WEST COAST Video Productions

We are professional video producers, but would you believe that we have sometimes suggested they use their niece or friend’s nephew to videotape. In deciding whether to accept your friends offer to videotape, it is important to think about whether you simply want to have an event archived or whether you need a professional finish.

Ask yourself how it will be used, and who the target audience is, or the message. Once in a lifetime events or opportunities should be videotaped. If a conference is a training seminar that viewers would benefit from in a DVD format, and they would pay for it, then definitely videotape. If you do spend the time and money and do it well.

If you are not sure if the subject matter would inspire purchase by either attendees or people who missed the conference or event, but you want the information archived, then just audiotape it.

The decision of whether to have a video made begins with defining your audience. Who will be viewing? What is their current background or knowledge? What is their attitude? How long would they be willing to watch it?

The next step is to decide what you want to communicate to this audience? What will this program accomplish? What will the viewer be able to do, feel, or know? What tone, feel or point of view do you want to communicate? Do you want to train them in a subject? Do you want to inspire them to donate to your non profit organization? Do you want them to buy your product? What would they take away from the experience?

Once you have answered these questions you will decide the length of the video and your budget. A scriptwriter and actors will increase the cost but provide a more professional look, but you can save money by writing your own script, and picking the shots from a dubbed copy of the video for editing, and designing your own DVD labels.

Finally you will need to decide how many copies you will want. There are price breaks at 1000 copies but if your audience is small or if you are unsure of the demand, it may make more sense financially to start with a smaller number.