Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Video production doesn’t always require
film crews, lighting, sound, major effort, and major expenses. Chances are that
you already have assets within your organization that can be repurposed and
amalgamated to produce a shareable video. At the least, you likely have
existing assets that can make future creative productions better, but they must
be cleared and be accessible to your creative producers.
For every five-minute video that has been
shot for your organization, chances are there was dozens of minutes of footage
that remained unused. There are certainly repositories of photographs somewhere in your organization too. These assets could be extremely valuable in the future as b-roll, establishing
shots, and can even support a specific narrative in a new project.
Integrate Creative Assets
Larger organizations (and many smaller
ones) shoot photos and/or video fairly often. Your organization may already
have video assets, both completed videos and raw footage, that can be reused
in other contexts, but they are currently stored within separate departments.
It’s extremely beneficial to get all of these graphic resources collected under
one umbrella – both video footage, and original photography.
Existing creative work is an enormous
resource that was already paid for. Getting all of those shots together in one
place can avoid significant duplicated expenses. I worked with a University on
a video project, and I needed b-roll of the campus to complete the project. I
knew there was aerial footage available (in the very early days of drone
videography too, when it was still breathtaking and unique). However, we
couldn’t get access to the raw footage – nobody had collected it in a
manner that was shareable. The University as a whole had paid for it, not the
individual department (all cheques come from the University) – which meant it theoretically
should be made available to everyone on campus to use. Unfortunately, people
get protective over creative assets, and the overall organization hadn’t thought
to centralize their creative assets in any way, so we couldn’t access the
footage. We had to reshoot b-roll at an additional (and unnecessary) cost. It
was basically the same footage, at twice the price.
People in large organizations may get
territorial about their creative work, so senior management must ask themselves
what is more important – protecting fragile egos, or saving money? B-roll or
stock photography shouldn’t be held back by individual Spielbergian aspirations
– if it’s basic stuff that could benefit the organization as a whole in the
future, it should be shared.
Integrating creative assets shouldn’t be
difficult either – it may be as simple as creating a central series of folders
in a Dropbox Pro account (if not on a central server), and having someone with
authority demand that everyone with existing assets take a few hours to get
those files copied and centralized.
The same goes for smaller organizations –
and even or solo entrepreneurs. Every business has a collection of images or
video (even if they’re just Facebook photos) that could be repurposed elsewhere.
My company often produces “enhanced PowerPoint” videos for clients that are
basically just collections of still images, tied together with a script and
audio. These are very simple to do (and can be easily done in-house too –
that’s another blog post), but you need the creative assets in-hand to build
them.
Accessible Storage
Get all photos and video together in one
place, date each file, and keep them accessible to anyone in your organization
that produces creative communications material. Even audio may be relevant –
have you ever contracted original background music or audio signatures? Get
them in there. If you are a small organization and you're not crazy about the cloud, buy a dedicated 4TB hard drive (or
two drives, to ensure you have a backup), and copy everything over. Regardless
of the technology, your existing creative files should be collected and shared
as easily as possible. Some images and videos will become dated as fashions
change over time, but basic footage should have a shelf life of at least five
years – and that can represent an enormous savings when avoiding duplication of
effort.
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