Heidi McLean

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post-production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

Have you ever watched a pilot prepare to take a single-engine plane into the sky? It’s a highly-detailed art. No matter how well they know their aircraft or how many times they’ve flown, they still go through that checklist with meticulous care. After all, think of the stakes. If they get it right, it’s gonna be a beautiful ride, but if they get it wrong, it just might all go down in literal flames. The stakes for a well-planned shoot aren’t as high (although if you ask a producer on a particularly stressful day, they may argue that point), but better preparation still leads to better, more enjoyable shoots.

3 tips to make your shoot smoother

1. Follow a “night before” checklist

You know your gear better than anyone. Make a checklist that covers everything from the biggest details to the smallest. Be sure your tripod is packed, your batteries are charged, and your memory cards are empty. Special bags with your unique needs allow you to have a home for each lens and any other required gear. Put every item in the same place each time and before long, you’ll be like Forrest Gump when you’re packing and unpacking your bag. You may even go so far as to lay out the clothes you’re going to wear and prep the breakfast you’re going to eat. Include anything that will make you confident you can grab your bag and walk out the door calmly, not thinking of a damn thing except how good your coffee tastes. Keep that checklist in your gear staging area and, just like the most meticulous pilot, go through your checklist the night before each “flight.”

2. Follow a “day-of” checklist 

When it comes to the actual shoot, everyone’s process is a little different. But no matter what, you need to make sure your camera is on and stable and your subject is well lit. Make a physical copy (a mental one leaves too much room for error) of whatever it takes to get to that point. Include the little things like, “test microphones.” If you’re prone to getting into an all business mode, you may even want to include something like, “say hello to crew.” Go through your checklist for when you actually set up for the shoot. You can laminate it and make it small enough to put in your pocket. It may seem like overkill, but if you’ve ever missed the money shot because of a preventable error, you know it’s worth it.

3. Recover from mistakes quickly

No matter how much you prepare, sometimes, things will not go as planned. If you make a mistake or miss something important, pivot. Use all your creative juices to decide how to get what you need another way. Ask any documentarian ever and they will tell you that some of the best moments on film came from some of the worst mistakes. If you can remember that and recover quickly, it won’t be a mistake anymore.

The secret benefit of good preparation

Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama see such value in paring down decisions that they wear roughly the same thing every day. They say it reduces decision fatigue, or “the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making” and frees their mental capacity up for more important decisions.

Similarly, one of the most important benefits of good, practical preparation before a shoot is that it frees your mind up for mental preparation. When you are confident all of the details are covered, you get to dig deeper. You can think about the tone of the shoot. You can think about lighting and framing. You can think about the story. That’s where the art happens. Just about anyone can learn to light a subject, focus a lens, and set a camera up on a tripod. But that’s not what you’re there for. You’re there for the magic that led you to pick up your very first camera. You love the craft. It’s harder to access the magic that lives beyond the practical when all you can think about is whether you remembered to charge your batteries.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

Every year, the American public witnesses a battle royale on two fronts: One is between two football teams contending for a championship ring and the other is to determine which commercials will most capture the American public’s attention. Finding a place in social media as among the best, funniest, and most shared ads is something of a Super Bowl type pursuit in itself.

That brings us to another title—not necessarily the most coveted—but an important one nonetheless. It’s the most controversial ad of the year. In years’ past, racy hamburger commercials (forgive me for not hyperlinking one that would make my mama blush) or an insurance ad featuring a dead kid have made the list. This year, the title seems to go to that Dodge Ram commercial that relied heavily on a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr..

So what does this ad—and its reception among the public—mean to video content creators?

3 lessons for video content creators from one of the Super Bowl’s most controversial ads

1. Controversy is memorable

One user overlayed the original Dodge Ram ad with different audio—that of King disapprovingly speaking of buying into capitalism. The brand defended its choice, saying it worked closely with King’s estate and was honored to “celebrate those words.” Whether this is an example of effective, sticky marketing or a tone deaf faux pas demonstrating American marketing at its worst is up for debate. What isn’t up for debate is that people (like yours truly) are still talking about the controversial ad. And if you believe the adage that even bad press is good press, then that might not be such a bad thing.

