Quiet on the Set: Lights, Cameras, Action !
Last week during my flight from Amsterdam to Barcelona I was sitting in between a Dutch TV-crew, on their way for a TV-shooting in Spain. While talking to the director who was sitting next to me, it amazed me how many people are involved in a TV-crew. And, how much their work is actually similar to ours in business.
Just to give you a flavor what kinds of roles are involved in shooting a movie, here is a list of different functionalities involved:
Pre-production: Casting director, Costume designer, Director, Location manager, Make-up artist, Production designer, Researcher, Set designer, Television producer, Writer, Head writer, Screenwriter, Story editor
Production: Boom operator, Camera operator/cinematographer/videographer, Character generator operator/Aston/Duet operator, Floor manager, Graphics coordinator, Stage manager, Gaffer, Grip (job), Gallery/control room team, Production manager, Production assistant, Runner, Stunt coordinator, Technical director, Television director – director, Video control operator/vision engineering, Video tape operator, Vision mixer
Post-production: Colorist, Composer, Editor, Foley artist, Post-production runner, Publicist, Sound editor, Title sequence designer
Specialist editors: ADR editor, Bluescreen director/matte Artist, effects coordinator
That’s quite an extensive list, isn’t? The crew I was talking to was not that big but for one day shooting in Spain they still were with a group of seven. During our conversation we were discussing the parallels between business and TV-making. In all events it all starts with your objective; what do you want to achieve? What is the story I am going to tell? How am I going to tell that story? As with every story, you will have a beginning, a middle and an end. How will these three different parts be interlinked? Will my viewer grasp the meaning of my messages? Will I be able to keep my audience intrigued enough or will they tune off (literally in the case of a real TV program). What will be your back-up plan when things are not going as planned? All kinds of questions both people in business and in TV-making should ask themselves.
Let’s take this parallel a bit further and see how this would work in real business life. Imagine you and your commercial team are working on a sales approach towards a certain prospect in your field of business. Again you start with an objective, right? What do you want to achieve with this certain prospect? What team members need to be involved? Do you need a “producer”, ”a camera man”, “an editor”, etc.? How will you approach this prospect? What steps do we need to take to take them to the final shot? Will we need to use any cliffhangers to get them really interested? But even before that, what will be your message? And even before that, what is the value proposition you will have available for this prospect? What do we really have to offer them that will add value in his or her view? When talking to larger companies, you might want to take one of the prized ideas that TV-makers are using on a daily basis; work in a team, create scripts and make usage of story boards. Before you reach out to any prospect, build your own (internal) team, use story boards, create a script so everybody is on the same page how to approach this prospect and build in contingency plans before you do anything else.
The next time you start working on a prospect or customer sales plan you might want to consider what roles you want to involve. Pre-production; before we actually start, who needs to be involved defining our objectives and whom should help creating our value proposition? Most likely this can involve strategic marketing, business development, sales persons involved and the business owner of the account. How about production? These are basically the individuals involved that will be part of the delivery of your value proposition to this specific prospect. (And the actual implementation or supply of whatever we sell to them). This will mostly likely involve again the sales person looking after this account but this can also involve product marketers, sales support people, colleagues from operations, sales directors, etc. All depending on the size of the prospect and what you would like to achieve. Now let’s assume the forming of your (internal) team has paid off, your script worked just fine and your story boarding has helped you to achieve your objective. You have won the contract with this prospect and your team can start with the implementation or delivery of the product! Great job and all kudos to you! But who will be part of the post-production phase? You might want to think about that as well. In this case you could involve your sales support colleagues perhaps, your service team, your application specialists for frequent reviewing the result of the implementation of your solution, your manager for semi half year reviews at the customer, etc. The final role to play is for thespecialist editor. This role could be fulfilled by your strategic marketing colleague, your marketing communications colleague, your sales director or for instance by your VP business development. This team will review the value proposition you created, your script and the story boarding that was used for this prospect and will assess what fine-tuning is needed for similar cases and what could and should be improved. After all, you strive for success and ambitious hit rates no matter if it is for higher viewer ratings for your TV-show or for achieving your commercial objectives. Be prepared, have fun and; Quiet on the Set: Lights, Cameras, Action !
