4 Stages of Production You can be involved as much or as little as you like in the production. Some clients want minimal involvement. After the appropriate briefings they just want us to go away and do it and deliver a finished product for their approval. Other clients like a much more hands on approach and prefer to be closely involved at every stage. Indeed they thoroughly enjoy the creative challenges and new experiences that arise in the production process. We're happy to work either way. It's your call.   When making a video program there are 4 distinct stages in the production process -

1. Script Development
2. The Shoot
3. Post-production to Finished Master
4. DVD authoring, Dubbing and Distribution

Here's a brief summary of the main elements of each stage;

1. Script Development.

This is where we sit down with you and work out exactly what you want to say and to whom you want to say it. We know how valuable your time is and so we always aim for an efficient, no-nonsense approach to script development. One or two meetings is often enough to define your target audience and identify your communication objectives. We then go off and develop the specific content for your program which culminates in a first draft script. We then toss this around making changes based on your feedback until we get it right. More complex projects sometimes require a number of drafts of the script but usually a second draft is enough to enable us to proceed to the next stage of production.

2. The Shoot.

We only proceed to the shoot after your approval of the script so that you can be confident that what is getting shot is exactly what you wanted. The length of the shoot, of course, can vary greatly from project to project. Most corporate videos are shot inside a week.

Consistent with our flexible approach to production, as outlined earlier, you can choose to be as involved or uninvolved as you want in the shoot. We find that most clients have at least one representative of the company on location during a shoot.

3. Post-production to Finished Master.

This is an exciting phase of the project - it is when you finally get to see on the screen this thing that has, up till now, only been words on paper. With graphics, titles, music and narration all mixed in the program is suddenly a living reality. As with the development of the script there are usually two or three "drafts", or more accurately, "cuts" made before the project is signed off. After your final approval we are ready to go to the next and final stage of the production. Once again you can choose your level of involvement in the post-production process although we find that most clients consider the long hours of editing a bit arduous and prefer just to see the finished cuts as they arrive.

4. DVD Authoring, Dubbing & Distribution.

The final stage of production is distribution. There are an enormous range of possibilities now available for getting the program to your intended audience. The good old days when you simply ran off a thousand or so VHS dubs are long gone (although still available if required). More often these days you'll want the program delivered on DVD and/or encoded for some form of webcasting. Whatever your requirements Parham Media Productions can deliver.

The most common delivery medium is DVD. These can range from straight dubs that work pretty much like the old VHS tape - just put it in the machine, dim the lights and hit 'play' on the remote. Distribution copies can be done in any quantity from 1 to 1 million (or more)!

DVD's can also be 'authored' which opens up vistas of new possibilities ranging from the adding of menus to the integration of other other resources such as PDF documents into the package. Multiple versions of the program can be included on the one DVD, you can have sub-titles, CSS encryption can be added to protect your material from copying, pretty much anything you see on a commercially available DVD can be done. Naturally we can also handle the artwork and printing for the DVD sleeves and the DVD surface label and, finally, offer a range of DVD cases with shrink wrapping giving you a fully professional and commercial end product.