Great news! You’ve decided that you would like to produce your own video-based resource. Video production is an exciting and rewarding process that can provide for a powerful and engaging way of sharing your ideas.
But before you can get started, it is important that you consider some key questions. Your answers to these questions will help to clarify what you want to achieve and the key
messages that you want to communicate to your audience.
In short, you need to prepare a project plan or briefing document. This, in turn, will give your chosen production company a clear sense of your hopes and intentions,
helping them to help you to produce the most effective and engaging resource possible.
The questions and notes in this document are simply designed to get you thinking. There are no right or wrong answers, no right or wrong approaches. Your project is
unique and your ideas and expertise will drive its success.
But it all starts here and it all starts with eight questions…
1. Your audience: who is your primary audience for your proposed video project?
• Existing customers
• Potential new customers
• Fellow professionals?
• Students and learners?
• The local community?
• Local businesses and/or other commercial bodies?
• National/International businesses and/or other commercial bodies?
Top tip! A resource should have primary audience and keep that audience foremost in mind during the whole lifetime of your project. Projects can suffer if you try and make them too inclusive, messages can be diluted and focus lost.
2. Project aims and objectives: what do you expect your project to achieve?
• What would you like your audience to do after watching your video resource?
• How do you want people to feel after watching your video resource?
3. Key messages or learning objectives: what do you want your audience to learn?
• How would you prioritise your key messages and why?
Top tip! Video is a wonderful medium for motivating audience and raising awareness. It is less effective at conveying lots of information. We recommend that you include no more than five key messages for a video of up to 15 minutes. These can be repeated and reinforced throughout your video sequence as necessary.
4. Content: whilst it is too soon to decide on the precise audio-visual content for your proposed video project, it is helpful to begin thinking about the type of things you might like to see included.
• What activities and/or events would you like to include in your video?
• Who might be interviewed?
• Are case studies or testimonials appropriate?
5. Who will be involved in your project?
• Who is going to be involved in the production of your video project?
• Is it appropriate to involve colleagues, pupils, teachers, clients or suppliers in the planning or production?
How might you involve them?
6. How is your video project to be delivered?
• How is your video resource going to be delivered and viewed? On what format?
• If online plan for good use of social media around the launch of your video
• How is it going to be viewed? As a standalone, or as part of a training day, or is it part of a CPD resource?
7. What is your production schedule?
• Do you have a deadline for your project?
• Is there an event that the resource must be ready for, or that we can use to help launch your resource?
• Are there any events or activities that it would be useful to include in the filming schedule?
8. Other considerations…
• Will your resource require subtitles or will it need to be dubbed into any foreign languages?
• Will your resource require any support materials (posters, user guides, information packs, online support, web pages, blogs…etc)?
Next steps
Your answers to these questions will help you to develop a detailed project plan and this will form the basis for further discussions with your colleagues and, eventually, with your production team.
If you would like any further information, or would like to discuss your ideas, then we would be delighted to hear from you. You can use our contact form here to get in touch!