Know The End Even Before You START! YES, you read that right, as the Director of a Corporate Film you should know each and every aspect of the entire process. Too many Corporate Film production projects start through the process – with an idea or worst of all, no idea at all. If you take time to properly plan out your production, it will never fail to achieve the objective of the business.
Importance of Pre-Production Stage
Every Corporate Film Shoot may be planned with different purposes; some may be made to acquire new customers, new employees or customers’ testimonials, whereas the others may be created to sell products or services or to portray the value proposition of the company. There are various types of videos which are generally created considering many factors including cost and objectives of the business.
Companies are focusing on creating engaging and entertaining videos rather than creating something just to promote the products of the business. It is a two way communication between Businesses and Consumers and the videos are considered to be amazing story tellers.
List out your key things during the planning stage
Corporate Film Shoot is very challenging and equally interesting too. There are various aspects which need to be considered before-hand while planning a video shoot. It may be Outdoor like Industrial Video Shoot or Indoor like Interview Shoot of key management of an Organization. Since there are multiple steps involved in the entire process and a huge number of things are involved, things can go miserably wrong if it is unplanned. You should be ready with the task list before hitting the Camera.
Let’s consider and put forward a few pointers, but that’s not enough as the list is seemingly endless. There are several other things to consider before you even turn your camera on.
Define your Objective: Your video is successful only if it can cover your business objective and deliver it to the world. There can be various objectives of a Corporate Film Shoot like nurturing awareness, showcasing products, highlighting the USP of the business and engaging people across the industry. You should be able to measure and drive outcome in measurable format to calculate the Return on Investment (ROI). You should always know the expected outcome once people finish watching the video. It should be perfectly sending the defined message to your audience.
Concept & Planning: You should have some uniqueness in your concept for your next video. You should briefly summarize the idea and outline the style of the video. Summary of this concept is then elaborated in a Storyboard format wherein you chalk out if you need voice-over, animation and music in the video. You should also fix the tone, pace, duration and location for shooting of the video. You should get the plan ready for distribution too. Plan should be made considering all the aspects right from the start till the very end.
Meticulously Check the Budgeting: Budgeting for your video is definitely an important and quite a tricky thing to consider while being in the planning stage. It becomes difficult to analyze the actual budget before you have clear idea about everything. In few cases you have to limit your idea on the basis of the budget fixed by the client or your team. Do your thorough research and comparative analysis on various aspects to determine approximate budget for video. The budget should include the cost for crew, artists, locations, animation, marketing etc.
Identify your Location: A corporate film can either be Outdoor e.g. Industrial Video Shoot or Indoor shoot e.g. Founder Interview shoot. It is very important to analyze proper location for the shoot. If it is an Indoor shoot, you should consider which area of the office you will be able to highlight in the video to the outer world. If you have to shoot an indoor or an outdoor video, have a visit of the place to consider aspects like electric points, logistics, local people, security, on-site maintenance, cleaning, etc. Consider season and climatic condition for the outdoor shoot well in advance, however sometimes it may be a surprise.
Advance Permissions & Approvals: Outdoor shoots need various permissions from authorities and departments. It can be like shooting permission for location, access for parking, any kind of insurance, etc. If it is a new location, know in advance whom all and when to approach for permissions. You should get all the permissions and approvals well in advance to avoid any kind of surprises during the shoot. If you are planning to use Drone Camera for your outdoor shoots, don’t forget to take necessary permissions from the authorities. Approvals can be in terms of getting the entire script and flow approved by the key stakeholders especially in a large corporation.
Line up your Team: Make a thorough list of people to be involved from the Ideation to the completion stage of a Corporate Film production. Talk to each and every team member involved in all the stages of the shooting plan. Your list may include Director, Assistant Director, Line Producer, DOP, Production Artist, Makeup Artist, etc. Let each person know when their availability is required as per the script and the schedule of the shoot. Your most important person on the camera would be the person who is going to act. Check if he is done with his rehearsals and is completely prepared to face the camera. Let him be informed well in advance about his dress code, timing for the shoot and any other requirement.
Arrange the Equipment: Every Small to large tool has to be considered as equipment and needs to be arranged beforehand. You should have all the right set of lights, sliders of different sizes, reflectors, power, audio equipment, and various lenses, additional battery packs etc. which are necessary. You should also consider any such equipment, products, props, etc. required to complete the shoot. Considering last moment surprises, you must always have a backup of your equipment; be extra careful for your most important equipment i.e. Camera. Ideally you should analyze the number of cameras you need to complete the shoot.
Plan the Schedule: Plan the schedule well in advance for each and every person involved in the process of corporate film making. Plan a well-defined schedule with listing all the tasks linked with the person/persons and their time availability. It would be better if you could assign a fixed time slot to everyone, off course with some buffer as per their requirement in the entire process. Let them also know their expected duration while shooting so that they can be well planned in advance.
Don’t be surprised! Be ready to make tweaks to all your plans.
If it is for the betterment of the corporate film, why not to tweak (if needed)? There is a possibility that while being on the shoot you may counter some new idea that needs to be included in the script and the shoot may improvise the Corporate Film further.
“Better prepared and planned person may be able to manage the new changes in a far better way”
Be very flexible while being on the shoot. You can do your practical experimentation with the help of your camera on the shoot location. This will also help in practicing it multiple times before an actual shoot.
Your Pre-Production is your actual Project!
Once you are done thoroughly with all your planning and above points, the rest to follow would be the actual execution. During pre-production stage all your wild thoughts and experimentations may not cost you any money except your precious time, which is worth it to achieve something better in terms of quality.
If you have a winning and competent team with you while being on your shoot, you will have a great journey with last mile inspirations for your Video.