How to Communicate With Your Production Company
by Clare Cassidy
The situation is familiar. The producer asks a question and the clients eyes glaze over, panic sets in. What is a cutaway? Why are they talking about pans in a film studio? Why are they so obsessed with schedules and what on earth are they asking for 40 blocks of cheese for?
As a video production agency we at Curious Crab have seen it all. Clients requesting flying burgers, exploding truffles and Johnny Wilkinson drop kicking a fruit juice to name a few. And we are always happy to push boundaries for your brands, but sometimes you need to be speaking our language. It is so easy for marketing teams and production companies to speak past each other. You want the camera to move from left to right, but how do you communicate that? The first cut is washed out and the sound is terrible, should you panic? The production world is so technical and jargon heavy, it can be quite intimidating, so here are a few concepts and terms that will get you up to speed.
It's a joke in the industry that clients call all camera movements a ‘pan’ shot. A pan is when the camera moves left to right on an axis, a tilt is when it moves up and down on an axis, a dolly is a forward or backwards motion on tracks or a slider, tracking is left to right on a slider or tracks, and a jib or crane can be used to create most of these. Cutaways are the shots that ‘cutaway’ from the main action to show you something the presenter is talking about or a location. A close up fills the screen with the object, a medium close- up is a bit looser and gives the object some space around it, a wide takes in the whole scene and contextualises the object.
We are obsessed with schedules because we have many elements to take care of before our shoots: hiring in food stylists, props and backgrounds, creating recipes, booking chefs and studio time, ordering product and produce, scheduling the production team and plotting every shot of the video. So when you read your emails two days before the shoot and decide you’d prefer blue plates rather than pink…we will accommodate you, but we won’t like it.
We are ordering 40 blocks of cheese because it is only after the 20th take that we will get that perfect shot of the cheese melting over the burger at just the right angle that you wanted. Most likely that shot will require a food stylist suspended in a harness over said burger, wielding a blow torch and cursing the director for ever plotting that shot.
And finally, never expect perfection from the first cut. Getting the colours and sound right on a video requires a long process that takes time and precision. Once we have colour graded, added graphics and mixed sound we actually can’t change too much more on the video. That is why the first cut looks a bit rough. It is so you have the space to play and make changes to the edit, before it gets locked in. So don’t panic if it’s a little washed out and the volume goes up and down, that will all be fixed at a later stage. Just focus on the content first.
There you have it, our 101 on communicating with production folk. You won’t quite be pitching like Spielberg yet, but at least you’ll sound like you vaguely know what you’re talking about. The main thing is to have fun and get your ideas out there, we will do the rest. Check out our process here for more info on how we work at Curious Crab.
