EDUCATING CLIENTS

After more than 50 years working in the TV and video industries I still don’t “‘get’ what video is and is not” as you put it. It’s a visual medium with both artistic and commercial potential; it’s a medium for communicating ideas and ideologies. At its best it’s a medium that permits us to share beauty and adventure, horrors and sadness visually. But it has never been a medium of “right” and “wrong.”

No, I don’t know of a “paper” or book that conveys all of this to a client who wants to use the video as a PowerPoint-like infomercial. You can make suggestions, you can show your client alternatives to their ideas, but ultimately you’ll have to live with their choices, or turn don the jobs.

As for the “lets shoot everything” problem, you might try insisting on a story-board before you begin shooting. Point out that this will reduce costs by improving the efficiency of both the shoot and the edit. If the job is big enough — i.e., going to pay quite well — I’ve gone out with a still camera and shot locations so I can show these to the client to help in developing the storyboard.

From a purely business point of view, however, our job as commercial videographers is to advise and consent, to try to give the client what he or she wants while making it look as good as possible. Whether we want our name on the work will remain to be seen.

Sometimes, clients just cannot be counselled or trained. I’ve even had to abort one job mid way through, because the instructions I kept receiving were impossible to make work. In the end, reputation is more important to me and I do not wish to have my name on an inferior product.

I think a lot of creatives forget that they are getting paid to make someone else’s video. It isn’t our video but theirs. At the end of the day, it is our job to make their vision come to life.

Not every job you work on will go on the reel. In the industry, people call it: “One for the reel, one for the meal” or “trash for cash”. Get the picture?

Please don’t interpret my thoughts as meaning you should never educate your clients. If you have a better way of doing something you should always bring that up as an option. But if they don’t like it don’t get frustrated is what I’m saying.

As for ““lets shoot everything and see what we can do with it” school of video”. I would tell the client this is the most expensive way of creating a video. It coasts more because we spend a lot of time filming things we don’t need and then when we edit we have to comb through all of that footage. Time = money. If we did (your solution here) we could get a higher quality video for the same price.

Hope this helps and best of luck.

Utah Video Production

Roger that. These video links aren’t exactly what you are looking for but close. At the end of the day. If you are dealing with business people they understand money and all problems and solutions have to show them how it will affect the bottom line. Take a look:

Utah Video Productions

YouTube query “how to get the best out of video” produces quite a few interesting articles and discussions.

A military friend always says it’s the six P’s

Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance