Video Production Process

So, what’s the process of video production?

Well, if you currently have a web design service from us, you will already know the importance of educational content – such as FAQs, blogs and articles, case studies, etc. – on your site. So, you will naturally already be clued up on some of the objectives and processes that our video production service follows. Either way, whether you’re an existing or new client, we’ll walk you through our step-by-step process.

Step 1 – Education

“Education is our passport to the future!
For tomorrow belongs only to the people
who prepare for it today”

Malcolm X

In order for a video production to run as smoothly as it should, all parties involved need to understand the process and the reasons behind why we do what we do. Without this, it would be like crossing the road for the first time without reading the green cross code, without knowing what a car was, or what could happen if you crossed the road without checking if there was any traffic heading your way. So, please take your time to check out all of the content on this video production page, and let it all sink in. You’ll know when the time is right to get in touch with us.

Step 2 – It’s Good to Talk

Emails, phone calls, video calls, or in-person meetings at our office or yours, whichever suits your process and your calendar best, at any given point in your video production journey.

With all parties involved and educated on video production processes and business marketing strategies, we can conduct a meaningful and creative exchange of ideas and information, research, and development.

We discuss video marketing concepts and goals, establishing the best routes for your company to take, on producing your content, to suit your brand, your budget, and your deadlines.

Step 3 – Pre-Production

With all the information gathered about you and your company, and having established the right strategy for you from all our correspondence and meetings, we go away and start compiling a set of video production documents that form the backbone and direction of your whole video project.

These production documents consist of the following:

Pre-Production Planning Document

Initially, you fill this out as much as you can before our first meeting. Then, we fill in the gaps during our first meeting.

• The Brief

From our planning meetings, we draw up a brief based on the information we have discussed and gathered from you.

• Production Schedule

A schedule is drawn up so everyone involved knows the when’s, where’s, and how’s of all the filming plans.

• Shooting Schedule, Call Sheet & Shot List with Script and/or Interview Questions

The shooting schedule is the documentation used on the day of the shoot, including which shots are being filmed, when, and at what locations specific to that one day of a shoot. The call sheet notifies all those who need to be in attendance, at what time, and for what type of activity. The shot lists, scripts (if any) and interview questions are all key players for the videographer, providing all our pre-agreed content from our initial planning meetings.

• Risk Assessment

Video production can be so varied in the nature of its work; it can literally take you anywhere, to any given situation, undertaking the most unusual of tasks, you never thought you would end up doing. This brings a potential risk, which comes in many forms. We will provide you with a risk assessment every day of every shoot, as each filming session can be different, especially when changing locations.

• Talent Release and Consent Forms

This is a document for anyone appearing on screen, to legally sign that they give their consent to be filmed. It is also a document for them to agree that they release all copyright for the use of their participation in filming. We will send these forms to you via email before the shoot, for you to read, sign, date, and email back to us. We cannot legally film anyone without their consent. If we cannot get a signature on the day of the shoot before filming begins, we will have to cease production.

• Location Release Forms

The location release forms are just like the talent release forms, except instead of obtaining permission to film a person, we are getting permission to film on private property, which is more often than not, a company’s premises and its land. This has to be signed by the property owner or manager authorised to grant this permission.

The brief is established and refined from our first meeting. We compile all the information from this meeting to draw up a brief, which is then emailed to you for your review. The video production planning form forms part of the pre-production process.

It establishes when, where, and what we are going to film, as well as what we need in place in order to do it, including the logistics of filming your project. It outlines when your content will be edited, in what style and pace, and how it will achieve the goals and purposes we previously agreed upon in our correspondence and meetings. And finally, it outlines how the finished video products should be produced aesthetically in line with your company’s brand guidelines, the agreed deliverables, with timescales and budgets.

This might seem a bit long-winded – but it ensures your shiny new video content is not only on brand, on target, and on budget, but the entire process and output is agreed and understood from day 1, so all parties are on the same page at every stage of the process.

Step 4 – Production “Quiet On Set Please… and Action!”

With all the details of production worked out, we start filming your project on the pre-agreed dates, as per the production schedule.

But what actually happens on the day of the shoot?

