A PR Person's Guide: How To Maximize Your Video Edit Time

I'm talking to PR people in this post. 

You're busy. You always have more than one client or one job that is taking up your day.  You want a video so you're calling on a trusted video producer.  And, your budgets are always tight.
 
With the explosion of web video, I've been getting calls from PR folk, asking me to edit together a 2-3 minute video story for a website about an event, an opening, a party, a gala.  You get the drill. As much as PR people want to make the video, cost is their over riding concern.  Many times footage comes from another source and I have no control on what it is or how it's shot. (That's the topic for another soon to written post).
 
I thought I would share some tips to make your dollar go as far as it can when working with video professionals.
 
Before the job, negotiate the schedule and billing.  For smaller budget shows, the post process happens in four phases. 

• Phase 1: Loading footage, creating show titles, lower third supers (id's), choosing music, slugging together the sound bites and selecting the best b-roll shots.
• Phase 2: Editing the show flow, whittling down sound bites, cutting to music, laying in titles.
• Phase 3: Review with Client
• Phase 4: Tweaks, audio mix, color correct, Upload final, create master and web files.

In order for this to run smoothly you, the PR person, should do the following:

1. Have all names and titles spell checked and have ready before Phase 1.
2. If you want to use your client's font, make sure you have a mac version of it to share with the Producer.
3. Determine any show open titles, show ending titles, urls that have to be flashed, logos, or bugs that have to be shown.  Again, make sure the Producer has them before Phase 1.
4. Determine the genre of music that you want. Give examples to the producer of stuff that you've heard that you like.  Music is the easiest thing in a video not to like.  But if you only have 20 hours of editing, killing the music cut - after 15 hours of editing has elapsed - can kill a project's budget.
5. Make sure you have your client's time booked to see the rough cut and finished versions.  You don't want your video post crew waiting around and billing you. 
   
6. Where are you uploading this?  Let the producer know whether this is being streamed on a client's server, YouTube or other social media platform for distribution.
7. Content. The more you can share about what your client wants to see in the finished version - the easier it will be to hit the ground running on that first few hours of editing. At the very least, tell the Producer the two essential pieces of information that have to be communicated and what emotion you want viewers to feel after they have watched it.
   

Image Credit: Matt Gibson

What are your experiences in making video for your clients?

Comments

[christian]

i appreciate your putting this up. a lot of it is common sense and i'm glad that you've taken the time to commit this to a public record.

i've added this into my own set of work notes.

thanks so much.

csk

[Christopher Ming Ryan]

Thanks Christian. I like your Everything Is Original doc. Regards, CMR