Is Video Production an Expert Service or a Hobby?

It’s clear that video marketing is on the rise. More and more businesses have started to realise that they need videos as a part of their content strategy, but they often don’t comprehend the amount of effort, skill and experience it takes to do a good job, to actually create. It may look like we show up at a location, set up the camera and hit the red button, and we certainly don’t stick all that footage into some editing software, jiggle it about a bit and out pops a perfect video edit. A video production expert does so much more than that, so we thought this would be a good opportunity to go into a bit of detail on what we actually do behind the scenes.

So let’s take a look at what it really takes to create video marketing content that achieves your goals from a video production expert. Hopefully, at the end of this blog you’ll understand that video marketing is more than just a couple of hours of filming and a few days of editing.

Problem Diagnosis

At Film Division, we don’t see the final video(s) as what you’re hiring a video production expert for. The video we produce for you is a tool to achieve your goal or a solution to solve your problem. Before they can present you with a solution, a video production expert needs to diagnose the problem you are having. Just defining your goal or identifying your problem can be quite time consuming in itself. Every video that is produce needs to have a purpose, otherwise there is no point in creating it in the first place. Knowing the purpose is so important as it defines every decision made moving forward. A video production expert always starts with the Why.

• Audience Research – A video is designed to be watched by people, so its important to understand a little bit about these people, where they live, where they work, what job role they have, what ethnicity they are, what their hopes and fears are. With a proper foundation in audience research, you’ll have a better chance to produce video marketing content that resonates well with them. Typically you want your target audience to feel or do something after they have watched your video. This could be the goal of the video as a whole; along the lines of donate to this charity, sign up to a mailing list, start using refillable deodorants. So a video production expert needs to empathise with an audience to ensure this message is delivered in the right way for them. Failure to understand your audience can lead to a rejection of your message and a wasted investment of time and money.
• Brand Research – A video production expert also wants to understand you and your brand. Whether you are a small charity who rescues stray dogs, or an international circular economy company, you still have a brand. Your brand needs to be instilled with every piece of public facing content you produce, especially video production.

Video Production Expert Design

Now that the research has been analysed, the video production expert knows what you want to achieve, they know who they need to reach out to in order to do that and they know who the message is coming from. A video production expert then needs to figure out, how they do that. They can’t just go along with any initial idea they came up with or saw in another video and thought it looked cool. The type of video comes into the play, the imagery and the music are all key factors when designing a video with a purpose.

• Idea Generation – One of the most exciting parts! This is where your video expert gets all creative and thinks of the perfect solution for your video marketing. How can your target audience  be enticed to commit to your message, that’s the challenge.
• Concept Development – Here things get serious and committed! Once the most effective idea, plot or hook to reach your audience has been picked, the video production expert fully develops it and formalise it into a working concept with the aim to produce it into a video format.

Pre-Production

We’ve written about pre-production quite extensively in earlier blogs, but let’s recap for a moment. Pre-production, to us, defines all video activities before the actual filming process starts.

That concept includes scripts, storyboards and shot lists. It also involves a whole lot of project management and logistics. It can, at some points, feel a bit tedious, but it is a vital step to produce video marketing content. The entire video is planned out before the camera has been setup, that way know one has to do any thinking when it comes to the shoot day, the crew just follows the plan. Without planning and management, your entire video could be left to chance and that could really harm your ROI.

Production

Production is where the fun begins. Finally it’s time to film. On an atypical video production shoot, you will probably encounter a few different types of crew. Each of them have their own role and responsibility on set: the Producer, Camera Operator and Assistant.

• Producer – The producer is the person manages shoots and keeps a keen eye on the on the schedule.
• Director – A director oversees the entire projects vision and story and is usually there to direct any talent and ensure that everything captured aids the message.
• Camera Operator – To produce video marketing content, you’ll need a camera. And operating a camera is much more than just pressing the little red record button. In a small crew, a camera operator acts as DoP (Director of Photography) or even director.
• Assistant – As the name states, the assistant role is to help the Producer and/or Camera Operator on set. They could be assisting with lens changes or focus pulling. On bigger shoots, every lead crew member could have their own assistant. Their main goal is to free up the other crew members from tedious tasks such as battery changes so that they can focus on creating the video. Production Assistants save a lot of time.

On set, the crew will follow the shot list as set out during pre-production. However, it’s not always that straight forward. In order to start filming, you need a camera and lenses. But don’t forget about the lighting or reference monitors! It takes time to build up a complete set. Especially if you’re using specialised equipment such as a crane, gimbal or glide rail.  These bits of kit help to create a more dynamic image, but it could take an hour or two to get everything ready. This is not the kind of equipment that an amateur would have, but is a staple part of any video production experts kit.

Our motto is “Don’t compromise quality over convenience”, so if it takes two hours to set up, it will take two hours. Rushing it is not an option if you’re looking for quality. If you want quality but can’t invest the time, then a large portion of your budget will need to be spent on getting in more crew members.

On smaller sets, you might just have a tripod and a couple of lights. Other sets might have multiple cameras and extensive lighting. Getting it perfect is a challenge. Combine this with a long shot list to go through and you’ll quickly realise that the phrase “it’s just a couple of hours filming” doesn’t hold any truth.

Post-Production

After filming, the post production starts. Again, there are three recognisable phase in the editing process: Narrative, Context and Final.

• Narrative Draft – In the narrative edit, a video production expert concentrates on creating the message  as set out in Pre-Production. They go through all the footage and select the best clips to bring the story to live. Our layered pre-production approach allows us to efficiently and get results quickly.
• Context – In the Context Draft you can start to see the tone of the visuals and the style in the edit. The important part here is to ensure that the visuals match with the message and that they show your organisation in a positive light.
  With colour correction and colour grading, the look, feel and mood of a shot is altered to match it with the goals of the video. No matter how flashy and perfect the imagery is, a video is wholly enhanced by good audio. A video production expert understands that your audience must be able to understand the message. A perfect background track or sound effects can make the video a much more engaging experience for the audience.
• Final Draft – In the Final Draft everything has been polished and finalised and all client feedback changes have been made. Captions and motion graphics have been added and all of the short social media edits have been produced.

As you can see, there are many steps in the edit. And naturally, some projects are quicker than others. Some project might not require extensive colour grading or sound mixing but every effort should be made to make a video that does the job and more!

Targeted Distribution

It’s no good spending all this time and effort producing a video if you aren’t going to get it seen by people. And not just any people, your target audience. 5 views from prospective clients are far more valuable that 100 random viewers. This is where a video production expert will employ online targeted distribution. Utilising social media platforms and television can put your video content in front of your target audience. Remember, people aren’t going to seek out your advert so you need your advert to seek out your audience.

In Summary From A Video Production Expert

All in all, I hope you understand that video marketing is a serious business. It’s not something you’ll do on the side in your spare time as a video production expert. Its important to appreciate that a persons expertise and experience is the results of years of struggles, experiments and even failures. Academically learning and developing processes and honing a crafts by rolling up sleeves and making things happen. If content is created in a short amount of time it’s because a video production expert has spent 20 years learning the process of how to create something within that time. A video production expert is paid for the years, not the minutes. The cost to the expert for producing an enticing video advert for a sustainably sourced charcoal company could be on a couple of grand. But knowing how to design the video, how to relate to the audience, where best to place a camera for a particular shot and how much a shot should be held on in the edit suite is what you are paying for.