Illustrative or Promise: The Line Every Unbuilt Project Film Has to Draw

Every image of an unbuilt project is a claim about the future. Most of the time this is fine, because everyone in the room understands the convention. It stops being fine when a viewer takes something as documentation that was actually an intention, and then makes a decision on it.

The industry handles this with a line of small text about artist impressions. That line does real work, and it is not a strategy. The better approach is to make the film in a way that carries the distinction inside the images themselves.

Three tiers, and it is worth writing them down

Before production, we sort everything on screen into three buckets, and we ask the client to sign off the sorting. It takes an hour and it prevents the expensive kind of argument later.

• Settled. Approved, specified, contractually committed. Structural form, approved massing, materials that are signed, layouts that are consented. This can be shown as documentation.
• Intended. The current design intent, likely to be built roughly this way, still subject to change. Most interiors, most landscaping, most finishes at early stages.
• Illustrative. Present to convey character rather than fact. Furniture, art, styling, vegetation at maturity, weather, and above all people.

The categories nobody thinks about

Two specific things cause most of the trouble, and neither is a material choice.

The first is the view. A film shot from a unit looking out is making a claim about what a buyer will see. Adjacent plots get developed. Trees get removed. A view is one of the few things in a project entirely outside the developer's control, and it is one of the most heavily relied upon by buyers.

The second is vegetation at maturity. Landscaping shown as it will look in fifteen years is standard practice and it is a significant visual claim. It is not dishonest if everyone understands the convention, and a surprising number of viewers do not.

Why the honest version is also the better film

This sounds like a compliance argument. It is actually a craft one.

Precision reads as confidence. When a film is specific about a material, a dimension, a relationship between two spaces, the viewer registers that somebody has decided. When a film is uniformly glossy about everything, the viewer cannot tell what is real and defaults to discounting all of it.

So the strongest structure is to be exact where you are exact, and openly atmospheric where you are not. The contrast between the two is legible and it makes the settled parts land harder.

Specificity where you have it reads as confidence. Vagueness where you do not reads as care. Uniform gloss reads as neither.

Practical handling

• Get the tier sorting signed before production, not after the first cut.
• Where a view is shown, know what the current planning position is on the adjacent plots and treat it accordingly.
• Show landscaping at a stated point in time, and state it.
• Keep people illustrative. Nobody believes the film is documentary about its extras, and this is the one place where freedom costs nothing.
• Make the disclaimer legible and specific rather than a wall of small print. Vague blanket disclaimers protect less than people assume, and they signal that nothing on screen is trustworthy.

The point that survives every jurisdiction

Rules on off plan marketing vary by country and by state, and they change. Nothing here is legal advice and your counsel should see the film and the surrounding material before it goes out.

What does not vary is the underlying logic. If a buyer or an investor makes a decision based on something in your film that turns out not to be true, you have a problem whose size has nothing to do with how the disclaimer was worded. The film is the promise people remember. Build it so that everything it promises is a promise you intend to keep.

This sorting is part of how we start every unbuilt project. More on the unbuilt projects page.

Sort everything on screen into settled, intended and illustrative before production and get it signed. Being exact where you are exact and openly atmospheric where you are not is both safer and more persuasive than uniform gloss.