1. Making contact: In one way or another you'll be contacting us to talk about your project. There is no cost or obligation involved in this part of the process. Initial consultation is free and we often do a bit of research for you help get the conversation going.
2. Receiving your wish list: After an initial chat we are going to need to receive a 'wish list’ from you. A wish list is a vital part of the production process: it helps to firm up some fundamental aspects of your production. For example, who the project is for and what you aim to gain from it and importantly how you view the project in your minds eye, in terms of look and feel. A wish list might also include any ideas you have for location. For example; you might want some drone filming material or special music included. Having a wish list helps everyone involved, your staff, and our production team, clearly see what you want. Finally this information helps us create the best value price for your budget.
Production prohibitions
We reserve the right to refuse any involvement with the production of socio-politically inflamatory material. This may but not exclusively include anything which, encourages or engenders:
Pornography
Religious extremism
Threat to national security
Disproportionality or falsity
The use of illegal drugs or violence
Mysoginy or misandry
Abuse of the vulnerable or otherwise
Threats to health or life
Environmental damage
3. Understanding your budget: People are often guarded about talking budget, we understand that, we have been around long enough to hear horror stories about inexperienced new companies offering the world for unbelievable budgets. In truth, in our 30 years experience we find that those who are bold enough to talk budget get the best value deals than those who are cagey. As a guide in the media nothing really happens for under £500 per day, because they are simply too many factors involved including camera, lighting and sound equipment and crew. For example, you want one person with camera kit to help you with your project our prices start at £399 p/d if you want us to budget crew or a full production we’ll quote and in somecases pitch for that.
4. Pricing up your project: First off media is expensive that’s life the equipment is expensive and the risks are very high for anything to do with media and television. The first TV camera we had was £64,000. The good news for our clients is that we are a non-debt company. We own everything cameras, drone equipment, edit suites, sound and light rigs and TV vans, so you the client never pay inflated hire costs; it means that your paying for extremely skilful media crews to realise your objectives.
5. Booking your production: When you feel ready to push the button on your media project we will invoice you a percentage of your total budget to confirm your booking for our team to pull out the stops. This is normal for media companies and has been part of our terms and conditions for nearly 30 yrs. For example, if your project is under £3,000 the booking fee will be 50%, if it is over £3,000 it will be a third of the budget. For projects over three grand, another third payment will be required after filming and the final after completion.
6. Pre-producing your project: Pre-Production is all about planning and creating your project in meetings, on paper, storyboards, scripting, film scheduling and many other details that become the guidelines in the production stage below.
7. Producing your project: Production is the most exciting part of the process, it is the ‘camera action’ stage. A huge amount of background work has been had up to this point already so that on shoot day(s) everyone knows what they are doing.
8. Post-producing your project: Post production is all about bringing everything together in to one communicative creative piece of work. This might be a video, a film a YouTube clip, a theatrical play and so on, the list of possibilities for video is endless. Typically post production services may include the editing of dialogue, music video or digital film, titles captions and special effects. If it is included in your budget the final edit goes through colour grading and sound design so that everything is tweaked to perfection. Finally ‘delivery’ is the stage by which the correct output file and encoding is created. This might be a broadcast DNX or ProRes file, a mastered Blu-ray disc, a DVD, or an MPEG file for Vimeo or YouTube.