10 digital video production facts every business should know.
Digital video production doesn’t need a big budget to create big impact!
Big ideas don’t always need big budgets, and effective video marketing can be produced on limited resources. Be flexible in your approach and make sure you hire a creative producer to give you the most bang for your buck!
Don’t expect a crew of 100s
Many corporate videos or pieces of video marketing content can be shot with a small crew (often just 2 or 3). The demands of these type of productions mean that kit is lightweight, portable and easy enough for a small crew to operate. However do be wary if just one person turns up with a camera and intends to direct, shoot, and record sound. Unless your budget is extremely limited and you can only stretch to a one man band then you should expect a crew minimum of two so as to maintain quality control.
The shoot days can be very long
The standard day for most crew working in corporate video production is 10 hours. This is what you’ll have been quoted on. However a 12-hour day is very common and 14 and even 16-hour days are by no means unusual.
The work starts long before the actual filming starts
If you’ve found the right producer they will be busy behind the scenes way before the shoot begins. They will be doing their homework on the subject matter and checking out any and all possible variables that could affect the shoot day. See our guide to pre production for more information on this.
A video producer will know more than just how to produce video!
Again, if you’ve hired the right person you’ll find that they have a great deal of knowledge of target viewing habits, sector idiosyncrasies and sector history. They should have done their homework on your brief and be able to offer some valuable insight into how the film can connect with the intended audience based upon their research.
Not all cameras are equal (HD is not just HD)
In the early days of HD digital video production, ‘high definition’ used to mean the resolution was either defined as 1280×720 pixels (the lower end) or as 1920×1080 pixels (full HD). Today, we have cameras capable of shooting up to six times the quality of what we used to call ‘full HD’.
The majority of online video marketing content is delivered at 1280X720 but this will change as 4K becomes commonplace in the home and online. So think about how much longevity you need from your film in case you need to future proof it by shooting in 4K or above.
The director will actually say “Action”
That’s right, the director is going to call “Action” and “Cut”. Aside from making it feel like it’s a Hollywood movie, it does have practical applications – it lets everyone on set know when it’s time to start the action and time to finish, especially for the on screen talent. Separate calls will be made to actually start the cameras recording (“Turn over”) as well as the microphones (“Sound speed”)
A small tweak when shooting can take hours
A good producer will anticipate as many issues as possible when overseeing the shoot, but inevitably there are some things that will just happen unexpectedly and everyone will need to take that on board. Small changed such as camera angle, lighting etc come with knock on effects so dot expect things to happen quickly when shooting.
A small change when editing can take days
Digital non linear editing is powerful and much quicker than the old analogue approach. However don’t confuse the software used with other applications that you may be familiar with. Changing a logo in photoshop can be a quick process but in video it will require rendering, exporting, compressing and probably uploading before you will be able to view the small change you requested.
You wont be able to email your final film
In the world of video marketing it would be great to be able to attach a HD video to our emails and simply send this straight out to our viewers. But sadly, this is just not going to happen. Even with todays powerful compression methods video files will usually be far too large to email (especially if they are HD).
A better practice is to email links to the film once you have uploaded or embedded it onto an online platform (see our guide for tips).
So there you have it. Hopefully you’re now either slightly more enlightened about the process of digital video production than before. But do email us if you have any questions about the process as we’re always happy to help out.
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