You need a video, and you decided that you need to hire someone to help. Great!

Before you start speaking with production companies about your proejct, you should go through this list of questions to make sure you have all the answers and details needed to describe your project.

For you, the potential client, we understand you’ll shop around with other agencies and producers. Being able to articulate your project well will help you compare apples to apples when you start getting estimates back.

An alternative approach, when shopping around, would be to use this list to create an RFQ and blast it out to all the agencies you’re interested in working with, and get submissions back!

At The Brute Squad we often get phone or web leads asking for us to bid on a project, which is great, but sometimes these calls are a bit premature and we can’t really help.  Why?  Well because we often ask a series of questions to qualify the lead / project.  If the potential client is prepared, the call is a breeze and we can quickly and accurately create an estimate.  If the potential client doesn’t have many answers then we’re left to speculate and are left shooting in the dark.  (There’s a video production double-entendre in there somewhere).

Here’s a list of the questions we’ll typically ask in the first correspondence between a potential client and us, to best determine the scope and scale of the project.  Before you contact any video production agency about a project, we suggest you have a look at these questions and prepare your answers as accurately as possible.

About the video:

• What is the purpose of the video?
• Who is the target demographic?
• What is the emotion or message you want the view to take away?
• What would you like the viewer to do after the video is over?
• Is this video part of a larger campaign?
• Where will this video live?
• What resolution / format do you need this video delivered in?
• What is the target duration of the video?

Creative:

• Do you have examples of similar types of videos you like?
• Do you have examples of a look and style you like?
• What are you ideas for the video?
• Who will produce the script?
• Do you need assistance with creative?
• Do you have a corporate style guide?

Scope:

• How many actors do you expect to be in this video?
• Do you have employees or reps that you want in this video?
• How many locations do you envision?
• What type of places are the locations (audio a problem?)
• Do any location include travel?
• How many shooting days do you expect to take?
• When are final deliverables due?
• Will you need to update this video in the future?

Client:

• Have you produced a video before?
• How did it go?
• What experiences, good and bad, have you had with other agencies?
• What do you want to be different this time around?
• Do you have a single point of contact / final decision maker?
• Do you have a set budget or budget range?
• Is the budget allocated and ready to green light?
• How will you measure the success / ROI?

If you have any questions about our questions, or if you would like to discuss your project, we’d be happy to help.  Give us a call or fill out our contact form.