Producing a video for your business is an arduous task whether you have an in-house creative team to accomplish it for you or you are hiring one for such a need.
However, if you have your video production timeline all set and ready to execute, it would help a great deal.
With all the minute and huge tasks involved in creating a video, no matter how simple or grandiose you are planning for it to be, a calendar of activities will put everything in place and will map out your journey from day one. Having a video production schedule that you can always refer to will ease all the stresses involved and make everything go relatively smoothly.
If you need a bit of help in developing your video production timeline, here is a plan that you can use to give you a head start.
The Video Production Timeline – A Sneak Peek
Every individual or business who endeavors to go into video production will follow these fundamental segments to the whole creation.
Creative Brainstorming and Planning – Two weeks
With the desire to develop a video production comes the influx of ideas from your brain. You will need to collaborate with your team or partners as well. Depending on your film's purpose, you have a target audience in mind, and there are specific goals and objectives that you want to accomplish through your video. You can browse through available videos everywhere to give you an idea of the many directions your film can take to align with your purpose.
The next thing to do is to get together with your creative team. The decision-makers in your business will also need to be present in your all-out brainstorming of ideas. You may have the most excellent ones but teaming up with others and creating a beautiful mesh of brilliant minds is the best way to go.
You can dig into your company resources or consult outside, depending on the requirements of your planned production. The result of this activity is a concrete storyline to your video and how you can effectively communicate it to your intended viewers.
Before Production – Three weeks
When you have the plan set on paper, you can start implementing the pre-production steps. It will include making your calendar and distributing it to everyone involved, task delegation, booking of locations, hiring talents and staff, and creating a script to the video, among others.
It is vital to be informed of the timeline to ensure that everyone works with the deadlines in mind and that all things push on schedule. There may be factors beyond anyone's control, such as the weather or some things that may come up to cancel some appointments, etc. But if you are ruled by a schedule, you will not likely miss important targets.
If you have an internal production team that will take care of all of these, it’s all good. It’s just a matter of executing your set plans. Be flexible enough, though, to consider all contingencies. On the other hand, if you hire an agency to do this part for you, there's much less work required of you.
On Production – One week
This part is where the film is going to be shot and all the necessary add-ons to the video. These are the voice-over or any dialogue and footage of the background appropriate to your video. Theoretically, it takes less than a week, maybe a few days, to finish these tasks, but to provide a bit of leeway and flexibility to this stage, we can give it a whole week to finish and polish everything.
If you plan to produce a film that will need people from outside your team and fresh talents to be involved, the schedule may be adjusted according to their availability. The additional days to the video shoot will also make room for other issues like in the location, equipment that could malfunction, or some team licensing requirements.
Checklists should be your best friend throughout the production since one little thing you forget can derail an entire day or week's plans. Keep referring to your video production timeline and generate a worksheet for each section.
After Production – Two weeks
With your finished footage in hand, you can begin editing your video production to include musical scoring, color enhancements and adjustments, and some final touches until the team is satisfied with the output. This task may take several days depending on the number of editors you have on the employ or outsourced, and the amount of footage that needs work.
A draft video will then be run for feedback and possible changes and improvements. At this point, you can still make some modifications to the film. These changes could be in the music, or how much focus is given to the parts that you want to emphasize, among other things. Get your team together so they can provide their comments and suggestions as well.
Two weeks will be sufficient for everyone involved to have a say about what needs a further brush-up and editing in the video and for the final output to be ready for distribution.
Video Roll Out – One week
Timing is everything when it comes to video distribution. You want your film to have the most impact, especially on the first roll-out, to reach the maximum number of people you have targeted to receive the message. Consequently, “when” your video comes out to the public must be planned to a hilt.
Your advertising team will need to help you with the distribution, whether it is via social media platforms or PR outlets and news channels. Depending on how wide and broad your target audience is, the schedule of your roll-out will follow suit.
Your job doesn’t end when the video is published, though, as there may likely be a need to repost it from time to time to refresh and rejuvenate brand message recall. The most beautiful thing about video production is that it doesn’t get old pretty quickly, like other marketing content. An excellent strategy is to go full blast on your initial distribution for the broadest and most optimal impact and then continue with regular video publications afterward.
Final words
If you put everything together, you will realize that you need approximately two months for your video production timeline to be fully implemented. Various factors come into play from the birth of the film's idea to the final roll out of the video, and there are variables that you cannot entirely control, so there should be room for contingencies and flexibilities to your schedule.
Keep in mind that the calendar presented above is at a minimum level, so any cause of delay or additional steps added to the timeline will extend it accordingly. Two months may seem like a longtime, but if you've ever experienced being involved in such a venture, you will know that time flies when you seem to be running out of it, and you still have so much to do in your hands!
When you’re under an extreme amount of pressure, and you want to meet deadlines consistently, your video production timeline will be your knight in shining armor and the solid anchor in your sails. Remember not to bite off more than you can chew and seek help when needed so you can seamlessly execute your plans for a video production without unnecessary problems and failures.
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