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Our goal is to make the most of your money – to accomplish that goal, you need to know what you want to communicate and be clear about your budget parameters.

Develop a clear vision

Use our Video Planning Checklist to focus your thoughts. Talk to us about your vision and your budget and we’ll develop a video treatment that achieves your objectives, a schedule that works for you and a budget that fits within your specified financial parameters.

How much does it cost?

The most important thing is that you know what you want to say, why you want to say it, and who you want to say it to. The next most important question as you set out on making a video is “What do you want to spend?” Please refer to What Does a Video Cost for some examples.

How do I make sure my video is staying on message, on schedule and on budget?

We work closely with you throughout the whole production process and there are key points at which you review, feedback and approve proposals before we progress. Stages for approval:

• the video treatment
• the budget and schedule
• the script
• the casting or confirming of contributors, as appropriate
• the rough-cut edit

Golden rule – The person who reviews the project must be the same person who approves the different stages of the project. This ensures the video delivers on the original objectives.

How much time and resources will video production require?

Delegate one person from your organization to be responsible for the video. They don’t need to know anything about making videos, they just need to know about the project – or at least know their way around your organization well enough to get the answers they need. And make sure they have the authority, or speedy access to a person with authority, to make decisions on practical requests.

If your video requires interviews from people in your organization, they will need to block out time in their schedule. A simple interview would normally take no more than an hour of their time.

You, and any others who need to be involved, will need to make time for reviewing, feedback and approving the key stages listed above.

We like having our client around on the day of shooting. You will know that we are covering the right ground and we can discuss anything that comes up. Our clients find it interesting, and rewarding too.

What is ‘Post Production’?

After the shoot, we spend several days in a darkened edit suite with all the footage, some music, graphics and type. We come out at the end of it with a ROUGH CUT that we want to show you. These days a ‘rough cut’ doesn’t actually look that rough. But this is when you get to see the fruits of your labor and talk to us about any changes you would like. After we have made any necessary changes, we mix the sound and color-correct the images. Then we produce the highest quality recording MASTER.

We will design an interactive menu for your DVD for you to see and comment on before we progress to ‘authoring’ (programming) the master DVD.

A tailor-made cover and label are produced by our designer, using images that you supply, or we can custom design one for you, with any text that you want to put on the cover.

Finally we duplicate the program – this can be on DVD, CD or VHS. Or we can encode the program so it is ready for uploading to your website.

How long will it take to make the video?

The more time you allow for making a video, the better it will be. Conversely, the less time you allow, the more it will cost. At your end, you’ll need to put time in certain people’s schedules for briefing or taping or approvals.

At our end, some special arrangements nearly always need to be made prior to shooting, that take time to sort out – like gaining permission for filming in certain locations, booking the most suitable camera crew, finding locations or researching content and contributors, or getting consent from participants.

Here is a rough example of the production stages for a three day, news-style shoot:

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© Copyright 2003-2008. All rights reserved.
JSL Communications LLC
info@jslcom.com  
PO Box 11292, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
Tel 206.855.4911; Fax 206.855.9499