Best Practice Timelines for Live Action Production

You Have Good Intentions

You planned sufficient time for creating your online video. Unfortunately, you ran behind on approving the final concept, and the production calendar was squeezed. It was never your intent to get behind schedule. It just happened…

So This Happened…

• The preferred directors were all booked, so you were stuck with who was available.
• Your agency said, “Because we’re in a hurry, we don’t have time to triple-bid this job,” and you lost all the advantages of competitive bidding (which can save 10%-20% of the production company’s costs).
• You needed to find the right talent with very little time, so you held casting in 3 different cities, which built in a waste factor of 66% for casting expenditures.
• You needed color-corrected packages and paid a premium of 50%-100% because of the rushed schedule.
• Extra props and wardrobe were bought. (“I don’t know which she’ll like better, the yellow or the blue. Get ’em both.”)
• Extra setups were shot, and scenes were overproduced. You heard people on-set say, “We’ll fix it in post-production.”
• Post-production and retouching costs escalated by 50% due to “fixes” that were needed.

Why waste up to 25% of your budget on rushed production when those same dollars can be used for additional assets or media? Follow these best practice timelines to ensure success.

90% of Rush Production Can Be Avoided

Carefully review your advertising plans. Producing a spot for TV?

• Starting point. Keep in the 8 weeks as a baseline (include additional weeks for global campaigns and/or special effects).
• Extra time. Include extra weeks for creative development, copy testing & research analysis, management approvals, and legal review.
• Create deadlines. Then, keep the pressure on agency partners and suppliers — and your internal teams — to stick to them.

Brands all over the world struggle with the costly ramifications of rushing production. With MRA, you don’t have to be one of them.