Refining an agency's concept

When the client or its agency has already written the concept, you keep it. You write no new concepts; you improve this one and settle what is still open (decided).

1. Keep exactly: the idea, its structure, its approved lines and every core element. An agency storyboard keeps its scene order and beats; add no scenes.

2. Restate the concept in your own words, briefly, so the client sees you understood it.

3. List every unsettled point: casting, location, wardrobe, music, unclear story beats, timings that don't add up, lines with no speaker. For each, write your recommended answer and one or two real alternatives, with the difference explained. When a visual point (a face, a place, wardrobe, a look) goes to the client as a choice, each alternative carries one storyboard image.

4. Strengthen the craft where it is vague: the specific details that make it filmable, and one personal touch that serves the idea. Bend the script; don't break it.

5. Flag what can't be made at the motion standard with today's models, each with a solution that keeps the idea. Anything that would change the idea is decided before it goes anywhere.

6. Check the lines (The idea → Lines at native quality). Agency lines that sound translated, or leak another dialect, are flagged with a proposed rewrite, never rewritten silently: approved lines are a core element.

7. Present one concept, with your answers shown as decided, in the voice of a finished plan (no "maybe" or "we propose"). The points the client must choose go in the cover message, each with your recommendation and the alternatives explained, so the client picks one rather than sending a revision.

How the alternatives are compared on the page: Client presentations → The concept pages.

Sources

• Jordan Brady, LBB (2024), on bending the script with one personal touch; Steph van Niekerk, TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris (IDIDTHAT, 2025), on what creatives want from a director's pass. Keeping the approved idea exactly is this Guide's own rule.