The process begins by defining the purpose of your film. The key to a successful video is keeping it simple and limited to just one goal or message. It is also important that you have identified your target audience, so we know who we’re trying to reach and can therefore choose the appropriate style, pacing and music.
Following a preliminary consultation between you and one of our video producers, we’ll provide you with a proposal outlining the best ways to convey your message to your audience within your budget and timeframe.
The proposal will cover the content, locations and contributors/actors for the video, the intended style and look, and the overall length of the video. It will consider the need for special graphics or animation, and the inclusion of narration and music. We will also prepare a detailed budget breakdown so you can easily see what each cost entails.
Upon approval, a contract will be signed and at this stage a deposit of half the total cost of the production is expected.
The production phase involves the filming and this is when all the pre-production plans start to be translated into moving images.
The period of filming can vary enormously from a day to several weeks or months, and can take place in any number of different locations, ranging from the simple backdrop of the office to international shoots encompassing a number of different countries. These decisions will have been made in the pre-production phase.
It is important to build a certain amount of flexibility into the shooting schedule as certain factors are impossible to predict and often last-minute changes are required. This means it is advisable for you to be in close contact with our producer throughout this stage of production.
It is during the post-production phase that all the different elements are pulled together to form a high-quality final product.
Firstly the footage is logged. This helps inform the editor of exactly what is on each tape and what needs to be transferred to the computer. This can take some time but is worthwhile in terms of the time that is saved in the long run.
Then, after the necessary footage has been digitised onto the edit suite, a rough edit can be assembled. This is referred to as an offline edit and is a rough version of what your final programme will look like without effects or graphics.
At this stage it is essential that enough time is allowed to show the offline edit to all the key people involved, so that a comprehensive list of changes can be drawn up before the film is finalised. At this stage we still have time to make changes without much disruption.
After finalisation of the film’s content we can create the elements which are crucial to giving your video a bit of pizzazz and professionalism: the narration, music, graphics, animation, titles, and credits.
The final stage of the process is the online edit, in which a polished master copy of the video is produced in a format that can then be duplicated as many times and in whatever formats as required.