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The rise of video creation
Video is an increasingly powerful medium for creatives in the marketing and advertising industry. This growing potential is fuelled both by dynamic video creation tools and the huge audiences that are available to brands through their phones and other video-enabled devices.
Yet there’s no doubt that the process involved presents significant challenges. Often cumbersome and time-consuming, files can still take hours to download, review, edit and share. This has created an efficiency crisis in video creation that if overcome will unlock significant time, resource, and cost savings.
Across the pages that follow, we’ll explore video creation in greater detail, talking with leading creatives and decision-makers to discover more about the key challenges and opportunities.
In light of these insights, we’ll also show how software such as Frame.io, Adobe’s integrated video collaboration platform, has the potential to transform the feedback, editing review, and approval process.
Speaking directly to creative directors, influencer marketing experts, motion graphic artists, video producers, and directors, we consider the issues involved through four lenses: the challenges facing creative decision-makers; the practical elements that can make the creative process more efficient; the benefits unleashed by greater collaboration; and the growing importance of a sustainable approach. This increased focus on sustainability is particularly relevant given the potential of review and approval software to boost the efficiency of the video creation process and reduce the carbon footprint involved.
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Brands are creating video in a vast array of formats that inform and entertain a wide range of audiences. This means that established practices are evolving constantly and that there’s a rising need to collaborate with a whole range of people to achieve the best results. It’s essential, then, to be aware of the challenges before assessing the opportunities.
Complex process
Speaking to leading creatives in the space, it soon becomes clear that video creation is often a complex process. Many people are involved in making decisions, from the ultimate decision-maker, the client holding the budget, through to agency and production teams, and freelance creatives. The collaboration and feedback process consequently brings its own challenges in terms of being potentially cumbersome and inefficient. Creatives are often missing out and not getting what they need in terms of collaborating with others.
Mal Sobczak, Senior Art Director at Ultra Brand Studio, works in a business that specialises in both creative and brand strategy, and is a hands-on user of video creation tools. She says: “Feedback over email gets lost. People put in the wrong kinds of time stamps, they comment on old versions. It’s a bit manic sometimes. If it’s five different people on the client side, we get five different emails. So, it can be hard.”
However, this manual consolidation of feedback from multiple stakeholders is now firmly in the past thanks to software such as Frame.io.
The situation can remain confusing when the people involved are using a whole range of systems and software to provide feedback. Mohamed Hussein, Motion Graphic Artist at creative agency Keko Dubai, has collaborated on recent video projects for Porsche. He says: “We can’t always write down what we need - we need to send a voice note or have a quick call. But the most important thing is to share our references, which is what I’ve found hard. We sometimes jump on WhatsApp, or on Teams or emails.”
Hussein argues that this leads to frustrations when sharing feedback because the back and forward of opinions, and then working through new edits, proves to be “messy”.
Agonies of scale
At times video creation requires a quick turnaround. But more commonly, creative leaders talk about a process spanning a matter of weeks, or months, embracing many different layers and stakeholders. These larger projects require greater levels of collaboration and potentially leave more room for confusion through the editing and feedback process.
Ian Flynn is the Executive Creative Director at RocketMill, the UK-based digital marketing agency, and as a creative leader has worked with advertisers including Huggies and National Geographic.
Flynn explains the potential layers of the video creation process on larger projects: “You end up having a collection of people on video feedback calls, and all have slightly different responsibilities. That’s tricky because it becomes a communication challenge. As the creative directors, we’re looking at the video and going ‘that bit needs changing’. But we’re not necessarily looking at who owns that bit and whose responsibility it is to get it done. I don’t know if that’s a process challenge or a tech challenge, but I think that tech could probably help with that.”
Global consistency
Client organisations, agencies and production companies are becoming increasingly global, with their people working and collaborating across multiple markets and time zones. This presents clear challenges when it comes to video creation, sharing assets, and streamlining feedback because stakeholders are in a whole variety of places and working at different times.
Davide Bianca is the Chief Creative Officer at BCN Visuals, the global business renowned for creating animated 3D billboards. Based in the US, Bianca has a strong perspective on the requirement for a seamless global process because BCN was founded in Spain and has a HQ in Barcelona.
