Competition work has a different job to marketing imagery. The jury is reading twenty entries in an afternoon, and the images have to carry an argument, not just an atmosphere. That means deciding early what the scheme is actually claiming, then building a set of images that each prove one part of it.
We work as a package rather than a shopping list of renders: a small number of hero stills that carry the idea, a support set that answers the questions those raise, and a film where movement explains something a still cannot. Under deadline, the sequencing of that work matters as much as the craft.