17 Oct Behind the Stream: It Keeps Happening
We’ve completed over 20 shoots for our Mainstream Video: Behind the Stream series, and each one has taught us something new—we learn something every time! Last week, we explored our on-screen appearances and discussed ways to improve (spoiler alert: nobody is as obsessed with you as you might think!). This week, we delved into our workflow, identifying what worked, what didn’t, and the adjustments we made along the way. Creating consistent video content for your brand should be an evolving process. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for your team to be efficient while maintaining the highest quality—so you can achieve that sweet, sweet video ROI!
Beth: Welcome back to Mainstream Video Video Behind the Stream! We are doing what we call a post-mortem. That’s what we called back in the television business after we would do a shoot, a major production of some kind, you go through it and you look for what happened; What worked, what didn’t.
Beth: Last week we talked about the visuals that we did and didn’t like. Once the video is shot, then it goes into post-production, and then you’re editing, and now you’ve got a whole other creative process happening and we ran into some jams there as well. Kind of. The goal for these videos, as I’ve mentioned, is to put something out every single week, let people know we’re still in business, we still know what we’re talking about, we’re still working with people, we’re always learning. That’s the goal, so I feel like putting something out, even if it’s not 100% perfect, serves that purpose for me, and when you wanna make something really, really good, you gotta think about details.
Erica: So with the– It was mainly the audio setup was kind of the biggest thing– biggest lessons learned after the last one.
Past Beth: Having done actual very little of the actual setup.
Past Steph: It’s true. I literally sat here While Erica Set everything up.
Erica: We had put a lav on you which is typically how we would’ve done it. and that’s typically how we do interviews for our clients and so we’re trying to, in a sense, replicate what we do for our clients, for us. So you had a lav mic and for ease of shooting, we went on one boom mic because there was only one person monitoring audio, so we had to kind of simplify it, and that’s what we went with. For post-production purposes, there are some tricks that needed to be done to make sure that your lav was isolated and that our boom mic, you know– I was a little bit closer, she was a little further away so when we talked, there were different levels between us so it needed a little bit more finessing in post… Which is what we do for our clients!
In this case, what had happened is, we were trying to pump out content quicker, so Steph, as a producer, who usually rough cuts stuff was editing, not knowing the finesse that was needed for the audio. So we just, we had a discussion about that and so our audio set up for today is that Beth is on a boom mic, we each have our own mic here. So it’s a little bit easier to– and it’s each running– it’s running into its own separate channel so we can monitor levels, as opposed to having both of us on one channel. We now have individual channels and we have a PA here to help monitor our audio, which is actually really helpful.
Beth: Talk About course correction!
Erica: There’s not gonna be as much finessing that needs to happen because the forethought was put in prior to the shoot.
Beth: And one of the things I always will say to clients, especially ’cause we love DIY, if Stephanie and I are filming or editing, I still consider that a DIY. It’s not a professional. Stephanie is very good at editing and she can do a lot in editing, but as it relates to a producer’s job, which is the storyteller, the content creator.
Steph: Right and that’s, I mean, it’s a good lesson learned for me because I tend to get– we pump out a lot of content on our own, we got behind, and we were trying to catch up. So I was trying to finish it myself. and as we’ve discovered even with my decades of experience in video production, I still am not a finishing editor, and that is why you need someone like an Erica.
Beth: If you want that polish!
Steph: If you’re gonna spend your money on anything, if you’re DIYing…
Beth: Yeah, that’s true too.
Steph: Editing is where you wanna spend your money. The final, because a lot can be corrected in editing if you know what you’re doing.
Beth: I think that’s the lesson is that, you know, we have done several of these Mainstream Behind The Stream Shoots. We’re always coming up with new ideas, the way to make the content different, the shot’s different, and each time you make a different choice, like a new variable pops up, and that is why the post-mortems are key to just make sure that, okay, does this workflow still work? Is this still serving the goal that we want it to serve? You know, video is this incredible medium, It’s very powerful, but it’s not a magic pill. It’s not a magic button. You don’t just get to push record and everything works out. We continue to hone our craft and anybody that is looking to do video, we recommend it as well.