The production industry is a very interesting field that involves a lot of creativity and ambitions, but a lot of people are very afraid of making the first steps in this industry, so today we are going to talk about these first steps. Before you ever think of starting a film production company, you have to learn about the basics.
BASIC FACTS TO LEARN ABOUT VIDEOGRAPHER BUSINESS
Here are the most basic facts about videographer business that you need to know to develop in this industry.
In short, here are the most important points that you need to pay attention to before you start a production company.
- The first thing to do is to analyze and understand the market, in particular, your area.
- It is almost impossible to build a business alone. Need to find people-associates.
- It is necessary to build a development plan to understand where to move on at any given moment.
- Specify the product, based on market objectives, start working.
- Soberly assessing your strengths and capabilities is important.
- If you have failed, you should admit it and find your place in this life.
THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE STARTING A PRODUCTION COMPANY
Here are the things to consider before starting a video production company, knowing them will make it easier for you to focus on the things that matter.
Name and type of company
The name of your company is your identity. Your logo is the face of your video production studio. These two things matter. We will talk about the type of company later on in this article, but choosing the type of company will play a large role in the process of starting a company.
Creative vector, the core advantage
Figure out what will differentiate your company from the rest of other companies, figure out what your creative vector is, how your product will look and be memorable, what you will do to make it stand out.
Financial plan
You can’t just get in a room with your friends and call yourself a video production company, you need a structure, you need a financial plan, you need some structure for your company.
HOW TO START A PRODUCTION COMPANY: 7-STEP GUIDE
If you think that creating your own video production means simply making videos while having fun with your friends, then you are mistaken. Opening video production, you create a company, structure. Other people begin to work together with you, which means you have a lot of responsibility and new powers that need to be fulfilled. This is a difficult undertaking, and now we will explain why.
1. Make a choice
How to start a production company? The first few years of video production are the most difficult. All this time, you will have to abandon many projects in favor of working on business development and transfer incoming orders to the project team. There is no possibility and sense to put a manager in your place at this stage – if someone instead of you manages your production, isn’t it easier to go to work in someone’s studio?
Creating a company, you enter into a major game with the market. A huge commitment to supporting your cause rests on your shoulders. If this way seems too difficult for you, you can always remain a small group of two or three people, which specializes in medium-sized orders. In this mode, you can avoid big problems. You can continue to work on a freelance, realizing that although you do not have your own production, you have the opportunity to take on your favorite projects, do what you want and not be responsible for your company.
You can talk about a company when you clearly understand that the market needs video production services. Then, by creating a company, you will solve a specific problem of the market. But there are additional questions that need to know the answer in advance – what is the size of the market, is it growing, what are its prospects in our rapidly developing world?
To open a video production, you need to go to the tax office and register an IP. You become a legal entity, and you can consider yourself a full-fledged production. But you need to clearly understand: why are you doing this?
The main thing is to decide who you are – a specialist in the market, to which customers turn for a specific craft; or you are building production, a global organization that provides a service that already includes a range of different crafts. It is important to answer all these questions to get an answer in principle, “Do you need to open production and does the market need your product?”
2. Starting a business is also a matter of investment
How to start a video production company? One of the first things you need to know about starting a video production company is that you need finances. You cannot grow your video production business without any investment. You need to understand how much investment will be required at the start and what to do: hire people, rent an office, or have some kind of “airbag” to calmly engage in business development. If there is no way to invest money, you need to think about how much time to invest – how much you need to work on a freelance, at McDonald’s, or in another production to earn your first capital. In such a case, everything will always rest on what exactly you will spend – money or time. Of course, time is more expensive.
3. The right path
Let’s talk about the right way of starting a production company. It would be wise to go to work in one video production, work there for a year, gain experience and knowledge, go to the second and then to the third. This will help gain a lot of connections, experience, and knowledge. In the fourth video production, you can go up the career ladder to pass through your leadership experience. On this path, you can find a business partner who understands that you have the knowledge, experience, and good knowledge.
This is how companies come from scratch, with experience and investments that can be acquired due to the fact that they have already acquired a large number of connections. Perfect production. Having worked in two or three companies, you can get not only connections from the industry but also a small base of contractors, especially if you behave environmentally in relation to the people with whom you have worked. Thus, you can even get a small flow of customers, which will initially allow you not to think about marketing and big investments. At this stage, it is important to learn to communicate – not only with potential and current customers but also with colleagues. Our market is a service market where communication is one of the most important skills.
4. Fears and risks
How to start a videography business? If you want to start your own film production company, you have to think about the risks. We did not think about what to do if all else fails. More precisely, six years ago, the solution was simple – we would just scatter, and everyone would do their own job. We did not get into debt and played on the field up to one hundred thousand. The risk of mistakes was much less because there were at least small projects that could cover financial problems. When you play in the millions, the risk of making a mistake and staying in debt is much higher. It’s impossible to just run away.
We are always in conditions of partial uncertainty. Some of our decisions are right at the crossroads – either it will work, or everything will fail, and there will be serious consequences. Perhaps at the beginning of the journey, we unconsciously made some decisions that could ruin our company, but, fortunately, this did not happen. Now we have become more conscious, although the risks are not reduced, we go to them with a full understanding of all the possible consequences.
5. Startup and trust
If you want to start your own production company, you need to establish trust. This is a big part of creating a production company. In part, we still consider ourselves a startup. Because we are still changing internally, we are still specifying products on the market, we are testing hypotheses and are still very mobile. The faster we are able to test hypotheses regarding everything – the market, products, interactions within, the faster we become a serious structure, the faster we will develop, and, for example, will enter the foreign market. If you don’t go to the very top and try to be number one, why start at all?
From the very beginning, we trusted each other. This can be risky, but trying to do something without trust is very difficult. Each of us has to think about a whole range of issues. If there is no opportunity to turn away somewhere and focus on something different, then moving at a great pace becomes almost impossible. We have built trust from the first project.
6. Equal contributions
Equal contribution to the project is a very big part of the start of a production company. If we talk about legal regulation between the co-founders, then we always think about this: you can save what you have by writing a bunch of contracts and regulations, but you can think about how to increase and not be afraid to lose what is now. Not the most cautious approach, we know.
We started from scratch, we had nothing. It wasn’t such that someone contributed two million to the business, while someone contributed 500 thousand. Of course, if at the very early stage, your business relationship begins with such investments, it is important to bond them with contracts. We had nothing, no investments, there was only time and working machines. What we have now – everything is deservedly equal.
If our life values cease to coincide with each other, then we will make some decision, otherwise, it will not work. To any employee whom we hire, we say that they can realize any of their goals within the company if they go in a common vector for production. We create a space where everyone can realize their ambitions that correlate with the goals of the company. If everyone is in the black and grows, then our paths will not diverge with any of the employees. The same thing happens in the management team.
7. The hardest part
Here’s the last thing about starting a movie company business. You should never open video production alone – it will be incredibly difficult for one on this battlefield. If your partner is not suitable, it is better to change them, but not be left alone. Yes, this is a matter of such a complicated thing as motivation. But when you give up, and this will happen more than once, unless there is someone nearby who will work, who you can look at and understand that you also need to work hard, it will be difficult. The chances of survival are greatly enhanced if you are not alone. There have been many difficulties over these seven years. But we simply do not see another way – we almost did not work on the “usual” work, changing our activities would be a huge stress. This stress forces one to overcome many difficulties.
From our own experience, we realized that solving the problem of yesterday, you do not move forward. We need to solve the problems of tomorrow. Everything is easy for someone, but you have time. This someone is resting, and you use this time to catch up and overtake them.