The spectacular advantages of using moving imagery for marketing, sales promotions, staff training, and corporate communication need no introduction.
However, as this is such a fun, limitless and exciting way to communicate, it’s easy to get utterly carried away, leading to you wildly exceeding your video production budget, and possibly still ending up with footage not fit for purpose.
Try explaining that to your CEO!
To help you clip unnecessary expenditure, and pan in on your business goals, here are five money-saving tips for focused video production.
Let us tell you a story
Your storyboard is everything. The end.
Seriously, your initial video production plan is where a big chunk of the work takes place. Including formulating realistic costings, time frames and content specs.
It goes something like this. Who is your audience? What reaction do you want to achieve? How can you reach that goal, as quickly, powerfully and memorably as possible? And how can you manage this without having to remortgage your house? (Okay, slight exaggeration on that last one, but if you’re not careful the costs can really start to mount up!)
Your initial planning and research may reveal some very ‘grounding’ facts, like your audience wanting a quiet, well-reasoned presentation to camera – not a glamorous magic carpet ride using every camera trick in the book!
Plan in place – more prep needed
Haven’t picked up a camera yet? Good! There’s still more work to do.
Even with a great storyboard and plan sorted, cost-effective video production still requires more preparation. This includes sourcing the best backdrop, creating a goal-orientated script, sourcing music (preferably royalty-free music) and thoroughly briefing everyone involved. It all helps you to stay on budget, and on schedule.
Only when you’ve ticked off your massive pre-filming checklist, should you think of getting your camera out. That’s if you’ve got one!
Sourcing video production equipment
You can buy simple video equipment that does the job fundamentally well or more advanced options with a raft of creative extras. Clearly, the latter also sharpens up the footage and sound capture too.
Thorough research on the best value video equipment is time well spent. Much depends on how often you will use it. Go for high-end options if the cost can be spread over multiple visual content projects.
And… Action!
Time to capture your footage, at last! Sticking rigidly to your shooting schedule. Hopefully, this is the fun bit for you!
Double and triple check the lighting and sound quality throughout, and make sure you’re using a ‘closed set’ free of distractions. This ensures usable footage from every minute of filming.
Back to hard graft with editing
Sorry, it’s back to putting the hours in with your camera back on a shelf. Editing is where the true genius of video production can happen. Including turning content shot on a tight budget, into something truly amazing.
Cutting segments, adding soundtracks, captions, graphics, background shots… the list goes on. Producing just a few minutes of a commercially advantageous video can take many, many hours!
Wow… too much work!
If this all sounds far less glamorous than you imagined, fear not. The team at Creative Jam love every step in producing videos for commerce purposes.
In fact, creative video production comes naturally to us, from the initial briefing to the final showing, when the client explodes with joy (we can dream).
Chat to us about your budget, objectives and timescale then sit back and relax. Let the magic of affordable filmmaking come to you!
