Video Production Commissioning : A Final Summary

As a final summary to all the ‘commissioning video’ articles that have been posted out over the past few months, here’s a useful list to help you with your next video production project.

Before you start any video production commission…

• Identify and define your objectives before you start the commissioning process. If you’re not sure what they are, think about the problem you’re trying to solve and the messages you want to convey.

• Really think about who is your target audience? What’s their background? Where will they most likely be viewing your video? What do they like or dislike?

• It’s vital that you define what a ‘successful’ outcome for the video means to you and what you want your audience to do at the end of the video.

Scoping out and developing the brief with your agency

• Get an early meeting with your chosen video production agency to build relationships and to talk through your (and their) processes, methodologies and don’t be afraid to give an indicative budget, it’s extremely helpful in coming up with realistic concepts.

• Plan out a workflow, schedule and single point of contact for the project during this meeting. It’s worth emphasising that a streamlined approach to project management is key to a smooth production process.

• It’s essential that the objectives for the video are identified within the scoping-out meeting, and this has to come from the client. Ensure you and the agency know exactly what you want the video to achieve.

• Don’t go any further along the production process without a signed-off treatment that you’re happy with. The treatment should be provided to you by the agency and details exactly what is going to be produced for you. It’ll contain your objectives, messaging audience, timescales, budget spend, deliverables, formats and an initial concept (or two) for the creative.

Designing the creative

• From the video production agency’s POV, it’s essential to get in as much research as possible before starting any creative work, so any supporting materials a client can provide will come in very useful. These can be anything from the subject matter itself, through to examples of work that you like.

• Input into any part of the creative process should always be welcomed, but choose the right moments to offer it. Once your feedback has been delivered, let the production team come back to you with their next development, before you add in further additional changes

• Make sure that what you see is what you want.

Filming and video production

• The production and creative process for a film or video is the time to see your ideas take shape in front of you, but it’s essential to understand that what it isn’t, is the time to make changes to the brief. Trust the process and commit to what worked in pre-planning. Have confidence in your ideas.

• A client who is readily available, comes back with quick responses and gives succinct, consolidated feedback will facilitate the best projects. Try and commit to a choice, whether that’s a creative or logistical one.

• Be prepared for any type of variable on the actual filming day and always have a ‘Plan B’ ready to go. That could mean scouting alternative locations for filming or even having different contributors on standby.

Post-production

• The most important thing for a client to do during the early stages of editing is to listen to the content. Don’t worry about what it looks like yet, just make sure you’re happy with the messages and the way the story is being told.

• After you’re happy with the edit’s narrative, then it’s time to keep a careful eye on what you see. Take on board the editor’s advice (they’re the experts) but do make sure that you’re happy with everything you see on screen (and that it’s on brand!).

• For every edit round, collect all the feedback from your side before sending it over. Feedback that comes in dribs and drabs can make the edit process significantly more complicated and much more labour-intensive

• Finally, do offer feedback after a project is over as it’s incredibly valuable to a video production agency to hear how they’ve done. We really value all of the feedback we receive, (not just so we can blow our own trumpet) but because it means we can improve processes and refine our own methods, and then feed this back into our practise.

So if you’re looking to kickstart a project, or would even just like to sound out an idea you might have, please do get in touch as we’d love to hear from you. We’re happy to talk through your ideas and can give you further guidance on how to start a project, or work with you to identify your messages and set the right objectives to ensure that your content reaches the right audience with maximum impact.

We’d love to hear from you