A Day in the Life of a Videographer

Tim Stockman 2m 589 #videography

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

Videography Life

According to predictions from Entrepreneur Magazine, 80% of all online content produced for marketing purposes will be video by 2020. Where videographers were once an expensive asset only reserved for highly profitable companies with TV commercial budgets, these days more and more businesses have access.

These new demands and clientele from all walks of life makes the profession of a videographer much different than just five years ago. Let’s discuss what a day of the typical videographer looks like and walk through the video production process for business videos.

Client Communication and Brainstorming

Interacting with potential clients and discussing the goals and objectives of a video project is one of the most rewarding parts of a videographer’s job. In this stage of the video production process, we are really trying to walk away with an idea of the following:

• How we want viewers to feel about the brand or message
• What we want the viewers to do once they watch the video
• What the next steps are after watching the video (for the viewer)

With this information, we can then decide on the filming location, who needs to be in the video, and an appropriate time to shoot.

The complexities of these questions also play into how expensive a video will be, so we spend time discussing a client’s budget requirements and how that fits into their goals. While some video production companies cater to varying sizes of clients, these days almost any business can afford some type of video for their marketing.

Script Creation

Winging a video can lead to wasted time, dead air, and poor messaging. We like clients to be prepared for their air time so we work with them to create scripts that are short and sweet.

We often recommend conversational tones and the avoidance of corporate jargon. Understanding the previous answers to the above bullet points makes script creation much easier and helps us to stay on track with the end goals and viewer takeaways.

Pre-Production

For pre-production (a fancy way of saying what happens before production day) we will create a production brief with the client that goes over the main points of the video and everyone’s roles. It is also a time to review the goals.

This is also a time to prepare the shooting zones to make sure they look like they are supposed to and fit in with the overall goals of the video.

Production

Lights! Camera! Action! Now is when the real fun starts. At production time, everyone involved knows their role, and the videographer’s role is help provide assistance and let the business representatives in the video show their true colors and depth of knowledge in their respective area.

Following the production brief, the shoot can take a couple of hours and up to a whole day depending on how many people are involved, how many different locations need to be shot, and how well the actors get through their lines.

Post Production

After the video team gets all the necessary footage, we begin to mash all the video together in the editing process. This often involves music, text or graphical overlays, voiceovers, or other add-ons.

Editing can be a time-consuming process but really entails a lot of attention to detail. Once we get through a draft, we send it over to the client to review and make comments on. This may happen a few times until they are pleased with the final product and the video is delivered to them to market.

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