Have you ever heard of the Rule of Thirds?
It’s a photography and design philosophy, but you don’t have to be a designer or a photographer to appreciate the concept. Simply put, it’s a principle of composition based on the fact that the human eye naturally gravitates to intersections when an image is divided into thirds.
Why am I telling you this? Because it demonstrates that creativity can live inside a studied, structured approach.
Take our logo, for example. It follows the Rule of Thirds from top to bottom. But there is more symbolism when you study it from left to right. Look at the dashes above our name. They signify the way we do business—a smooth transition from raw idea, to research and inspiration, and finally to finished product.
And the length of each dash? That’s symbolic, too, because it represents one of the reasons we stand apart from our competition. It’s what we do on the front end—the longer dash—that leads to the highest quality deliverable at the end.
It takes time and thoughtful consideration to move through a proper process, but we feel our process truly protects our clients’ investment. We have administrative systems in place—honed over nearly 40 years of experience—which ensure that the act of doing business with us never interferes with the act of being creative.
Those systems also give our clients the peace of mind of knowing exactly what to expect from us from that first conversation until final delivery.
So, what does our process look like? We have it broken down into eight steps.
LISTEN
The first thing we do with our clients is talk about what you hope to achieve with a video. What are the objectives? What is the purpose of the video? Who is the target audience? How will they be reached?
DISTILL
We analyze everything we’ve heard and figure out which questions we still need to answer, which markets we need to study, and what challenges we might face. We work hard to “see around the corner for our clients,” since we’ve walked this walk before.
RESEARCH
We dig deeper. How are other organizations in the same market segment presenting themselves or the problem that’s being addressed? How can we present our client uniquely in the marketplace? This is the stage where we put our expertise in messaging to work. Clients may come to us seeking a certain kind of video, but our research may lead us to a different idea we think will work best to meet the objectives.
STRATEGIZE
Here, we present our ideas and inspirations—ones we believe will give our clients the best ROI. Using our project management tools, clients can collaborate with us on the development of concepts even from great distances.
CREATE
Writing. Pre-Production. Shooting. Editing. Compression. All the creative stuff happens here once you have approved the strategy.
DELIVER
When your video is ready, our delivery platform allows files to be downloaded in the right size for the right delivery platform. We do all the compressions for you, so you never lose quality when you need to shrink a video.
MEASURE
Our work doesn’t end when we complete a project. We check in with our clients to see how it is going. Is the video working? Are the objectives being met? Success matters to us.
PROTECT
We guard all the data. All files are stored in two places, including raw footage that didn’t make it into a final video. Clients can call us a year from now asking for, “that one shot we did at the park at sunset,” and we can find it. It happens regularly for projects that are well over a decade old.
A strong structure means no surprises. A smooth business means creative success. That’s how we do it.