24 Hour Turn: How To Produce A Professional Video Production On A Tight Deadline

When traveling for a job like this, we like to have options. Our crew utilized everything from a high-end, large Sony XDCAM, to small EX 3’s. We also travel with plenty of GoPro’s to give us the kind of moving shots only a GoPro can. Of course, the more cameras you travel with, the more bags you have to check. Look for the airline with the best possible rates for checked gear. We like to fly Southwest and find them very friendly to people in the production business.

We chose this occasion to break out the new 15″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display for the first time. What we noticed first? The speed. The new solid state drive was an obvious upgrade from the start. Squeezing video took half as long as our other MacBooks – it just flies. On top of that, it’s an extremely thin notebook. It’s so light, we kept thinking we forgot to put it in our backpack.

Before getting on the plane, make sure you have a system in place between your video editors and graphics staff. We find it important to have the graphics team on site – this way they can attend our interview shoots and make sure every shot is optimal for post-production.
Plan out your shifts to make sure you’re getting as much productivity (and sleep) as possible. And when graphics and video need to be transferred back and forth, make sure you have the proper technology to do so. Our graphics artists connected their laptops through FireWire 800, and we had a small hard drive to transport graphics to the video editing station. Work with your team to come up with a plan that works best – but make sure you have a plan!

This kind of goes along with the camera section, but think about what you need to bring to your location before you go. For example, on this trip, we needed a few nine foot long white paper rolls for our interview sets. Instead of traveling with them and worrying about damage, we found a vendor in the area. This saves us money (and headaches) in the long run.