If you’ve ever wondered how these advertising agencies and production companies get away with charging more than $100,000 for a 30-second Instagram video shot on an iPhone, I’m about to tell you. 

Creative development is one of those “budget black holes” in the production process. We don’t charge enough for it, clients don’t want to pay for it, and we spend way too much time doing it. 

At the end of 2023, I got burned out on producing. A few stressful projects in a row left me feeling overwhelmed by the idea of dealing with clients and crew, and I didn’t work on a major production for four months. 

We try to focus on everything: making good work, and making a lot of money, and treating our clients well, and finding work-life balance, and having a good brand. When we focus on all of it, we aren’t really swinging that hard at any of it.

Saturation is a budgeting software—specifically for video productions. And it is genuinely...incredible.

I’ve produced online courses for half a dozen different solo creators in the past. Full Time Filmmaker blows them out of the water. It has 10x more lessons than the biggest course I ever produced.

What on earth is a production fee and how can you start charging one for your video or photo business? How do you explain a production fee to your clients? Won’t they get mad?

You know the difference you can make for someone’s project in a day, or even just a few hours. Yet we have a hard time believing other creatives could do the same for us. This is walking. This is the left foot and the right foot of commanding larger budgets for your projects: invest in quality, then get more money.

I was having lunch with a friend who me if I wanted to start producing narrative pieces. I’ve produced a ton of commercials, but I haven’t produced anything narrative. I told her no. Two weeks after that, I produced my first narrative short film for Fuel the Fire Film Fest.

Switching between tabs and triangulating tasks is exhilarating. It feels like you’re in a space ship command center, shouting orders, shooting down bogeys, mapping a new course all at once. Except it’s a surefire strategy to burn out–quick.

Uh oh. There was a hiccup. Plans changed. Someone forgot the skateboard. Whatever it is, here’s my three step process to deal with changing plans on a video shoot.

As a producer, you need to be consistently moving tasks and vendors and bookings forward, every chance you have, in order to get the production ready in time. There’s no time to get lost in a doom-scroll session because you didn’t take breaks. 

My favorite place to find locations for videos is through Peerspace. Peerspace is like Airbnb, but for film locations. People can list their homes, studios, bars, offices, or open fields as locations for rent on Peerspace.

I have a friend who is getting into production. He’s gaining the skills to be a good producer. But he hasn’t produced a shoot entirely on his own yet. And therein lies the predicament.

Is it going to work out? Is everything going to be ok? Is this project going to get finished? These are all valid questions, especially when you’re producing a video shoot for the first time. Or the second, third, and even tenth time.

Sending notes to an editor is an integral part of the video-making process, but it’s difficult to convey exactly what’s in your head. Videos are visual, and words only go so far to explain your vision. I’ve found five best practices that help clients get the video they want without exasperating their editors.

If you’re always pushing the envelope, you’re always stressed about whether you can pull it off. You’re never in the moment, because you’ve never done it before.

One of my lights burnt a hole through a silk. Not the best look. But, I had fun and the other people on set seemed to enjoy working with me. Over the next few months, I received 2 or 3 messages trying to hire me as a gaffer on other sets.

Anyone can be a commercial producer if they can communicate clearly and make decisions efficiently.  Time is only on your side if you use it, so get to work on finding a crew and a location as soon as you can. 

If you’re producing a creative project, there are a thousand ways to get it done. For a while, these decisions paralyzed me. That was until I saw a funny meme.