We’ve Done The Shoot. What Happens Next?

Picture this. You’ve just wrapped up a big day of video content creation with EPIC Creative. So what happens after we pack up all our gear and head back to West Bend?

A lot! In fact, that’s when the real work begins.

One of the advantages of working with EPIC: We’re one of the few ad agencies that has its own in-house video, motion, and photo team.

Upload and share

It starts with our videographers uploading all the footage they shot into our cloud-based media management system. That can be as few as 10 video clips for a simple two-hour shoot, to as many as 1,000 clips for a week-long shoot. We also upload any photos we capture.

The great thing about our media management system is that once those photos and videos are loaded, we can immediately share those files with our clients. So you can have nearly instantaneous access to the same files we do. This can be very helpful in identifying critical shots and footage that need to be used for projects that have extremely tight deadlines.

Comb through the content

Once the media is in our system, it’s go time. If we’re creating a testimonial video, a producer will typically start by downloading interviews and getting them transcribed. Artificial intelligence has really improved this process and allows us to share lengthy interviews with clients in just a few hours. This also allows us to find relevant sound without having to listen to an entire 15- to 20-minute interview.

If it’s a demonstration video, the process is a bit different. A producer usually starts by putting together the clips in order. But even that’s tricky, because you can have multiple takes, or we might do something out of order because we had the camera in a specific spot. And if we have a script, a producer will share several voiceover talent options with the client and get the voice ordered. Regardless of the type of video you are doing, we try to get this step started one to two days after the shoot.

Craft the story

From there, our talented editors and motion graphics team take over. They tend to get videos that are roughly edited together in the proper order, but still need plenty of finesse. Again, depending on the type of the video, our animators could end up creating graphics for the entire script or work with our design team to create lower thirds (names and information bars at the bottom of your screen), opening and closing slates, and full-screen graphics.

Our editors do plenty of heavy lifting; color correcting the video to make sure if we had multiple cameras that the color of the video matches from camera to camera. And remember those 1,000 clips I mentioned earlier? It’s the editor’s job to go through all the footage and find the best possible shots. They also listen carefully to the audio and clean up any stray or random noises, find music, and add any graphics needed.

Get the team’s take

While you might think the project is now done and ready to share with the client, we’re not there yet. Once a video is complete we post it on Vimeo (an interactive video website) and it’s shared with an in-house team, consisting of the producer, project and account managers, a creative director, and, when needed, a proofreader. Here’s where things get super interesting. Everyone looks at the video with a critical eye. But at this point in the process, the more eyes the better, because we’re all looking at different things. Our account managers look at it from the client’s perspective: does it meet brand standards and does it accomplish what we proposed? The producer might be checking that the shots the editor chose match up and advance the story. Our creative director will check the colors and fonts and the overall look and feel of the video and even offer suggestions on music. Project managers might catch an odd edit or notice one of our crew who inadvertently ended up in a shot. And proofreaders will frequently catch typos or style consistency issues.

Ship it!

Once everyone weighs in, the video goes back to the editor for an update. After all the changes are made (which could take multiple rounds of edits) and our team is happy with the video, we finally share it with the client. The goal is to give each client a video that is our absolute best.

What’s really amazing is often we can do all this in just a week or two! That’s one of the advantages of working with EPIC: We’re one of the few ad agencies in Southeast Wisconsin that has its own in-house video, motion, and photo team. Things can move fast when we’re not relying on third parties to do our shooting, editing, or animations … sometimes saving weeks on projects.

So what are you waiting for? Book us for your next big video project, and you’ll join the ranks of hundreds of satisfied clients who have EPIC videos to help tell their stories.