TAFE is one of the absolute institutions in Australia and over the years it’s gone through ups and downs. Right now it’s having a resurgence and is seen a little more positively. At its core, it’s full of people having a crack at giving people an education and that’s an honourable endeavour.

So when GoTafe approached us to create a video for a new program to help their staff improve we were all about it.

“no more pencils”

Helping a company distil its messaging down is a tricky juggling act. You want to make sure that you understand the product and that the video gives enough information to excite but not so much that they feel they have everything they need. You want them asking questions at the end. Being excited to know more. That it’s scratched an itch. And you can only do that if you really truly understand not just “what” the program is but what it’s trying to “do”. What is it accomplishing?

“no more books”

So now that we knew what they wanted it was time to throw out any playbooks we might have had and try something new, after all, they were. There was no way we’d be able to capture the unique spirit of their new undertaking by simply doing the same old thing.

And in the immortal words of John Keating – I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. So we stood on our desks… metaphorically. What was important… wait a second… what happens to the important things in our lives? They loom large, we blow them out of proportion. So we did just that. We blew them up. We played with perspective. As soon as we did, it was unlocked. We knew we had it.

“no more teacher’s dirty looks”

We delivered our concepts and they loved them, they loved them so much it sparked new ideas, whole new sections that hadn’t existed before. We began a back and forth that sparked ideas in our heads as well.

Some people believe that the only way to get good work is to push and push (the Whiplash school of thought) but this would be a prime example of the opposite. It was an absolute delight.

“school’s out for summer”

When a client tells you that working on a video was the “creative highlight” of their year, you can’t help but catch all the feels.