It’s quite possible to make a beautiful video that doesn’t achieve very much.
The filming can look great, the interviews can be polished and everyone can be pleased with the finished film. But if nobody decided what it was supposed to achieve, who needed to see it or what was going to happen to it afterwards, it’s difficult to judge whether it worked.
So before thinking about cameras, locations or creative ideas, I normally start with a much simpler question:
What are you trying to achieve?
Start with the problem, not the video
Sometimes the answer is straightforward. You need more people to apply for jobs. You’re launching a new service. You need potential customers to understand something complicated. You want to demonstrate the results you’ve achieved for an existing client.
Establishing the objective gives us context for everything that follows: who the audience is, what we need to say, what kind of film we should make and where people are going to see it.
Audience, objective and the stage someone has reached in the buying journey can fundamentally change the content we make. Pasted text
Decide what success looks like
There isn’t one universal measure of success.
I’ve worked with clients who have put a proper paid advertising campaign behind a film and generated significant results from it. I’ve also seen businesses upload a film to YouTube, get 20 views and conclude that the video wasn’t particularly successful.
But making the film and getting people to watch it are two different things.
A business story sitting on your website might only need to be watched by a relatively small number of potential customers to be valuable. A recruitment campaign might be judged by applications. A promotional film might be expected to generate enquiries, ticket sales or website visits.
Views can be useful, but they aren’t necessarily the objective.
So before production starts, it’s worth agreeing what you want the film to do and, where possible, how you’ll know whether it has done it.
Think about distribution before you make the film
Where is the film going to live? How are people going to find it? Are you putting advertising behind it? Sending it to an email list? Using it during the sales process? Putting it prominently on your website?
These aren’t questions to ask once the edit is finished.
A film intended for paid social media needs to attract the attention of someone who may know nothing about you. A case study sent after a meeting is speaking to somebody who already understands what you do and may be actively considering buying from you.
Thinking about distribution at the beginning helps us make the right film in the first place.
Find the idea within the brief
Sometimes clients arrive with a very clear creative idea. Quite often, though, there’s an opportunity to develop it further.
A recent client came to me wanting a recruitment film. Their idea was to follow an employee through a typical day at work. They also sponsored a professional rugby player and wondered whether we could follow his day and put the two stories alongside each other.
There was already a good idea in there, but I thought the interesting part wasn’t really what either person did during an average day. It was what they had in common.
Both were ambitious. Both worked hard. Both wanted to improve and progress.
So the film became less about comparing two daily routines and more about the shared characteristics that drive successful people in very different careers.
That’s the kind of creative development I can bring to a project. You don’t necessarily need to arrive with a finished concept.
Good interviews shouldn’t sound like interviews
I’ve conducted well over a thousand interviews during the past decade, with everyone from business leaders and professionals to teachers, builders and people who have never been near a professional film production before.
Most people are perfectly capable of giving a good interview if you make them comfortable.
I generally don’t want people reading scripts or memorising answers. I’d rather have a conversation.
While somebody is talking, I’m effectively editing the interview in my head, listening for the sentences, phrases and ideas that could work in the finished film.
If someone gives me a great answer that’s simply too long, we can talk about it, identify what they’re actually trying to say and go over it again more concisely.
The important thing is that we’re still capturing their answer and their truth, rather than putting somebody else’s words into their mouth.
Plan what needs planning
Good production requires preparation, but how much depends on what we’re making.
If we’re producing a tightly structured film under a minute long, I might plan it in considerable detail. There may only be ten shots in the entire film, so every one needs to earn its place.
Longer-form interviews and business stories can be different.
I’ll prepare the broad interview questions with the client so we know what territory we need to cover, but I don’t necessarily want to know every detail of the subject beforehand.
If I’m learning about the business while conducting the interview, I’m closer to the position of the eventual audience. If something isn’t clear to me, I have to ask the interviewee to explain it.
There’s a balance between preparation and leaving enough space for a genuine conversation.
Use pictures to tell the story
If you’re paying for professional video production, the finished film should feel professionally produced. Good composition, lighting, sound and carefully shot footage all contribute to that.
But the pictures shouldn’t simply be there to make the film look pretty. They should help tell the story.
If somebody is explaining a process and I can show that process while they’re talking, they don’t need to explain every detail verbally. The viewer is receiving information through the pictures and the interview simultaneously.
That makes the film easier to watch and often allows us to say more with fewer words.
Exactly how important the visual element becomes depends on the subject. A straightforward business story might revolve largely around the people involved. A film about food, tourism or a visually interesting product may rely much more heavily on the pictures.
Either way, the visuals should have a job to do.
Don’t confuse production quality with effectiveness
Professional production matters. But an expensive camera, beautiful lighting or a spectacular drone shot can’t rescue a film that doesn’t know what it’s trying to say.
Equally, strategy alone isn’t enough. The film still needs to hold people’s attention and reflect the quality of the organisation behind it.
A successful business video needs a clear objective, the right audience, a strong idea, people who feel natural on camera and visuals that help tell the story.
And then it needs a plan for what happens after you’ve made it.
That’s why I prefer to get involved before the filming starts rather than simply turn up with a camera.
If you’re thinking about making a film, you don’t need to arrive with a finished brief. Start by telling me what you’re trying to achieve. We can work out the rest from there.