Bianca says: “We work around the clock, through rolling time zones. Before I go to bed, basically, I will make sure I brief the European team so that they know for the next six hours the direction they need to develop. Then when I get up, I review and then I pick it up and go forward on the US time zone with the US team.”
“You end up having a collection of people on video feedback calls, and all have slightly different responsibilities. That’s tricky because it becomes a communication challenge.”
Ian Flynn, RocketMill
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As we’ve seen, the collaboration, review and approval process raises significant challenges throughout the various stages of video creation. However, creatives are turning increasingly to software that makes arriving at the final edit far more integrated, collaborative and painless. Here we’ll consider some of the benefits of the platforms used currently, and discuss how they’re selected and deployed to ease the path towards high standards of video creativity.
Increased efficiency
Implementing this software helps to streamline collaboration by providing one central hub to share video content and other media. This also tracks feedback, and then provides a clear workflow for everyone involved in the process to follow. There’s potential here to generate time and budget efficiencies by making the creation process less cumbersome and feedback more easily understood, and centralised. Generally, these solutions are intuitive and relatively easy-to-use, removing the need for any tech training. Frame.io’s app, for instance, requires minimal learning due to its simple and intuitive user interface.
Brit Phelan is a director and photographer (Brit Phelan Enterprise), creating film and social media content that involves collaborating with video creators all over the world. Recent projects include a campaign for sports brand Puma that involved complexity due to the involvement of four celebrities.
As a user of video creation tools, Phelan says that there are clear benefits to software that integrates all aspects of the process: “What I’m looking for as a creative is the simplest workflow so that I don’t have to spend a million hours on figuring out how I’m going to make things look. The tools just work for me, and I think that streamlining allows me to create more and better things because I’m not putting all that energy towards not creating.”
Review and approval software is not used for all tasks in some creative businesses. For instance, Beckii Flint, Director, Head of Marketing and Communications, and Co-Founder at influencer marketing agency Pepper Studio, has tended to share content through non-specialist software such as Google Drive.
However, as a business decision-maker, on top of being an experienced influencer and creator in her own right, she can see the benefits offered by the latest platforms: “We’re a service business, so being as streamlined and efficient as possible is really key to that. Anything that we can do to save time is really important.”
Widespread adoption
Traditionally, teams working on video creation were dependent on a patchwork of tools to support collaboration and feedback. However, the range and functionality of review and approval software has moved forward to the degree that there is more widespread adoption among agencies, production companies, their clients and freelance partners.
Ian Flynn at RocketMill says that while his business is happy to be flexible and work with software such as Dropbox and Google Drive, it actively encourages partners in the video creation process to embrace review and approval software. He adds: “Most of our freelancers use Frame.io in a video context. If they don’t, we would probably say to them that it’s a lot easier than an email.”
Demand for new features
When deciding whether to adopt new software in the video creation process, creatives argue that the introduction of novel, more sophisticated, features would really help them to commit to the investment. Demand is especially high for the ability to add a greater number of graphical elements more easily (such as the possibility of dropping in client logos), and tools that move beyond manual uploading of assets, which can become very time consuming when this involves hundreds of edits.
Mal Sobczak at Ultra Brand Studio adds that greater flexibility in the software to enable creative people to express themselves, and to provide feedback, visually would provide a real step forward. She says: “When I feed back to editors, it’s better for me to scamp it out, to do a slight storyboard rather than writing comments like ‘use this kind of face, not this one’.”
“When I feed back to editors, it’s better for me to scamp it out, to do a slight storyboard rather than writing comments like ‘use this kind of face, not this one’.”
Mal Sobczak, Ultra Brand Studio
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The advantages of seamless collaboration are clear to see in terms of efficiencies, and the potential to make life easier. But in the video creation process, assisted by review and approval software, this collaborative spirit can also lead to better creative results and higher levels of client satisfaction with the final outcome.
