to bully him into saying that it was a good idea. Needless to say, Mike’s blank expression wasn’t owing to his failure to grasp the concept. He got it. His issue was that it was awful.

 

It’s an age old lesson: kill your babies and don’t bloody shoe-horn an idea just because it’s punny. Caz, please forgive me.

 

Once Dusty well and truly killed the idea, we started to explore another insight we’d discovered on the very first day of our washing up liquid journey. This was the winner. It was one thousand times more executable and credible than our previous proposition. The only problem was that we’d wasted so much time yelling ‘Mopumentary’ at each other that we now had limited time left to fully explore the new idea.

 

Lesson: don’t just explore one proposition at the beginning – try a few out and see which execution concepts are the strongest

 

We thought we could just get it together in time. The night before, we had our execution ideas and a vague script. We spoke to two visiting mentors who encouraged us to challenge the brief and push the idea way more – meaning that we’d scrap 80% of the idea. Whilst that advice was invaluable, it didn’t come at the right moment.

 

We ignored the limited time we had left and, inspired by the conversation we’d had, decided we had to take the mentors’ advice. We shouldn’t have done that. We should have tweaked what we could of our existing idea and applied the advice full throttle at the beginning of the next brief.

 

Lesson: do not take advice from mentors blindly. While all of it is incredible, all advice must be followed wisely. It’s up to us to work out what to take away from the conversations with our mentors and work smart. It wasn’t smart to completely change our idea at this stage.

 

Somehow we felt weirdly calm. That was wrong. We should not have been calm. Soon enough the panic set in and Friday morning we found ourselves sat hyperventilating whilst rocking back in fourth in Pret, paralysed by time pressure.

Lesson: don’t let yourself get so panicked you then cannot do a damn thing and make very bad decisions.

 

We scrapped everything and decided to embark on our webcam disaster. Awful. But at least we handed something in.

 

Lesson: always hand something in and don’t give up. And learn from your failures. As I’m doing right now.

 

As a treat for you all, here’s compilation of our outtakes. Enjoy.

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