# Video Production for Business: What Are You Paying For?

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Video Production for Business: "We need a video." Nearly every video enquiry I get starts with the same eight words. "How much do you charge?" It is a completely reasonable place to start, and I never mind hearing it. But it is not a brief. It is a symptom. Something has usually happened behind those four words: a rebrand that has left the website looking flat, a new product with nothing to show for it, a recruitment problem, a competitor who has put out a film that made someone in a board meeting uncomfortable, or a marketing manager who has been told to "do more video" without being told what that means or what it costs. So before anyone talks about quotes, the first job is working out which video you actually need. Because "a video" can mean any of these, and the price of each one is wildly different: Video production in the form of a brand film that explains who you are and why anyone should care Interviews with your leadership team, cut Longford (wide) for the website and short-form (portrait style) for LinkedIn Customer testimonials filmed at your client's premises rather than yours Social media video production, vertical, fast, subtitled, built to be watched with the sound off Event video production, where there are no second takes Recruitment content aimed at people who have not heard of you yet Product and process footage for a sales team or a trade stand Aerial and drone work to show scale, site or location Voiceover, scripting, music licensing and sound design Editing, colour grading, subtitling, and multiple versions cut for different platforms You can see the problem with quoting for a video production assignment. Two companies can both say "we need a video" and mean jobs that are a month and several thousand pounds apart. Any quote that arrives before that conversation has happened is a guess dressed up as a price. This piece is my attempt to explain, in plain English, what commercial video production actually involves and where the money goes. If you are weighing up quotes from a video production company and they all look different, this should tell you why. Nobody needs "a video". They need an outcome. The most useful video production question I ask on a first call is not "what do you want filmed". It is "what has to be true after this film goes live". More enquiries? Fewer explanatory sales calls? A stronger application pool? A client who renews? A room full of people at a conference who understand what you do before you have opened your mouth? Once I know the outcome, the format almost picks itself. That's the part of the process businesses tend not to buy. Why? Because this part of video production is invisible on the invoice, but it's the part that decides whether the film works. Where the money actually goes.  The second question will enevitably be (if it's not the first question) How much will a video cost me? Here is the honest breakdown of a commercial video production, in the order it happens. 1. Planning and pre-production This is the recce, the schedule, the shot list, the script or interview questions, the running order, the risk assessment where one is needed, and the awkward practical questions nobody enjoys. Who is on camera. Are they any good on camera. What time does the light hit that side of the building. Is the factory floor running that day and will I be able to hear anything over it. So many times, we're asked to just rock up and shoot on the fly for clients, because they don't see a return on investment for planning and preparation. Do we need permission to film in that space. Who signs off the final cut, and how many people are in that chain. Pre-production is where a shoot day is saved or wasted. A day of filming with no plan produces a hard drive full of footage and a very expensive editing problem. Problems down the line, which will be explained, when people donlt have a brief. Or they have a brief and decide not to tell you what it iOS, and then expect the shooting and editing to resemble something far beyo

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