With the increasing need for marketing video to go just beyond a single, one-off piece of content, marketing and fundraising departments should approach their video projects with the mindset of collecting video assets. In other words, marketers and their video producers should have the mindset of "How can we extract as many video assets out of this production to have not only for our immediate needs,...

This is another 1-minute excerpt from an interview Rachel had with Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage, on the subject of b-roll.  In the top clip, I've added some b-roll grabbed from a client, Exploration School.  Just for the sake of comparison, I included the same clip but without the accompanying b-roll - just Rachel talking on camera. Transcription of Video Shots of kids dancing Rachel...

A Boston hospital called us, asking us for a proposal to do a training video.  After we delivered the proposal, my partner, Rachel, had a follow-up call with a woman who is managing the process.  She wanted to know why our estimate had come in lower than the other two she had received. It’s not clear why.  Perhaps it was because Rachel asked what money the organization had allotted for the video,...

Being flexible is often the name of the game in video production.  Sometimes it’s adapting to a situation that changes unexpectedly; other times it’s adapting to a situation that cannot be changed. Reflection Films encountered the latter on a film shoot in New York yesterday.  We had the pleasure of interviewing a donor who has given generously to a research center at Clark University.  She was delightful...

In a post from last week, I talked a little bit about the video production process and how it usually starts with the discovery phase.  During discovery,  the producer and client spend some time  in advance of production talking about the goal of the video, deciding who and what should be in it, and then mapping out a plan for the production.  This is a pretty logical approach, and we never  suggest...

I mentioned in an earlier post how most good video producers will have a process.  The process will vary from one producer to the next, of course, and it will also be dependent on the type of project. But let’s say you want to create a web marketing video, and you are working directly with a video production company (as opposed to hiring an ad agency or a communications firm to help with the video). ...

Many video productions need to be "on location."  In other words, the producers for a marketing video about a university probably ought to spend some of their time on campus.  But let's say you're the VP of Marketing, you plan to have several people interviewed for the video, and you want them in front of a neutral background.  For footage like this, filming in a studio might be a good option:...

Regardless of what kind of investment you made to hire your video production company, it makes sense to get the most possible value out of them. And one area in which you can make sure to maximize the value of your investment is during your actual production - the day(s) you spend on set or location filming with your producer. It doesn't take a master logician to understand that if your producer...

People often ask us, “How long should my video be?” Our answer has always been, “Less is more.”  I suppose a couple caveats to this could be: 1. If you have a captive audience, like at an event, maybe you can extend the length; or 2. You have something really compelling that you know will hold the audience’s attention longer. Here are a couple of points to consider, however, if you expect...

We had a recent conversation with a client of ours who was clearly feeling a bit frazzled.  His boss had assigned him to be the video point person for the organization, and his basic problem was too little time and too many things to do.  He put on a brave face, but he probably wished he didn’t have this responsibility. If you are considering a video project for yourself, but the idea gives you similar...