Better creativity
Our leading creatives argue that connecting with talent, such as freelance artists, musicians, and animators outside of agencies and production companies has never been more important. They also indicate that collaboration with clients and with colleagues in their own organisations is a vital part of creative success for a brand and that useful, easy-to-use tools for sharing of ideas lead to better standards in video creation. Pepper Studio’s Beckii Flint also believes that “greater diversity of thought” is an important outcome.
Mohammed Hussein at Keko Dubai points out that it’s easier for freelancers and other partners outside of agency and client organisations to feel involved in the creative process when better connected. This came to life with the agency’s ‘Drive2Extremes’ campaign for Porsche, featuring a collaboration with drone filmmaker JohnnyFPV. Hussein says: “You’re going to artists and freelancers because you want to do something totally new. You can do something out-of-the-box and no-one will blame you.”
Davide Bianca says that creative debate at BCN Visuals is more dynamic thanks to the features offered by review and approval software such as Frame.io: “The brainstorming element or creative discussion aspect of the collaborative tool incentivises creativity and sparks imagination. It really allows people to riff off each other and go back and forth. Even supporting happy accidents - things that you weren’t planning on doing but happen fluidly and organically in the conversation.”
“The brainstorming element or creative discussion aspect of the collaborative tool incentivises creativity and sparks imagination. It really allows people to riff off each other and go back and forth.”
Davide Bianca, BCN Visuals
Raised client satisfaction
A higher level of client satisfaction is an especially powerful business benefit that emerges from greater levels of collaboration. This co-operation leads to better outcomes and, in turn, those spending on advertising are happier with the results both creatively and in terms of saving time and budget. Creatives argue that review and approval software can play an important role in achieving this.
Ultra Brand Studio’s Mal Sobczak adds: “We don’t overspend the budget on additional rounds of feedback; we hit our deadlines so we don’t delay anything for the client and for us. All the parties are happy, that’s the most important thing.”
There’s even the possibility of bringing a project in under budget, with the potential to invest savings into better creative standards: “We can spend that on additional things, or give more money to the editors for retouches. Overall, we’ll get more work from clients if the project is successful.”
An additional benefit to this efficiency is that it makes the process more sustainable. Solutions such as Frame.io’s Camera to Cloud removes the need to move hard drives and people around the world.
This allows stakeholders to attend shoots without travel, and accelerates the production process on-set by enabling collaboration. These factors decrease carbon footprint by a significant figure.
The excitement around video creation has reached new levels, and the potential for brands is constantly evolving thanks to amazing creative ideas combined with technology that is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
It’s also evident that creative people face challenges in achieving the best possible outcomes, not least in the editing and feedback process. Collaboration is an essential and valuable part of video creation and, as we’ve heard from leading creatives, forward-thinking review and approval software is capable of unlocking a new frame of mind that will lead to a more collaborative and sustainable future.
Creatives forecast that the revolutionary change we’re witnessing, due to AI solutions and associated technology, will only accelerate. So, it’s never been more important to grasp the opportunities available to make video creation a fluid and seamless process.
In this context, Frame.io is leading the next generation of video collaboration. It also connects seamlessly with other Adobe Creative Cloud tools and services, providing a full scalable platform complete with advanced security features.
If you’re interested in discovering more about seamless, integrated video collaboration, click the link below.
CLOSER CREATIVE COLLABORATION
Now's the time
The excitement around video creation has reached new levels, and the potential for brands is constantly evolving thanks to amazing creative ideas combined with technology that is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
It’s also evident that creative people face challenges in achieving the best possible outcomes, not least in the editing and feedback process. Collaboration is an essential and valuable part of video creation and, as we’ve heard from leading creatives, forward-thinking review and approval software is capable of unlocking a new frame of mind that will lead to a more collaborative and sustainable future.
Creatives forecast that the revolutionary change we’re witnessing, due to AI solutions and associated technology, will only accelerate. So, it’s never been more important to grasp the opportunities available to make video creation a fluid and seamless process.
In this context, Frame.io is leading the next generation of video collaboration. It also connects seamlessly with other Adobe Creative Cloud tools and services, providing a full scalable platform complete with advanced security features.
If you’re interested in discovering more about seamless, integrated video collaboration, click the link below.