Video Production Tips (page 3)

4. Budget More Money

Today's production managers can work with amazing databases that include literally thousands of line items, pre-loaded with up-to-date salary scales, rental costs, permit fees, and on and on. An extremely skilled producer can budget out a ten million-dollar program, right down to the last measly cent.

Nevertheless, at or near the end of every form is an extra line for cash included to pay for goof-ups, rotten weather, and unforeseen disasters. Though it's usually called a contingency fee, it should be named for Murphy's Law. For an office interview with a CEO, a safe contingency fee might be 10% of the whole budget, while the slush fund for "Stalking Elusive Bigfoot" might be triple that much; but whatever percentage is set, even the smartest veteran producer can only pray it's enough.

You may not have the luxury of any contingency allowance, but you can avoid planning projects that will evidently consume all your resources, because they will actually need more. In video and in life, everything costs more and takes longer.

3. Shoot Long but Edit Short

When Vladimir Nabokov said, "you must kill your darlings," he meant you must often delete from your work the passages you're most proud of. If your video feels twice as long as its running time, it may just be a bad video. But if it runs 15 minutes when it might well finish in 12, review it for Cool Stuff that you just couldn't bear to part with: that gorgeous sunset, that wonderful run all the way down the ski slope, that moving shot that took all day to record.

The dismal truth is that nobody -- nobody -- is as interested in your stuff as you are, even when it's your very best stuff. So whatever your masterpiece, video or not, if something doesn't move things along, it doesn't belong there.

2. Spread the Credit Around

Assuming you wrote, produced, shot, directed, and edited your great opus, you can say all that with just one title: "A video by (your name here)." Instead of parading an endless scroll of self-congratulatory credits, be generous in featuring everyone who helped you. It rewards them, makes them feel good about helping you again, and makes you look good to viewers. Besides, it's the right thing to do. A universal truth to be learned from video is that hogging the credit gets you the spotlight; sharing the credit gets significantly more accomplished.

1. Have Faith

Finally, in Shakespeare in Love, the producer Philip Henslowe admits that every production is inevitably afflicted with disasters it cannot possibly survive; yet everything works out in the end. Asked how this can possibly happen, Henslowe replies, "I dunno; it's a mystery."

It's true: in the world of video, just as in life, some things don't change in 400 years.

Contributing Editor Jim Stinson's book, Video: Digital Communication and Production, is just out in a second, updated edition.

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Video Production Tips (page 3)

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