Most of our clients give us one half-day a month. From that, we make 12 to 30 videos. People are usually surprised it's enough, so here's exactly what happens. This is a real shoot day for a Growth client making 20 videos.
The week before
The shoot starts a week earlier. We send a plan with 20 ideas, each with three written hooks, and the client marks anything that's off-limits. We send a one-page call sheet: address, parking, who needs to be there, what to wear (solid colors, nothing with a big logo that isn't theirs).
8:30am · Load-in
Three of us arrive: me, a second shooter and a producer. We bring two cameras, three lights, two lav mics and a shotgun mic, and a monitor so the client can watch without hovering. We walk the space and pick two setups: one where the person talks, one where the product or the work happens.
9:00am · Lights and setup
Thirty minutes to set both spots. We use the window if there is one and add light to match it, so the footage looks like the place, not a studio. Sound gets checked twice. Bad audio is the one thing we can't fix later.
9:30am · The talking pieces
The founder or host sits for about two hours, with a break in the middle. We go through the 20 ideas in order. For each one we do the three hooks, then the body twice: once as written, once in their own words. The second take is almost always the one we use.
We keep a tally on a whiteboard so everyone can see how far along we are. People relax when they know it ends at 1:00.
11:30am · Product and B-roll
The second setup. Hands, pours, packing, the screen, the line, whatever makes the work look real. We shoot around 40 short moments here, each five to ten seconds. These end up as cutaways in the talking videos and as standalone product clips.
12:45pm · Pickups
We check the list for anything missing or weak and redo it. Usually two or three hooks.
1:00pm · Wrap
We pack in 20 minutes and leave the space as we found it. Footage is backed up twice before we leave the parking lot.
After the shoot
Our editors cut the first batch in three days. The client reviews in a shared folder and leaves notes on the timeline. Each video gets two rounds of notes. The first videos go out five days after the shoot, and the rest are scheduled through the month.
The only thing we ask of clients during all this: about 20 minutes a week to approve edits. That's the whole job.
Want this for your brand?
A 20-minute call. We’ll look at your feed and suggest two formats.
