How to hire a video production company

An advertising agency owns strategy and campaign: what to say, to whom, on which channels. A production company owns the making: how it gets shot, cut, and finished. A freelancer is one person with a camera or an edit suite , and can be excellent inside a scope one person can hold.

The practical test: if you already know what you want to say, you need a production company. If you do not, you need a strategic partner first, and some production companies do that too.

Lead with the outcome. What does someone need to understand, feel, or do after watching? That single sentence is worth more than three pages describing shots.

Then give the constraints, because they are what makes a brief actionable: the deadline, the budget or a range, where it runs and for how long, who has to approve it, and any brand rules that are not negotiable. A brief that hides the budget gets a proposal built for a different job.

• The outcome, in one sentence.
• The audience, specifically. "Customers" is not an audience.
• The deliverable list and the aspect ratios, if you know them.
• Where it runs, for how long, and whether there is paid media behind it.
• The deadline, and what it is tied to.
• The approval chain. Names, not departments.
• Anything that already exists: brand guidelines, prior work you liked or hated, footage you own.

Ask who is actually going to be on your job. Plenty of companies pitch with a senior director and staff the shoot with whoever was available. Ask for the names.

Then ask the boring questions, because they are the ones that turn into disputes: how many revision rounds are included, who owns the raw footage, whether music is licensed and for what term, whether talent is bought out and for where, and whether color and mix are inside the number or outside it.

Ask whether post is in-house or subcontracted. A company that owns its own post can absorb a late note or a slipped schedule. A company renting time cannot, and you will find out in the last week.

Look for work in your situation, not work in your industry. A company that has handled a four-approver corporate relaunch understands your problem better than one that happens to have shot a competitor.

And watch a full piece, not just the reel . A reel is sixty seconds of everyone's best five frames. A finished three-minute film shows whether they can hold a story, which is the thing you are actually buying.

A quote with no line items. A company that will not name the crew. A promise that revisions are unlimited, which either is not true or is priced in somewhere you cannot see. And a pitch that is entirely about gear.

The last one matters more than it sounds. Camera bodies are a commodity and everyone rents from the same houses. If the pitch is a spec sheet, ask what the film is about and watch what happens.