Corporate and industrial: pre production
Services
Video to DVD & CD
Video editing
Film to video transfer
Foreign tape conversion
Tape duplication & copying
Stills from video
Video encoding for the web 
Audio visual services
Training

Productions
Corporate & industrial
Promotions & events
Show-reels & CVs
Training & seminars
Exhibitions & conferences
Do it yourself

Where are we
About us
Useful contacts
Client list
Home page
 

  Corporate and industrial: pre production 

When we work with you we start first by clearly defining your aims and objectives and identifying your target audience.

Printed below is the briefing form that we give to clients before we start a production.

  

Screne Productions Briefing form Before embarking on a video production, these are some of the questions we need to ask in order to gain a better understanding of your requirements. Please tick/add notes etc. and return together with any literature/brochure that you feel may assist us in developing a suggested programme treatment.
COMPANY NAME:....................................................

  1. Would the programme be made to:
     Inform
     Promote
     Sell
     Train
     Other (eg. fundraise)

   2. Who would be the target audience?:
     Purchasing specifiers
     Special groups
     Professional/lay
     In-house
     External
     Other 
    3. What would be the main aims and objectives?

    4. What do you feel would need to be shown and at what locations?

    5. When is the programme required - is there a deadline?

    6. Do you have any existing video material available
       and if so on what format? (VHS, Hi8, Umatic, BetaSP, DV etc.)

    7. What is the approximate budget?

    NOTES:

 

 You will have seen on the briefing form that Q5 asks about a deadline for completion. This could be an exhibition or a conference where the programme will be beneficial to the company, or it might coincide with a planned mail shot so that the video can be sent out to serious enquirers.

Having a deadline is useful because it means that the production can be concentrated on for a fairly short period of time and the investment can be realised quickly.

Now that we have identified your target audience, budget and aims and objectives it is time to produce a treatment. This defines the structure of the programme, what you intend to show, in what order, how you propose to present it and forms the basis for the script.

We draw up a storyboard, rough sketches or even photos of the basic things you want to show and write alongside them the key points they are to portray. Once you are happy that it follows a logical sequence and contains all the information you want to put across, we are ready to write the script.

Here are a few guidelines which we find useful.

1. Remember that the written and spoken word are not the same thing. Spoken English is far more relaxed and can be less formal than say brochure or manual language.

2. Don't get bogged down in minute detail (unless you are making a technical programme for technical people), it's far better to present an overview of the subject which will give your viewers a flavour and encourage them to talk to you.

3. We speak at a rate of 2-3 words per second so this should give us an idea of run time, bearing in mind breaks and pauses.

4. Remember that every word has to have pictures to cover it. Will we have enough visual material? Wild life, training and industrial process videos can get away with long video sequences, but most other programmes need to be pacey with 2-5 second cuts.

5. Always keep in mind the target audience and make sure that the script remains specific to them. Once filming has been done it is quite easy to re-script and re-edit the footage for other audiences. Don't compromise.

How long does it take?

The production schedule below shows the processes of making a video and the sort of lead time that is comfortable. This is only an example and by no means sacrosanct. We have, for example, produced a programme in a week (one very long hard week!) for an award presentation and we have equally produced one over the course of a year.

You will see from the schedule that we recommend that our client elects an executive producer to work with us. It's important to have someone to liaise with who has the authority to make quick decisions throughout the production.

 

Screne productions Example production schedule
We recommend that our client organisation elects an executive producer who will work with our producer to ensure the success of the production. This is not a particularly time consuming role.

     Screne
Executive Producer
Timescale 
  1. Research
     Collect information
 Liaise and advise
 1 week
  2. Treatment
     Define content
     & format
 Agree content & format
 1 week
    3. Script
     Prepare script from
     agreed treatment
 Liaison & agreement
 2 weeks
  4. Recce
     Visit locations
 Introductions & access
 1 week
    5. Shoot
     Shoot on locations
 Liaison
 1 week
  6. Draft edit
     Edit to agreed script
 Check content
 1 week
  7. Master edit
     completion of video
 1 week
   Total example production time
 8 weeks

Back to Corporate and industrial

 Tel: 020 8671 7071   Fax: 020 8674 2258   Email: us@screne.org
 126 Norwood Road London SE24 9AY