What is digital production?
When I first started in digital production, the companies I worked for, worked for ad agencies.
The agencies would develop ideas of how to sell their client’s brands and would brief us to turn those ideas into ads. For ages that work was really simple: put the print ad into a website or a banner ad.
At the time, banners were growing sophisticated and technical innovation transformed what it was possible to do online what felt like every week. Ads like the interactive homepage takeover (this is such a blast from the past!) became possible, and with that potential, the role of digital production companies changed.
Agencies, staffed with people who understood how to “think in tv” and not technology, struggled to create interesting or compelling digital concepts. How could they, when they didn’t know the scale or scope of what was technically possible? They were used to one-way communication with their audience who consumed print and TV ads passively (reading/watching).
But a website is intended to be used. To help people create, share and communicate. Ads in this context weren’t fun or enjoyable. They were boring at best, disruptive and irritating at worst. Suddenly, the agencies needed digital production companies to do more than just make their ads.
Why this story? Two reasons. The first is that the label “production” is, in fact, a misnomer. If you’re going to work in this business, do so with a fundamental understanding of your value in the creative ecosystem. We do for digital, what the agency creative team does for TV. We generate entirely new ideas. In this context, we are the agency.
Secondly, because this is the story of how I learned what digital production is really. And if you learn one thing from this course, it should be this: digital production is the creative use of technology. It is the confluence, or “merging” of creativity and ideas with technological potential. And done right it’s kind of symbiotic, where creativity drives technological innovation and technical innovation inspires groundbreaking ideas. The digital production process is how you merge them, and this is the work of a producer.
As a process, it is not a meandering collision of ideas. It’s something you design. It’s making intentional, purposeful choices about how and when information is exchanged, between whom. It’s also the quality of that chat, well-structured around a brief, a business goal, or with a consumer experience in mind.
Actionable ideas from this post
- Remember that digital production is as much about generating ideas as it is about making them
- Creating the confluence between creative and technology is how you will uncover what the project wants to be
- The process of digital production is finding and formalising communication pathways
