"The stars are aligned, and we are determined."

After answering the right questions, you’re armed with the right reasons and a healthy does of optimism to embark on your journey of video creation. Here are some guidelines to help you in the process of translating an idea to the big screen and onto the phones of an eager audience.

“We want our audience to love it!”

Define the scope and messaging from the start. Is your business model B2B or B2C? What will the video be used for? Is it part of the presentation deck to C-suite members of other companies, or to be used as an explainer video on your homepage? Narrowing down the nature of your audience gives you a better idea of what tonality works.

“Do we make the video first or?”

No piece of work is an island. A product, explainer, corporate, or commercial video, has to work in conjunction with existing collateral. As video production can be time and resource intensive, it is always a good idea to position the creation of the video when smaller collateral have been set in place, and have been proven to work. This gives you the advantage of making adjustments quick(er) and cheap(er).

“We can’t really decide on a few points, can we have another meeting next week please?”

Indecisiveness kills the momentum and affects the eventual quality of the video. Creativity should be fluid, ideas should flow. But there are certain things that need to be set in stone for the video to work. Defining your audience, focusing your message, and having a visual concept that drives your message. Having these points anchored is key to get the project moving, especially when the ideas and suggestions get too wild. Always refer back to those anchors, if the ideas don’t help, or are not aligned with the anchors, discard them. In the case where the team still feels strongly about it, it could be worth examining closer, to shift the anchor, otherwise, stay on course.

“I think the idea is great! Our audience gets and loves it, but we don’t like it.”

At times when a video project is going underway, and all the check boxes are marked, there will be someone on the team doesn’t like it. It is important to identify what about the work so far causes that dissatisfaction. At face value, being part of the team (normally) gives the feedback weight in knowledge and deep insight into the subject matter of the video. What about the work causes that dissatisfaction? Discussions can yield polarising ideas and approaches which at times, can be resolved, but what if they can’t?

Remember that for the purpose of the video, it has to resonate with the audience you have in mind. There might be some bits that you don’t like, and rightly so - no work is perfect. If the only ones that like it are your colleagues, spouse, and mother, you’re preaching to the choir. It should always be made for the audience in mind.

Video production can be daunting when you consider the process, and the work required to turn an idea into 4K fidelity. With all things, baby steps in the right direction goes a long way. Hit us up if you’d like us to help you with that.