By Stu Marks, Art Director, IncreaseSalesWithVideo.com

Somewhere between Hollywood producers and your Uncle Charlie’s Weekend video hobby, there exists that special set of video producers who have the experience and creative drive to help you make that compelling business video that you need without emptying two years of advertising budget in two weeks. It’s that magic zone in which you must search out your video partner who will get your message, and understand what you need and deliver it for an affordable price. 

Things change. This is a universal truth and it is hitting home in a big way in the world of video production houses. Digital video and less expensive gear has shifted emphasis from the requisite hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, to better trained and educated personnel with years of experience, being marketed better. This new environment will serve to benefit your business if you know where to look, and what to look for. 

The Perfect Storm

 The advent of two major technology shifts has become a perfect storm in the arena of video production tools. A) Video being handled digitally instead of with old school analogue has allowed the actual electronic signal of audio and video to be created by anyone with a relatively inexpensive set of gear. B) And then, since the editing of this digital signal is best done on non-linear software available to everybody with a computer; well, the entire industry is up for grabs.

 The New Environment

 So, there seems to be three main streams of video producers that are shaking out in this new arena.

1. There are the old school production houses who still own massive amounts of real estate and expensive assets who are finding it difficult to operate in the new environment of leaner budgets and faster turnarounds.
2. The quickly emerging one and two man video companies that used to only dabble in consumer video, shooting weddings and sporting events that required little to no editing. The small companies feel safe in promoting themselves as full scale production houses as they too own the same $2,500 software that the big houses are using. “I can, therefore, I am.”
3. The Magic Zone. A hybrid type of company that has on staff, people who have years of experience in advertising, TV production, writing and story telling because they may have been let go by the bigger houses who felt forced to reduce labor costs. These Magic Zone production companies are finding big success in segmenting the market into specialties like online testimonial videos or business testimonials, sales videos and product and service presentations as well as training and corporate videos; and then going after what best uses their assets.

 Equipment costs used to be the single most limiting factor that kept pro levels of video production work coming back to the same ole’, same ole’ crowd. Each city had its own handful of production studios that had the high tech gear that could correctly line up analogue video footage so it could be edited. Those days are gone. Gone for good are the Time Base Correctors and Network Buffers, the b and c-roll machines for creating dissolves and special transitional effects, and all of the required expenses that came with them, like the limited number of people with the technical expertise to run them.

 Companies with The Right Stuff

 Obviously there is a major contrast between a video product created by a couple of high school kids with access to the school’s computer lab and an HD video camera, and the pro video production team with almost the same type of gear. The difference is experience and well trained people.

 The company with the right stuff is the one which can demonstrate a track record of video products for which small business seeks. Here’s a short list of must- haves that any truly professional video company must posses within their creative tool box, in order to best serve the needs of their clientele.

-          The ability to tell a good story. It doesn’t make any difference whether you need a 30-second promotional video, or a 10-minute training video, what you’re trying to do is tell a story in a way that the viewer retains the information and is compelled to do something with it. Without professional writers on staff or in partnership, a video production company just can’t deliver. So, if their video samples do not have these elements of good, clear content, and a call to action, just keep looking.

-          A collection of several good, effective video samples. One good sample video is nice, but there should be several videos in different genres which well display the creative ability of the people operating the equipment and the software.

-          Pro gear. The one constant factor that has remained the same through this change from analogue video to digital is the quality of audio. In a way, the movement to digital has actually made it more difficult for some to capture and handle the audio portion of the video signal. Many pro-sumer cameras have great video capturing elements but lack the proper audio connections to use the good microphones required for clear human dialogue, natural outdoor sounds, and music. Check your video vendor’s audio capturing capability. Does it have an XLR input, or even two of them? If not, you may be dealing with a less than professional company. You are the final judge. You don’t need a degree from Harvard to judge if the video you’re getting is good or not. But, you do need to be able to judge between good and not-so-good audio. If you can’t, then you better find a consultant who can.

 Whether your business needs a video testimonial for the web, a video that will play at a trade show, one for TV commercials, or simply an in-house sales or training tool, the needs are basically the same. The message needs to be easy to grasp, clearly conveyed and compelling in nature. Without excellent visual elements, and superb, crisp audio, your efforts to create that needed video tool are largely wasted.

 Here’s a list of great resources for well leveraging video tools.
Boosting Sales 30%
Video That Grows Small Businesses
“Should I Buy This?” Who do Shoppers Trust?