Top 5 Cost-Saving Tips for Healthcare Video Projects

27 Nov Top 5 Cost-Saving Tips for Healthcare Video Projects

A manager at a health system we work with recently asked me to do a presentation to her team of communicators on cost-saving tips for healthcare video projects. They wanted to plan more doctor bio videos, patient testimonial videos, and medical service line videos, but worried about budgets. She asked me to share best practices for organizing a video project that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. After that presentation, and the feedback it received, I realized this information could help any of our clients or partners. Here are my top cost-saving tips for your next video project:

Engage the Video Team Early

Getting your video partner on board from the beginning can greatly enhance the creative, logistical and budgetary success of a video project. Develop a plan and strategy, well before the first shoot, so you can work together to keep cost in check at every step of the production process. Our team likes to suggest ways to streamline a project, when possible, so you can get the most out of your investment. The earlier we’re brought in, the better we can help with that. This pre-production phase is also a good time to talk about multi-purposing the video content. Often, a video that starts as an event video, for instance, can then be used (either as-is, or slightly amended) for many other purposes. It could be used as a web video, social media content, sent to referral partners etc. The more mileage you eventually get, the more value that initial video brings. Here’s more information about the main things we’ll want to know as we embark on a new project together.

Get Stakeholder Buy-In

Once you’ve developed your specific video plan, share it far and wide. The video projects that’ve gone the most sideways (and over budget) in my career are the ones that proceeded without those “at the top” giving their full blessing. There’s nothing more frustrating, or expensive, than getting deep into a video project, only to find that someone doesn’t agree with the approach. Do yourself a favor and send a detailed creative brief to whomever will need to approve your video(s). Include the basics such as audience, messaging, who’ll be in the video, the b-roll the video will contain etc. Get a written “thumbs up” before proceeding, at least in email form. We’ve found the land mines to be things such as “Why wasn’t So-and-So included in the video?” Then we have to schedule a shoot day to add that person and then produce and edit them in. If we had the video plan pre-approved, we could have caught that early and included the person in the initial shoot without any extra cost. Taking time to make sure the powers-that-be are on board will save you headaches, time and money.

Bundle the Shoots

Our video production company, like most, charges by the shoot day. So, if you hire us one shoot day for some interviews, another shoot day for more interviews, then another shoot day for b-roll, you’d basically be paying triple what you could if you’d scheduled the interviews and b-roll all on the same day. We know it can be challenging to work with the schedules of busy providers and patients. But when you can organize shoots into the minimum number of shoot days, you get more bang for your buck. Many projects still require multiple shoot days, but bundling things together is an effective way to keep costs in check. We’ve found this scheduling step to be so important to our clients that our team recently added scheduling services as one of our pre-production “burdens” that we help shoulder.

Get Approval Before Each Step

Just like getting stakeholder buy-in at the beginning, it’s good to get approval at key steps along the way. For instance, before the first edit, have stakeholders look at the script to be sure everything’s still heading in the right direction. Changing things at this script level is pretty easy. However, re-doing an entire edit to make a script-level change takes a lot more time and, therefore, money. Simple things like getting approval on a list of names and titles, before they’re edited into a video, can potentially save hours of billable editing time. 

Don’t Ask for “Feedback”

Instead of asking for feedback when sending a video around for final approval, ask for change requests or approval. It may seem like semantics, but how you say it matters. When people are asked for feedback, they feel the need to say “something.” They search for things on which to give their opinion. But if you ask for change requests, or final approval, they’ll only tell you things they feel must be changed. So, ask for specific changes, gather those together, be sure everyone has turned in their requests (“Speak now, or forever hold your peace!”) and then send one vetted, confirmed set of change requests to your video team. This’ll keep the back-and-forth rounds of changes to a minimum. That not only helps projects get completed on time, but also on budget.

In a subjective, creative process such as video production, it’s normal to have changes. We expect that, and we factor it into our time and budget estimates. Clear communication, at each step along the way, keeps those changes from becoming expensive ones. 

Our goal is to take the pain out of video projects, including financial pain. It can be done! Try these cost-saving tips for video projects. They come from more than a dozen years of experience guiding our clients through projects that don’t break the bank. Reach out if we can help!