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Little Orchard get many calls everyday from businesses who want to know how much a video will cost to make. However, unlike a pizza or a plumber, there is no standard, set price for these things.

It’s at that point we launch into dozens of questions to find out what type of video the person wants – or needs. Following on from Part 1, which was all about the management and logistics of your video needs, here are the sort of questions you need to ask yourself, and answer, when writing the creative part of your video communication brief. Think content:

1. Who is your target audience? (Customers, staff, stakeholders, investors, suppliers?)
2. What ‘message’ do you need to communicate?
3. What do you need/want to achieve? (What do you want your target audience to think/feel/do?)
4. How will this video work with your marketing/PR? (Think about how to ensure your achieve SEO online with the video or whether a DVD is to out as a DM piece?)
5. What style or tone of video do you need? (Head and shoulders, studio, product promo, case study?)
6. Where will we need to film? (Office, outside location, studio? Manchester, North West, London, national?)
7. Who will be in the video? (MD, staff, clients, the public, a professional presenter?)
8. Will you need voice over or sub-titling?
9. Will you need help with scripting/autocue?
10. What graphics are needed? (Logo, branding, photos, graphs, 2D or £D, animated or not?)
11. What type of music do you need?
12. Call to action, what do you want the audience to do next, call, email etc?

Of course, there are loads of other questions, hints and tips Little Orchard go through when helping you to brief your project. All of which are there to help you and us know exactly what this video communication needs to achieve and therefore how much you should expect to pay for it. For instance, we know of one client who’s service was many thousands of pounds but she only paid a few hundred for a video. Then wondered why potential clients didn’t want to pay thousands of pounds for her service – because she looked cheap.

A brief stops all these problems because it helps you to understand what you need an how much you need to pay for it. And helps video production companies know what you need and how much they can give you for your budget.

For me, the first, last and only question is what MUST you achieve with this video communication?

For help putting your video brief together, call 0845 838 7396 and speak to Little Orchard.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 10:20 am and is filed under corporate video Manchester, creative brief, marketing content, video brief, video budget, video communication, Video production Manchester. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.