First, let me say that there no implied criticism of the salon owner. I request that there is no criticism, trolling or contacting her (unless you want to book a facial).
This started with a friend of the salon owner asking if I would help with making some video’s. In the salon there is a screen playing different promotional video’s, and she wanted to replace them with her own video’s, but following a similar style.
Over the course of a days videoing, I ended up with 8-9 hours of raw footage from three camera’s.
The salon owner wanted several 10 minute video’s that she could show on Facebook, and have on rotation on her salon screen.
What I am interested in knowing is how I could better handle it. Should I just get a more detailed brief of what she wanted, and just make it, or make less/more steps for approval.
I won’t include all steps, because some were very minor changes.
1: Check that this layout was suitable and the style of background music was fine
Except where mentioned, the salon owner was happy with each step.
2: Make a start/spash screen
3: Add a title to the splash screen
At this point she said she didn’t like the pink colour scheme, so I made several different video’s of different colour schemes until we settled on the grey background with black text.
4: Approved colour scheme.
I made a couple more test video’s but that was just for checking the positioning of video within the viewport for each camera. I then made a full 10 minute video. I realise there was a transition error, and viewport position error, but they would be easy to correct in the final edit.
The salon owner was to give me the text that I would display below the viewport which I would add along with the audio.
After she watched this, she wasn’t happy, saying that because I wasn’t a skin professional, I wasn’t showing the procedure correctly with too much emphasis on the preparatory massage.
She has now asked that I teach her how to do video editing, so she can do it herself. I told her that I am happy to show her how I do it, and the tools that I use, so that may be the next step although I don’t imagine she will have the time to do that.
My question, is how do other video makers take their brief from their client. Is it as open-ended as I made it, or do they have a scene by scene breakdown before they start, or somewhere in between. I am keen to learn more, and do more, but in a more organised manner that meets the clients expectations.
As I said at the beginning, this isn’t a criticism of the salon owner. I need to improve what I do, so that there is a more clear scope before I start. I appreciate any criticism and suggestions towards my work and what I should do to improve.
To be clear, this isn’t paid work, it is something that I enjoy, and maybe do more of in the future.