I was on LinkedIn this weekend and saw a post about a video that hadn’t been executed very well and it got me thinking about how to work to your budget when producing a video. What follows may not be ground breaking but I think it is an important point and people should consider it if they are having to produce a video on a tight budget or within a tight time-frame.
Beware the feature creep
It is very easy during the pre-production stages of a video production project to get carried away with an idea and the budget somehow gets lost in all the excitement. It’s no bad thing to come up with a great idea that has some creative elements and will look beautiful but there is nothing worse than executing it poorly and having an inferior video at the end of it. So remember, work to your budget.
Quality not quantity
The quality of a video should reflect the quality of the product or service it is promoting. In the case of the video on LinkedIn it was for a very large cruise-line so the video should have been a thing of beauty. It suffered from many issues which could have been easily rectified with a bit of pre-planning and a thought to what works and what doesn’t for the the available budget. They clearly tried to do too much and for that the resulting video looked very amateurish. If they had scaled back the scope of the video and kept it simple it would have looked a lot more professional and would have received a much better reception online.
Short social media videos still must be professional
When I first watched the video I thought it was a facebook live video because it hadn’t been edited and early-on the presenter asks the audience for their questions. But, the only place I can find it is on YouTube which further begs the question, why was it produced like that? facebook Live is a great application but it can be very dangerous for companies if it isn’t used correctly. It all comes back to the question, if we do this will it be advantageous to us and will it look professional?
Listen to the experts
It can be hard to scrap ideas but it is very important to keep all your marketing material looking professional and if that means producing something far simpler and with less scope then so be it. Any good video production company should raise any concerns and offer solutions during the early stages of any video production project so do your homework and make sure who ever you hire fills you with confidence and has a good track record. You must also remember that they are the experts and you have hired them to help you, so you should listen to their thoughts even if it isn’t what you want to hear.
If you’re planning a video we would love to hear from you, please call Will or Andy on 01273 911 345 or email info@echovideo.co.uk.