Well, we arrive at the first location (you might have a few) in a dedicated van full of filming equipment, and we may use a production cart to transport all the kit around the shooting locations, access permitting. That’s why we ask on the production planning form if any shoot location buildings have stairs that can be bypassed by a slope or lift. Before installing all of the equipment, we have a quick chat to let you know we have arrived, and assess the locations of filming to ensure they are still suitable for filming, since we carried out the initial recce of the location, and there is sufficient space to bring all the equipment onto the location.

Using the pre-agreed shooting schedule document, we carry out the filming of all the pre-agreed content at all locations on the agreed dates until all filming is completed.

Step 5 – Post-Production – The Edit

On the pre-agreed dates, the raw material, including the rushes (the footage we filmed), will be edited over a period of days, depending on the amount of footage captured and the number of videos agreed to be produced.

For all video editing projects, there is usually a lot of footage to process, so a period of time, typically about a day, is needed to prepare the footage for editing. So, what does that mean?

Well, here is a list of everything we do, so when you see the words edit prep on your quote or invoice, you know exactly what’s going on, on that day of your provided production schedule.

Edit Prep:

1. We import all the footage from our cameras, to our editing suite.
2. We create thorough file storage structures and backup all your footage to several sources before doing anything else.
3. We then ingest all the footage into our video editing software (We use Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps, specifically Adobe Premiere Pro for the editing part)
4. Then, we categorise and organise all the footage on the timeline and organise it so that each video type is easily and quickly found to streamline the editing process. If you’re not familiar with video editing software, all your video footage, which will be a lot, basically needs organising so we can find what we need when we need it. Imagine we’re making a video library out of all your footage, complete with Dewey numbers, so to speak.
5. Once we have our nicely labelled library of video footage, each and every shot needs to be reviewed and analysed for its suitability. What we are doing here is assessing which shots are the best ones to use for various purposes, depending on your specific deliverables. This streamlines and improves the quality of the edit, and generally makes the whole editing process more efficient, resulting in a better end product. This is a lengthy process, as there will be hundreds of shots to go through, but a very important one, and here’s why. Firstly, it is a process of quality control; we only want to use the best shots when representing your business. It also helps us get familiar with the footage in more detail for its intended purposes, making for a more efficient and streamlined edit.

6. Then, we prep the interviews ready for editing. (What we’re doing here is called top and tailing.) We take the start of the interview (the top) and cut out anything we don’t want, for example, the sound of the interviewer asking the question. Then, at the end of the interview (the tail), we also cut out any unwanted content that is not relevant. Another lengthy process, dependant on how much interview footage is recorded, is to cut out all the “Ums” “Errs” and “So’s” so when we are in the middle of an edit, we don’t come across any of these hesitancies and have to take them out mid-edit, causing timing issues with the edit that has already been done. This just causes more work in having to edit several parts of the video twice over.
7. Now our nicely labelled library of footage is not only organised and streamlined for the editing process, it also only contains the best shots, and all those shots only contain usable content. So when the editing begins, we are only spending our time with the best, optimised video footage, to go into your final deliverables. So now we do the same with the audio. We go through all the audio channels for each clip and optimise the levels and quality of the sound, including all the recorded interviews.
8. Now we need to gather our additional assets that we will need to edit with your footage. So what assets might we need?

