Outsourcing your video projects to a dedicated video team is not easy. But, it’s not even as challenging as producing your own promo videos by yourself.
While hiring a video team is what most brand teams do, it is pertinent to remind ourselves that experiences of most clients didn’t turn out great.
So, what can you do to keep your project safe, outsource it without any worries, and expect high-quality output for promotional videos?
Well, in this blog we’ll uncover four tips that every brand team can benefit from when outsourcing video production.
- Be open and transparent with what you want
Communication has a pivotal role in making your project a big success. What you need to do is be transparent with your video team. Tell them precisely about your goals, and expectations. You can’t expect the team to figure out everything on their own, while keeping you satisfied with the service. It just doesn’t work that way.
Instead, be open and honest with the team that’s offering your promotional video production. Here are a few things you should consider deciding with your video partner, before you move on to the next stage.
- Clearly mention your meeting schedule, preferred communication tools or medium
- Be very precise of what you expect of the video to appear as the final result; Share references if you can
- Share specific brand guidelines to ensure your brand videos are consistent, and have the same level of impression as other media assets
- Connect with agency members
Next thing you want to do to keep your project intact with all the guidelines is connect with the team at all levels. Primarily, clients engage with account managers; you’ll be assigned one dedicated manager in your case as well.
Besides, you’ll also get to meet, interact, and learn new things from creative directors, creative associates, art directors, artists, editors, production team, and a lot of other talented people.
While working with them, make sure you’re open with communication. Ask the team to prepare a schedule for the video project that aligns best with your planned date for the launch. Let the team bring their schedule for all milestones, and reviews.
You must be clear about exactly how much time the team will need to review the video, or process revisions upon your request. Make sure your brand team is well aware of how the video production will progress. Plus, be proactive to conduct review sessions so everything moves according to the plan in a swift way.
- Examine the proposal carefully
Proposals contain contract fees and guidelines. It is one document that embodies everything you should be mindful of before opening the contract for the video agency. It includes usual fees as well as penalties which may be applicable under certain circumstances.
Your job as the client is to be sure of what’s in the contract for you, and the video partner executes it perfectly, keeping your interests on top of everything. Therefore, examine the proposal very carefully.
Typically a contract for video production explicitly mentions following aspects of the job:
- Project summary (What you require, and how it’s to be done)
- Terms and conditions (Rules governing the transaction between you and the company)
- Ownership rights (Ownership rights are transferred to client after final delivery)
- Schedule for milestones and plan of action to accommodate revisions or additional requirements
- Additional cost breakdown for urgent tasks
- Number of revisions and edits (Included in the price of the contract)
- Final delivery (Deadline and protocols for final delivery)
- Payment method (What platform or currency both parties agreed for the payment)
- Actively collaborate in the video process
Your most important task is to become familiar with how the team pursues its video project, and follow up with them throughout the entire process. For best results, try to become an active collaborator with the production team without intimidating them.
Here are some major aspects of the project flow that you need to be aware of, and be passionate to provide your input, and uplift the creative team as if they’re part of your brand team.
- Concept Briefing
The first step of your brand’s video journey is concept briefing. The creative team at the video agency will work up the creative brief highlighting the crux of your messaging, style, and how it is to be achieved.
- Mood Board Designing
Next, the video company will lean over their creative department to work up the mood board for your video. Moodboard embodies video style, brand guidelines, color palettes, audio, and artwork, locations, if your video will be shot on a special location, and lighting, camera angles, and style of animation.
- Script and Visuals
Next, the creative team will initiate the scripting process. Your brand team will be in touch with a copywriter who’ll write the script. Your job is to reinforce the idea that the copy of the script, and the visuals that appear in each corresponding frame complement each other.
Make sure to finalize the copy of the script before going forward because there’s literally no margin for error. Once you request a change in the script later on, you’ll have to pay additional fees for the update.
- Storyboarding
Storyboard is a more detailed canvas showing scenes in your video. It details each frame to ensure that your copy syncs perfectly with each visual. Your task here could be to revise the visuals for more clarity, and impact.
Make sure to complete all revisions in the storyboard before you finally move into editing and animation.
- Editing
Finally, it’s time for editing. Being the client, you should keep a keen eye on the final result, and request changes promptly. It is so since video teams are busy juggling multiple projects at a time. So, the sooner you request edits in footage and animation, the quicker they’ll respond to you.
Most companies also separately offer video editing services for brands. This saves a lot of cost, and turns out to be an ideal option for clients that have low budgets for video production, but demand stellar quality for brand promos.
So, if you’ve a bunch of promo videos that might do well with some fine tuning from a professional video editor, then consider going with this option.
Wrap up
Let’s wrap this one up. In this blog post, we covered four powerful tips you can follow to reap the best results from your video project. Your role as the client is pivotal in making the video a big success. And, it’s only coming through your continuous collaboration with the video team.
Hope you got a nugget or two from this one.
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