2. Tackling the iconic is risky

Memorable or not, it doesn’t hurt to take a lesson from The Voice. If you’re going to cover a song by one of the legends, you need to bring it. From the first notes of a Whitney Houston classic or one of Adele’s heart thumping ballads, you can see the judges wince. They know how easy it is for even the most talented singers to fail spectacularly when tackling one of the legends. A historic figure like Dr. King carries weight in every way imaginable. People recognize his voice instantly and have deeply ingrained feelings about who he was and what he represents. That means the stakes for using his voice and words are high—a lot higher than performing in a singing contest. This is not to say that you can’t step on stage and belt a Whitney Houston classic or use audio from a historic speech to promote a brand, it’s just to say proceed with extreme caution.

3. Content creators need to have thick skin

When you step into the realm of the controversial and iconic, one thing is sure: People will react. Add that to the fact that the internet has given place to the strangest of phenomena—an intense level of arguing over anything—and you have a unique beast to contend with. Even if you say something as simple as “pretzels are the best snack,” you will be bombarded with counterpoints, often accompanied with a disproportionate level of vitriol. So if you’re going to say something a little more bold, you need to be ready to take the inevitable heat. Or maybe the real lesson is to stay away from the comment section of your videos. Because who really cares what pretzelfanboy17 has to say anyway? Consider the source and go about your business.

Video content creators have a big job. Please the client, reach the audience, and do it without ticking too many people off. That’s why they pay you the big bucks, right?

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

Three steps to a rockin’ elevator pitch

Being comfortable with your brand and sales pitch means that the next time you meet a potential prospect on the fly, your handshake will be firm, not clammy; your delivery will be confident, not desperate; and your pitch will compel your prospect to ask for your business card. Follow theses steps to be ready for when those strange and serendipitous moments present themselves.

Content producers: hide your credit cards. CES 2018 is off to a great start with smarter smart products, thinner TVs and laptops, and even more Ks (8K here we come). We’ve gathered some info on our top picks promising to make your life easier, brighter, and in higher resolution.

Here’s what we’re paying attention to at CES

1. TVs

Stephen King says you can’t be a great writer if you aren’t an avid reader. If that’s true for video content producers, you’ll need to watch a lot of content. In that case, you may be able to justify one of these TVs for your studio in 2018. Among your options are Panasonic’s FZ950–a TV fit for Hollywood post production houses and the Q9S QLED TV, which “uses AI to make its own 8K content.” As for your space, why have a TV mounted on your wall, when you can just have a TV wall instead? The wall (that’s what it’s called) spans 12 feet across and is made up of smaller, nearly seamless MicroLED screens, each of which is “made of pixels that, like OLED, produce their own light.” 8K resolution is here to scratch the itch of those who look at their old 4K TVs and think, “Rubbish! That is so 2017!”

2. All the Ks

It’s not just TVs getting in on the resolution game. Sony’s $30,000 4K projector sits 9.6 inches from the wall onto which you’ll be projecting a 4K image. Among its standout features is that “the laser projector reaches a peak brightness of 2500 lumens.” At $30,000 it’ll up your home theater game to the best in the block while also making your post production house portable.

3. VR

Vive Pro has unveiled its latest headset. With higher resolution, built-in headphones, and a more comfortable fit than its previous model, HTC has taken virtual reality to the next level. If video is your world, you better pay attention to VR. It is to video what drones were in the last generation. Those who figure it out and master it first stand to make their presence known.

Where does it go from here? With VR, seeing is believing, but where hand-held controls fall short with the current simple vibration, it’s our sense of touch that still needs convincing. Companies are sure to focus on better haptics in future VR products and to answer the question, “Okay, but can it look even more real?” The verdict is already in: It can.

The bottom line

2018’s tech is bigger and better than ever. And in some cases, like this fingernail-sized sensor, that means smaller than ever. You can keep up with the rest of CES news here.

About Crew Connection

Crew Connection puts a suite of marketing tools at your fingertips. Get your demo reels, stills, gear, awards, and more in front of the biggest clients all over the world—for free. At Crew Connection we pay video and post production providers within 30 days of receiving your invoice so your work and your life are never interrupted. Need live assistance or want to add quality jobs to your pipeline? Our crew coordinators are on call around the clock. Sign in to Crew Connection, call 303-526-4900, or email info@crewconnection.com.

This post originally appeared on ProductionHub. You can find it here.