• All your company logos, graphics and brand guidelines. Obviously, if you have chosen to have us design your logo or graphics for you, we will already have them. If not, we need your best and highest resolution versions of them. Ideally, we want your Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop project files. If you don’t have or can’t get the project files, then SVG files are great, or alternatively, high-resolution JPGs.
• We also need to know if there is any text you would like to see on screen, either at the start, during, or end of the video. You might want some text for a call to action, or a special thanks credits list. These things would be decided during our initial meetings when deciding on the key messages and purposes of your videos. So, in short, a Word document with your desired text will suffice, unless you would like us to write it for you for your review, in due course of the editing review process.
• That’s your part done, then we start sourcing the right music for your production. This could be one or more tracks per video we create for you, depending on the video length and style. We do pay very careful attention here, as we don’t have a full rock band and orchestra in the basement of our office waiting on standby any time we need music. We therefore use stock music agencies, as most media production companies will use, too. When we say careful attention, we mean we are carefully tuned into what bad stock music sounds like; we absolutely do not use anything that sounds like “I’ll just put you on hold” music, where we hear the violin version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. We do not use elevator music or the cheesy supermarket music of soundalike singers that sound nothing like the original. That’s the rant over! Rest assured, we take our time choosing quality music for your content, ensuring it is on-brand as much as possible. Our music provider is one of, if not the best, music providers out there. It also allows us to use parts of the tracks as we see fit, so if you like the track we have chosen, but don’t like the sound of a certain instrument or vocal, we can just take it out for you.
• Other assets we collate as part of the editing prep relate to stock assets, which we use, if and when needed. We use sound effect libraries where needed and may, from time to time, use stock motion graphics templates. We may also use some stock video if there is something we cannot film ourselves. For example, if you need footage of the International Space Station, we can get it for you. Whilst we’d love to shoot into space with a camera to get it, it might not be cost-effective for you. But it’s nice to know that if there is an impossible shot we need to get, we can achieve the impossible, too. Eat your heart out, Tom Cruise/Ethan Hunt!

So, if you see one or more days of edit prep on your estimate, quotation or invoice, that’s what it’s all about.

With all the edit prep complete, we go straight into the actual edit that directly produces the agreed deliverables. The number of deliverables to produce and the amount of content we have filmed for you, will determine how long the edit will take to complete a 1st draft. Generally speaking, in most cases, a full day of filming will require a two-day edit, including the edit prep. When a deliverable has been completed to the agreed spec, we call that a 1st draft.

Step 6 – Client Review, Amends & Delivery

Once we have edited the 1st draft of your content, we then upload it and send you a private link to review, allowing you to add any comments and changes you would like to make. It’s good practice to make sure the 1st draft is seen by everyone in your organisation who needs to see it, so they can provide their suggestions for changes, and we are not going back and forth too much. If we can get all the changes and comments done in one hit, it makes for a much more efficient process, and you receive your final deliverables quicker, too!

We use Adobe Frame.io, which is browser-based software, that allows you to enter your comments on the exact timecode of a video that you want to make a change to. (Timecode is simply the hours, minutes and seconds on the run timer when you hit play, in case you’re wondering.) Your draft videos for review on Frame.io, will be compressed and may not look like the quality you were expecting, but don’t worry, this is just the software optimising for speed. When you download your final content, it will be the full-resolution, high-quality file. Once a deliverable has undergone all necessary changes and you are happy to sign it off, you will then be able to download the final version from Frame.io.

So, after all your deliverables have been signed off, the project is complete. You will either need to upload your new content to your website, or we will do this for you if we are currently looking after your website. You may also wish to upload your content to your social media channels, and on that note, we just need to mention some terms and conditions when uploading your content.

Terms and Conditions for Licences

As we mentioned earlier, we use stock assets, to give your content all the bells and whistles it needs. The main player here is the music, but it can also include sound effects, AI Voiceovers, graphics, and stock video.

All these assets must have copyright clearance. We take care of all that for you. (Well, our stock asset provider does, we just buy the relevant licences to cover you.)

However, there are terms and conditions associated with those licences that are dictated to us by the provider. The key terms and conditions, the main DO NOTs, are listed here:

1. The final videos we supply you cannot be re-edited and posted online.
2. There may sometimes be a time limit for you to post the content online.
3. You can only use content on your social channels where you have no more than 3 channels per platform.
4. We are not allowed to provide you with any original files of the licensed assets; they have to be incorporated into a video.
5. You cannot take any asset off of the video and re-purpose it or use it for any other use.

From time to time, we or yourselves, might receive copyright claims, or notifications of a violation of your upload on some social media platforms. You may even find that the content you uploaded to a platform is playing but without any sound, or has been removed from the platform altogether. As long as you have not breached the terms and conditions, this is nothing to worry about. This won’t be anything on our part that has caused this issue. Sometimes, the algorithms on social media sites are a bit trigger-happy with shooting down copyrighted material. You simply need to let us know, and we will put it right for you as soon as possible. Once we have notified our provider of the issue, this can take a few days to rectify. In some cases, we may provide you with the proof of copyright clearance for you to send on to your social media platform provider.