Our team believes that in order to be confident enough to guarantee our clients receive an effective video, it is crucial to have a detailed and refined process. We honed in our process over the past 5 years.
For us it all begins with a Kickoff Meeting, a session between our team and the client. This is an opportunity for our team to discover the organization’s story and learn of the problems that the video should solve.
After the Kickoff Meeting, we then begin the Pre-Production process. At this step, our team digests all information gathered in the Kickoff Meeting, and ideates creative strategies as well as outlines for each video.
Once our team has a clear idea and strategy for the project, we meet again with the client to present our ideas for the video content, including storylines each video will follow and outlines diagramming each video.
Following the client approval of the strategy come the Pre-Interviews. This is an optional step, depending on the level of comfort the subject of the video has with being on camera. One of our producers will conduct a 15-30 minute phone call pre-interview with each interview subject to prepare them for production. This includes talking about questions and types of questions they can expect on the day of production, talking through what production will look like, what their expectations are, ideas for what to wear, and to answer any questions they may have.
Then comes Production. All of this diligent preparation works to set up success on the day of production. Equipped with a creative brief, outlines, interview questions, shot list, our team knows exactly what we need to capture. Our team on-site will be composed of both full-time 5&B employees as well as trusted sub-contractors.
After production, our team begins creating what we call a StoryDraft. This is a document that compiles the essential information that will be used by the Video Editor for post-production. This includes interview clips, b-roll ideas, target length, mood, and much more. With this document in hand, the Video Editors can focus on what they do best and streamlines the process. Approaching each project in this way is critical to our process. This ensures that the story is established before moving on to other post-production video editing.
Once our team creates the StoryDraft, our video editors take the project and begin turning that document, thinking of it as a blueprint, into a proper video. This process of course includes everything from color-correction, adding b-roll, motion graphics, music, etc.
Once the video is edited and passes our own internal approval process, we send it off to the client for first review. Updates and revisions are always expected, even the best preparation doesn’t guarantee a perfect result. This step is often collaborative in nature, we look to our client to provide any feedback that they may have to help the video become more appropriate and effective for their goals. Often this can become somewhat of a back and forth process as we refine the video until we arrive at the final draft for distribution by the client!