Field Guides: Straight Answers Before You Commission a Video

Browse by Topic

• Choosing a Production Company

  How to pick a video production company you'll be glad you hired, and how that company works alongside your own team and agencies.

  • How Do I Choose a Video Production Company?
  • How Does a Production Company Work With Our Agency?

• Briefing and Ideas

  What to tell a production company before anything is quoted, and how the idea for a video gets made.

  • What Should I Put in a Video Production Brief?
  • How Do I Make a Corporate Video That Doesn't Look Like Every Other One?

• Budgets and Quotes

  How video is priced, how to talk about budget with a production company, and what to do when a quote comes back in tiers or changes.

  • Should I Tell a Video Production Company My Budget?
  • What Goes Into a Video Production Quote?
  • Why Does a Video Quote Come in Tiers, and How Do I Choose?
  • Why Did My Video Quote Go Up?

• Planning the Shoot

  Everything that happens between saying yes and the first day of filming: pre-production, scheduling, locations and recording days.

  • What Happens in Pre-Production, and Why Does It Matter?
  • How Do I Plan a Video Podcast Recording Day?

• The Shoot

  What happens on the day, from helping people relax on camera to capturing enough to make more than one video.

  • How Do I Get a Nervous Person Comfortable on Camera?
  • How Do I Get More Out of One Video Shoot?

• The Edit

  What happens after the cameras stop: how a video gets cut, how long that takes, and how to give feedback that makes the next version better.

  • What Happens in the Edit, and How Long Does It Take?
  • How Do I Give Feedback on a Video Edit?

• Using Your Video

  Where your video goes once it's finished, and how to keep getting value from footage you've already paid for.

  • Can We Make a New Video From Footage We Already Have?
  • Is TV Still Worth It, and How Do I Get an Ad to Air?