Most corporate video fails in the first fifteen seconds, and it fails on structure rather than on camera. So the work starts at the script and the interview questions, not the shot list. Shot in log with the look agreed before the edit, cut to the length the audience will actually give you, and finished with sound that has been treated rather than left as whatever the camera happened to record.
Structure first, then a shoot built to serve it, then an edit that is allowed to be shorter than the brief assumed. Every project is delivered as a main cut plus the shorter and narrower versions you will be asked for two weeks later.
Company films, product launches, capability and recruitment pieces, and internal communications people will sit through. The script or the interview structure is agreed before anything is shot. Delivered as a main cut plus a sixty, a fifteen and vertical versions framed at capture rather than cropped out of a wide master afterwards, which is how the subject ends up half out of frame on a phone.
Sit-down interviews with clean two-camera coverage and lavalier plus boom, so the edit has cutaways and the audio has a backup. Observational shooting where the subject is a process rather than a person. Interviews are run as conversations and transcribed, so the edit is assembled from what was actually said rather than from a paper edit that ignores it.
Conference sessions, panels, performances and awards. Two to four cameras, timecode-synced, with a direct feed from the sound desk and an independent recorder as insurance — the desk feed is the one that fails. Delivered as per-session cuts rather than one unwatchable four-hour file, with speaker names checked against the programme.
Public-domain reference frames, not stills from the studio’s films. Moving-image work is shown to clients as cuts rather than as frames on a website. Sources and licences.
Moving-image work is delivered to clients as cuts, not as stills, so there is no gallery of frame grabs to show. These licensed photographs show the set instead.
Reference frames — not this studio’s work. Four licensed photographs of production sets. Creators, licences and sources.
A shooting day is a listed rate and can be booked outright. A scripted brand film is quoted rather than listed: the treatment decides the shoot days, the cast, the locations and the length of the edit, so any number set before the treatment exists would be a guess.
Taken on as its own engagement, including for footage shot by somebody else — archive, mixed-source and multi-camera material where half the rushes are the wrong frame rate, the wrong colour space, or both.
Structure settled before any grade or sound work, because that is what feedback should be given on. Sent as a private link with per-timecode comments so notes attach to the frame they refer to rather than arriving as a paragraph of prose.
Rushes normalised: frame rate, colour space, gamma and audio sample rate reconciled before anything is graded. Most of the visible problems in mixed-source video are conform problems that were never addressed and got graded over instead.
Primary balance, shot matching across cameras and days, then the look. Graded on a calibrated display in a controlled room, not on a laptop screen in a bright one. Skin tones checked against a reference and held consistent across the whole piece.
Lower thirds and titles to your brand’s type and colour, supers checked for spelling against a written list rather than by eye, and every ratio and length exported from a single graded master so the versions cannot drift apart.
Handled as its own session — dialogue edit, music to length, effects and ambience, then a mix delivered to the loudness target for the destination, with stems. Detail under post for picture.
Priced per finished minute rather than per hour of rushes, so a day of badly-shot material does not cost more to cut than a day of good material.
Either a film to make from nothing, or a folder of material somebody started and could not finish. Both are normal. Say which, roughly how long it should end up, and where it will be seen.
Vertical and short-form
9:16 and 4:5 cutdowns planned into the shoot rather than salvaged from it, with captions burned in because most of the audience watches with the sound off. Hooks cut to the first two seconds, and safe areas respected so nothing important sits under a platform’s own interface furniture.