Scheduling a Discovery Call

Understanding a Discovery Call with Vast Whisper Productions

The discovery call is the beginning of our partnership with you. It allows us to gauge whether or not we are the right production company for you and whether or not you are the right type of client for us. The most important reason we want to schedule a discovery call with every client is because many companies who approach us have no idea what they actually need. This is a time where we can walk through the types of videos that can best achieve the goals you are looking for with your video project.

Video Production

Video production is broken into 3 phases, Pre-Prouduction (planning), Production (filming) and Post Production (editing). Each of these phases has many tasks involved to make a video project a success. We cannot guess when it comes to planning each one of these phases which is why the discovery call is so important.

Video Production can be very expensive and in order for us to be able to give you an accurate quote that can fit within a specific budget we need lots of information. Many times you are unable to give the information during the discovery call but you will walk away from the meeting know everything that is needed for us to give you an accurate estimate.

Video Marketing

We need to understand your goals for the video we are producing. A video that is 5 minutes long wont work on social media when it should be 15-30 seconds long. The same goes for a landing page video that should be 2-5 minutes long instead 15 seconds. The same is true for a video campaign versus a stand along brand film. The end goal for your video project determines the style, runtime, and type of video we produce.

A well lead discovery call can save you money and time

Our goal is for you to walk away from the call feeling well informed and prepared to either move forward with your project or go back to the drawing board. Videos take time and can be very expensive. Our goal is that your project would be stewarded well which means we are fine telling you that the project should be postponed until it will be a success for you.

If you are having trouble coming up with ideas, we would be happy to partner with you in creating a Brandscript using the Storybrand framework. This will help you clarify your messaging and give you a plan for how to market yourself to your target audience.

Here is a list of some of the questions we ask during a discovery call.

• What is your budget range?

• Who is your primary target market or audience for this video? Please describe their demographics, interests, and any other relevant details.

• Have you worked on any video projects in the past? If so, could you provide some examples or references to help us better understand your preferences and style?

• Are there any competitors or similar companies in your industry whose videos you admire or would like to differentiate from? Please provide their names or examples if possible.

• Are there any other stakeholders or team members involved in this project that we should be aware of? If yes, please provide their names and roles.

• How many employees do you have? (We need to know this for licensing purposes)

• Do you have a timeline for this project?

• Do you have a marketing team that we will be working with to produce this content?

• Will you be writing the scripts or will we?

• Could you please provide a brief description of the project and each individual video deliverable? (video topic, estimated run time, all animation, animation mixed with camera footage or all camera footage, voice over or filming one of your team members talking) It is alright if you don't have answers for all of these yet but this will help us better understand the nature and scope of the videos.

• What is the primary goal for these videos?

• How many interviews do you expect there to be?

• How many locations will we film at?

• How many days of production do you anticipate?

• Will the video production be in Houston or out of town?

Hopefully you feel a little more prepared to start talking your video production project! If you don’t know where to start or need help with a marketing video for your business in Houston or anywhere else in the country, click this link!

Vast Whisper Productions is a Houston based video production company creating videos for non-profits and corporate business. Scott and Jess are the owners and have been producing videos in the Houston area for over 10 years. Their combined experience and passion for storytelling allows them to see your project goals through to the end!

How to Use a Teleprompter For Video Production

What are TelePrompTers

A teleprompter allows someone the ability to read text that is delayed right in front of a camera lens. This gives the appearance of the presenter having memorized all of their lines while speaking directly into the camera. It is physically made up of a piece of glass with a special reflective coating that allows the camera to see through it while reflecting any words underneath it towards its subject.

When to use a TelePrompTer

A teleprompter allows the presenter to deliver lines from a script without the need to memorize them. It is a good idea to use one when the presenter is not a good speaker, has no on-camera experience, and needs to memorize a script or lines of content. It can also be beneficial for those who don’t have time to memorize an entire script or when you need to clearly deliver technical information. We have a longer blog post you can read here that goes into much more detail about this.

Using a teleprompter while the presenter looks off camera.

Ok so you know when to use it but how do you use it?

Practice Makes Perfect

Just because you are going to be reading your script off of a telepromter does not alleviate you of any pressure to practice practice practice! We have had to spend hours redoing take after take because a client was having difficulty reading the script they wrote. This was because they did not listen to us when we told them they would need to practice reading their script aloud until it came off naturally. This ends up being stressful for the presenter and harder on us in the edit.

When you practice reading your script and have achieved sounding natural then you are done!

Typically the presenter did not write the script so the wording may be odd to them. When practicing the script this a good time to make any changes that will make if feel more natural to you.

Body Language is Key

Your body language conveys almost as much meaning as your words do. You will need to be able to focus on smiling, inflection, hand movement, and overall body language during filming all while being surrounded by lights, cameras, crew and anyone from your staff that is on set. This will be impossible for some if they are not familiar and comfortable with their script. But you can do it!

The Telepromter

We will be able to adjust teleprompter scroll speed to match your speaking and change the font to be a comfortable size.

Dont stress!

At the end of the day we just want you to feel comfortable on set and that will happen best if you prepare. On average we do around 3-5 read throughs of any script. No one is perfect and you will mess-up which is alright.

If you have any questions or need help planning your corporate or non-profit video production give us a call!