Save money on your production!

Charities, social enterprises and not-for-profits can save money on media productions.

Media production, be it shoots, animations, graphic design, virals or commercials, can be an expensive process, but there are things that your Third Sector or corporate enterprise can do to save on cost. Here are some little hints and tips that should save you a little time and lot of money:

1 – Come up with a rough idea of what you want, be it a fundraising video, an awareness viral, a infomercial or a commercial. Most pieces are under 5 mins these days, so two paragraphs explaining content, time and pace would be very useful to the production company. There is a rough guide at http://ignitecreative.co.uk/pre-production-questions/. Have examples of other peoples’ work that you like the style of, and might want to emulate. The more resources you have at the start, the better understood the media production house will be.

2- Keep it short! Can you say the same things more efficiently? Most people switch off in under 15 seconds if you haven’t already grabbed their attention – and even then it has to be compelling. Shorter means cheaper as well. Virals, animations and adverts are mostly 15-30 seconds long. Keep it short and compel the audience to find out more afterwards, once you have got them hooked.

3- Do some work your end. This can include organising the shoot (dates,venues,people,props etc) as well as written storyboards (rough ideas with timings, so long as you are willing to listen to advice from the production company) and a rough script. Most production companies can do all that but if you come up with a rough idea, it’s already saved you on days of research from the production company, and a lot of to and fro.

4 – Prior to the production start date, go through it all again, ideally face-to-face, so you are not faced with surprises once the production phase is under-way. Make sure that the supplier fully understands what it is you want.

5 – Timescales and budget – agree both in advance, and no scope creeping unless you are willing to pay for it! “Can you just do add 3 seconds of this ?” is more than 3 seconds work. It normally requires render times, output, upload, colour correction, audio correction and the like and is a lot more work than you anticipate. Keep to the brief unless the budget flexes for more!