I had a client come to me for their conference video a few months back. They'd worked with another videographer the previous year, and showed me their work: it wasn't dog shit exactly, but it wasn't good. It was organic dog food - digestible, but leaves you questioning why you consumed it in the first place.
"We want something similar in format but just... better."
It struck me then that it's all good and well saying 'check your videographers' previous work before hiring', but a lot of folk don't really know what they're looking for. Well, fear not, because you've come across this post. Lucky you! Here goes:
👉 Audio quality: have a really good listen to the sound when they're interviewing the CMO on the busy conference floor. Is there a lot of background noise? Is it easy to understand them? Turn the subtitles off, ask yourself that again. Does their voice sound a little bit flat? This probably means noise reduction has had to be used to reduce the background noise - a good event videographer will have the equipment and know-how to make sure that's not necessary.
👉 Noise: look at the darker bits of the video. Is it noisy? By which I mean, does it look like TV from the 80s? If so, the camera and lens they were using wasn't up to the job of getting great images in situations with lower light - and lower light can mean 'perfect light to see, but not as bright as a professionally lit shoot'.
👉 Shot selection: are there quite a few shots where you're wondering what the point is? If there's speech in the video, are the visuals being used to demonstrate, expand on and emphasise what's being said, or is it just a random selection of images to keep your eyeballs occupied? A great event videographer will know what they need to shoot, why, and how to use each shot in the edit.
👉 Finally, and most importantly: do you like it? What did you feel watching it? Were you bored at any point? Do you know what they were trying to communicate? Did they communicate that effectively? Do you feel excited about the event they were shooting? Do you feel like the people at the event were excited, inspired, enjoying themselves? Ask yourself all these subjective questions and listen to your gut.
Hiring an experienced event videographer, with a solid body of high quality previous work, is the ONLY way to ensure you end up not with a bowl of organic dog food, but a hot pan full of gratin daupinois, like I did last night.
(Yes I know dauphinois doesn't traditionally have cheese, but that's a bad tradition)
DuPage County Board Member
4moLove the video❤️❤️🔥🔥