An intro to how we work, who owns what and how we support you.
This Video Works is London based but I live near Worcester and am looking for a studio and as part of that have been going through the process of finding a good location that provides the right resources and is geographically well placed for me.
That has involved a little bit of networking and discussing the business proposition with consultants working within a reasonable distance of Worcester that is still accessible for London, Manchester and Bristol and its a process that continues, however, a couple of interesting points have been made and I wanted to address those in these two video clips.
Consultants who had experience either direct or of their clients using video production firms told of surprisingly similar experiences. Unfortunately they weren’t particularly good and I have no idea who the firms were they had experienced but I thought I could easily explain our approach and hope that would put at rest anyone’s concerns had they had a similar experience.
My main role has been a producer and often bringing together different creative resources to build a massive event or campaign but in filming small businesses, the breadth of skills may not be available. Take on a big production co and there will almost certainly be an SEO co also involved writing the Schema (code to get you found) and there is no need for one company to do everything but in smaller projects that may not be the case.
I can, though, deliver that broad range of services you probably need. As a producer, writer and researcher and coder as well as a cameraman, colourist and Schema specialist, I bring the full range of skills to make your project really deliver and part of that delivery is looking into your future needs.
The biggest issue seems to concern the ownership of footage where the production company retained all rights, making it very hard for the footage to be re-used.
We don’t do that, if we shoot for you, once paid, you own the footage, though we can happily store till needed again. That covers both the origination and edited footage we supply for immediate use.
We do request permission to use in our portfolio, and I mean request, it is in our view yours and valuable as you may be able to re-use in many ways.
That, though, does bring in the one key caveat. If we use stock footage in the clips we produce for you, that will have been licensed and if the usage changes, that license may ned to be amended or changed completely. We would always help with that but it would be your responsibility so it is important you are aware of that. The same goes for filming particularly on someone’s property or using talent (any level of personality or celebrity) it is always important to make sure permissions are kept up to date and changes are approved by all parties.
I used to cast A List celebrities in the US for major brands and am well aware of how important it is to make sure everything yo do is watertight and we are always happy to help with this.
The ability to edit existing footage also seems to have caused a few issues and I can fully understand this. Post Brexit and pre pandemic I returned to filming and expected my role to be mainly producer and for people to use my large studio in the Custard Factory, Birmingham, I’d run a successful programming firm beforehand though had filmed a fair bit for clients while doing that. I was, however, still shooting on a pair of venerable Nikon D7000’s which were killer cameras in their day but in terms of editing limited, especially as only shot in HD. I was happy using them and very proud of the footage they produced but I made sure I was getting in camera what I needed to supply to my client rather than relying on fixing things in post. Most of my portfolio is shot on those with a bit from later, very up to date, Sony and Lumix cameras.
I’m now fully committed to filming in the UK myself and fully kitted up, though will still use crews when required. And as part of that I am well positioned to future proof footage shot for you that can be edited by me, my editors in the US or by any good editor you may wish to use.
This means shooting principally on 6K Lumix (Panasonic) cameras on a 3 2 format and filming in Apple Pro Res HQ. 6K enables us get both landscape and portrait edits from the same footage so the same clip is used for Instagram and Tik Tok, your web site and at conference should you wish, the origination file sizes are huge but if you need reuse they are of the highest quality with huge reserves of dynamic range. The origination is shot on Vlog, a flat colour profile used all over the world.
If we’re filming on a street location (run and gun) where we would prefer to be less conspicuous, we shoot on Sony 4K in s-log or s-cinetone. Photography is on Nikon mainly.
The objective is to be able to fulfil your immediate brief and out put in whatever format you need but also to provide a back up of footage that can be re-used as required and gives you the widest range of options so that it can be used with other footage as needed.
We’re always happy to do further editing for you but we don’t want to tie you into using us, its important you have the flexibility to choose.
We do though offer editing and colouring and fixing on footage not shot by ourselves and this can be really useful for matching and fixing footage supplied from different locations, countries even and shot on very different cameras and often under difficult or challenging lighting situations.
We also work in audio to fix and improve, edit or balance voice overs and isolate external or unwanted sounds.
The second of these clips covers how our work in colour grading is enhanced through AI and does outline some of what we can do too.