November 20 2012
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Our Video Production Process Explained.
When you hire Go2 Productions to produce a corporate video, web video or tv commercial, one of the first things you will have explained to you is our video production process. The steps may vary slightly, depending on whether we use live action, motion graphics, 3D animation or green screen to produce your video, but in essence the video production process is the same whichever technique we end up using.
For corporate messages and company overview videos we recommend a target length of 90 seconds. The idea is to only say what is necessary and get to the point FAST. Today’s world is fast moving and mobile. Decisions are made fast, so the quicker you can successfully deliver your message, the better.
An animated 30 second tv commercial or successful 90 second corporate video production actually takes a lot more work than most people think. It’s the result of several weeks work for our team. Typically, each 30-90 second project takes us between 3 to 6 weeks to complete. From the initial start up meeting with our creative team and the client, through to completion and delivery of the final project. Below are the many stages we go through at Go2, ensuring we always produce great video content for you.
Discovery Discussion & Ideas.
Through a series of meetings either in person or by phone, we will listen and discuss your needs, wants and goals to establish what it is you are trying to say and to who. Through this discovery stage we will do a lot of listening. It is only by listening to you that we are going to understand exactly what you want to achieve. Once we have a good idea of what you are looking to do, we will then start to create a concept that we believe will embody everything you need and want to achieve your goal.
Scripting & Content Development.
A very important part of the process. Your message is fleshed out during this stage and crafted to work perfectly for you. It may be selling a product, promoting your services, telling your story or educating your audience. Whatever it is designed to do, it will be driving the animation and live action we see on screen. This is the reason it needs to be approved and locked before moving on to later stages. Changes to the script after animation starts can cause delays in the process as we need to develop new voice over and new scenes.
A good script is the backbone of every great video and we work with some of the most experienced writers available to ensure your message is entertaining and engaging.
As we come closer to obtaining sign off on the scripting, we will start to fill in the visual description to go with the script. The visual description is the Creative Directors visual interpretation of the script, describing what is happening on screen at each point.
Music Selection & Voice Over.
We want to ensure your company has a voice, not just any voice, but the right voice. We audition many voice artists per project to make sure we have found the right voice for you. Sure we have our favourites and indeed we have a long list of talented voice over artists that we keep busy on a regular basis, but we always source new possibilities too. We narrow down the submissions and present you with our recommendations in a short list so you can have the final say. All the ones we present to you, we believe will work well. At the same time we will already be thinking of music to accompany the voice, something that resonates well with your image as well as with the voice over.
Storyboards, Style Frames & Animatics.
Many projects we do require storyboarding, style frames and animatics, although some projects only require style frames and animatics.
Typically each frame of a storyboard relates to a line or two of the script. A storyboard is often hand drawn but may also be digitally created.
A style frame is a series of near final quality images that visually represents a particular point in the video, to illustrate style and mood as close to the final quality as possible.
An animatic is a rough animation that can be made up of the approved audio track along with sketched or rough images, hardware renderings or even just animated text to explain what will appear at that point. The point of the animatic is to show flow and timing of each scene and does not represent the look or quality of the final video.
Each of these elements combined at this point should give you a very good understanding of what the project will look and sound like when completed.
Filming & Photography.
This stage is relevant for live action, location and green screen shoots. We obtain all principle photography required to completed any video editing for the project. Everything we shoot is HD 1920x1080p and sometimes UltraHD (RED Scarlet 5120 x 2700p) for visual effects and green screen shoots. We use the very best in equipment and talent to ensure your footage is of the very best quality.
Editing, Motion Graphics & Animation.
This is where all the magic happens. It is also the most time consuming part. By this point our whole team is clear on the concept and understands what is needed to get the project done. Contrary to what some people believe, we do not have a button that just “makes stuff happen”. Everything has to be very carefully key framed and animated and to do it well takes experience and talent. Our motion graphic artists and 3D animators are both experienced and talented.
Motion Graphics and 3D Animation has become an essential ingredient in today’s media, CG characters and product, animated typography and complex 3d dynamics and visual effects add a whole new level of possibilities to your communication creation. Our design team know what’s hot and what’s not and they’ll bring a level of creativity and solid brand awareness to your project that you will be extremely proud of.
We spend countless hours bringing everything to life, using the very latest in editing and animation software. Text and graphic elements are built and animated to work seamlessly with the audio track along with 3D environments, scenes and objects to ensure your message is engaging and entertaining but most of all – understandable. We may go through a couple of iterations at this point to tweak elements and colour to make sure everything is as slick as possible.
Audio Mastering & Additional Sound Effects.
At this point we go over the audio to ensure everything is mastered and equalized to sound awesome. As animation progresses, we also start to add in additional sound effects to emphasize various objects and actions in the video/animation, this increases the level of engagement with the audience.
Final Colouring.
The last thing we do is colour grading. This ensures every shot and scene is saturated to perfection, every animated line, shape or object is matching through out the video, every hue, shadow and highlight is perfectly spectacular. We then crush the blacks a little to really make everything really pop.
Tweaks and Changes.
We always allow for a couple of small tweaks and revisions. There are so many elements created during this whole process, that no matter how much we plan something out, until you actually see the final version, it’s inevitable you will want to tweak something. Hopefully by this stage, we have planned enough upfront that it is only a minor detail that needs adjusting.
Changing voice over at this point can be very problematic as a whole scene may need to change, which could end up requiring many more hours to fix.
Final Delivery.
With everything approved, we then set up the final files for full resolution rendering.
This can take anywhere from an hour or two, to several days to complete and depends heavily on the complexity of the scenes we have built for you. Fortunately we have several very fast machines we use for final rendering all hooked up to our network. so everything is kept to an absolute minimum. Motion graphics and video productions usually only take a few hours at the most to render and compress for delivery.
Contact Go2 Productions to find out how we can help you with your next corporate video production, tv commercial or product demonstration.
