To an outsider, the whole video production process can be both an utter mystery and deceptively simple. On the surface, it’s simple, and that simplicity can make someone think that they’re capable of producing a quality result from filming to editing, even if it’s something that they’ve never done before. With some small businesses, this can even represent a way to save money on production costs – but if that’s the route you take, it’s important that you’re realistic about the outcome.
Understanding it more in-depth can not only be informative for your own efforts, but it can help you to know what to look out for if you decide to enlist these services elsewhere.
Pre-Production and Conceptual Stages
This is the most unstructured and variable stage of the production, with a lot depending on how exactly you’re going about this. If you’re directly involved in the production – if you and other staff members are working directly on the content, then you’re likely to be very heavily involved in the back-and-forth of ideas. Here, you have to not only think about what would work, but you also have to think about what’s realistic. These kinds of restrictions can be disheartening, but it’s important to not think of limitations as being a bad thing. In fact, rather than leave you overwhelmed in a sea of possibilities, the right number of limitations can help to funnel you in the right creative solution.
If you do have a production company involved, then they’ll likely work with you to understand exactly what it is that you’re hoping for. They might then offer their own expertise to create something that ends up being a hybrid of your intentions and wishes, with their ideas and execution. Naturally, you might find yourself in a position where you’re unwilling to give up control – unwilling for the product to risk not reflecting your brand accurately. However, this might end up being an educational process for you – and as long as you’re being heard, you might be pleasantly surprised at how your ideas ultimately come to fruition.
Filming
Again, the actual level of involvement that you have here will vary based on the approach that you’re taking, but if you are around for the filming, you might be surprised at how much can change on the fly. Ideas that worked well on paper might not feel as though they’re hitting the mark when you see them live. That doesn’t mean that you need to scrap the whole thing and start again; it just means that the crew works with the actors until they’ve reached something that feels closer to ‘right’. This can be a frustrating process, especially when it feels as though nothing is going right and you have a lot of people working together. However, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of routes toward success, and being too rigid with the one that you initially had in mind might block off some of these routes.
If you are working with a production company on this, being open-minded arguably becomes even more important. It can help inform how you might go about this process in the future. It’s important to remember that while this is your business, it’s their trade, and ultimately, you brought them in to help you deliver a result that you can be proud of.
Editing
Throughout this whole process, especially if you find that things are going wrong again and again, you might ask yourself, how does video production work? You might be waiting for that moment where it all clicks and where it all comes together. If you’re not as happy as you could be with the conceptual idea that your team goes ahead with, you might feel as though you’ll feel better when you see it in action. However, if the filming leaves you cold, you might instead presume that it will all come together on the cutting room floor. Much of the time, it might do, but putting too much pressure on the editing process might be a dangerous thing.
As transformative as an effective edit can be for a video, it’s not magic. If the idea is bad and if what was shot is no good, there’s going to be nothing for the editor to work with. Weaknesses in one stage can be supported by strengths of another, but your hope here is to unite all of those strengths and have that be the prevailing element, rather than using a glossy edit to hide the blemishes.
