Talent is important. Not as important as hard work. But for us we are going to need the skilled and the talented to help us achieve our aims. In my last article I wrote about why you may want to embark upon an ambitious marketing video project and how you could minimise the cost. This time I’m going to look at the most important part of that process. Gathering the talent of your contacts to create the additional resources you are going to need.
[bctt tweet=”To make a great Marketing video, you’ll need talented help. Here’s how you get it.” username=”yellbusiness”]
What Talent Do You Need?
As I discussed last time we are going to combine a low cost, fixed price, video product from a provider, with additional footage and production value. We are doing this so that we end up with an amazing, high end, video for a low end cost. To do this we need to seek out people who can help us. But to do that you need to know what kind of help you will need. You may be surprised to know that you don’t need to have planned your video to be able to discuss this.
All video productions are made from the same set of ingredients. You need a story, performers, locations, cameras and operators, editors and computers. Some of this equipment and skill is very specialised. That’s why we are going to use our fixed price video product to provide the editing and expensive high end computers and some of the camera work.
Story Talent
Before we begin we need to know what our story will be. For a 60 second video you need a script roughly one A4 page in length. That doesn’t sound like much at all does it? BUT we are trying to go above and beyond the norm so we need it to be a really good page. In this instance you need a writer. As I mentioned last time you will almost certainly know people who write for fun or for a hobby or who enter writing competitions.
What I would do is approach your local writers clubs or circles and sponsor a writing competition. Offer a prize for the best entry and tell them the criteria of what you want. Give them a product description so they know what they are selling and let them write it for you. You could run this competition on-line as part of your overall marketing strategy and as a way to build up interactions on social media. The aim is to get as many scripts to choose from as possible so that you end up with the best chance of getting something good.
Performance Talent
You are going to need actors and a director. Probably… This actually depends upon your script, but let’s assume you will. I have made several productions involving performers from amateur dramatic societies. They are often the background performers and extras. I’ve used them as bored audience members and cafe background coffee drinkers. But on a couple of occasions I’ve happily used amateurs speaking lines and holding the screen. It all depends on how good the people you find are. For your director, again, you will find in your town, city or village people of great talent who produce incredible stage shows. Directing for the camera is different but your town will also have a videographic society. Your friends list may contain people who have been directing videos for fun, for years. To find them you just have to ask.
Where Are We Shooting?
You now need to find the locations from the script. If, however, you were clever you mentioned the locations you could access in the brief you gave for the writing competition. So you already have your locations. Whatever your story you can find locations locally if you are a little bit creative. I once used an old iron railway bridge as the deck of a world war two ship. I’ll just say that the camera angles were slightly odd but I got away with it.
The Legal Stuff
You need to get permission to shoot on peoples property. Make sure you ask first and get them to sign. You need to get all of your performers and help to sign to say that they are willing participants and that they are happy with the fee you have agreed or with no fee. These kind of consent forms are widely available online.
The Moral Stuff
Be nice to everyone who helps you. Buy them drinks and lunch. Be especially nice if people are giving their time without pay… even if they are family.
Next time I’m going to talk about how you integrate the footage you have shot with your set video product. This will take some planning and explaining and careful preparation on your part, and its with giving some thought.
Read part 1 here
Read part 3 here
