Josh Burdick

Oct 28 2020

Introducing Studio V: Meeting Space & Soundstage

Veritas Media has been located in the heart of Bellingham, WA for nearly five years. Last year we invested in moving into a new space on Cornwall Ave to give us more room to grow and to serve our clients better. We planned a big ribbon cutting in April but, you know, COVID happened and our plans changed.

So, today I’d like to share with you some of the highlights of our new space and how it has been carefully designed to meet your needs for more efficient video production, live streaming and other virtual events.

In the Heart of Downtown Bellingham

We’re located just across the street from the newly renovated Hotel Leo and steps away from all kinds of coffee shops, breweries and restaurants. We’ve got fantastic food neighbors like Sage Against the Machine, El Capitans, Baby Greens, Evolve Chocolates, and Vinestrology (all right on our block!)

Welcoming. Versatile. Professional.

Soundstage

Our soundstage is optimized for virtual events and professional recording. It has all of the amenities you’d expect of a professional studio, and our turnkey solutions help to save you the extra costs of having our team go on-location (though we can do that too!). The recording space also offers better control over the audio and visual components of your video content.

Are you producing a virtual event? We can help with both live-streamed and pre-produced events. Learn about the difference between live streaming and pre-produced here.

Soundstage Amenities include:

High-Speed internet connection to support your live stream and all other devices needed to monitor your event
Professional lighting, audio, and backdrops
Professional teleprompter + 4K cameras
Bathroom/changing room
Kitchenette with refrigerator
Use of the storefront lobby with a 75” TV to monitor your event
Comfortable and practical workspaces to facilitate off-camera work
Complimentary bottled water and snacks

Examples of the end results filmed at Studio V (more available on request):

Meeting Space:

Our professional and convenient meeting space is perfect for board meetings, conferences, seminars and break out rooms. It features a versatile room with high ceilings, natural daylight, and professional multimedia capabilities. Choose from a variety of seating configurations, and bring in your choice of catering.

Meeting Space Amenities

High-Speed WiFi internet
75″ TV to use as a display for presentation/video conferencing
Bathroom/changing room
Kitchenette with refrigerator
Tables, linens and folding chairs (set-up included in rental)
Complimentary bottled water and snacks

COVID Restrictions

During Phase 2 we’re offering the room for rent for up to 10 people (our max occupancy is normally 48). For events hosted during the pandemic, we require all guests to sign a logbook and maintain social distancing and mask-wearing for the entirety of the gathering. Meeting duration is also limited to 2 hours.

Booking information and pricing can be found here.

Interested in checking out Studio V?

We love giving tours and would be happy to show you around! Our physical space is open by appointment only and we follow all recommended guidelines to ensure that your visit with us is safe. Reach out to us on our contact page and we’ll get something scheduled!

Oct 20 2020

Live streaming vs. Premiered Virtual Events

If you had any event, conference, gala, or auction scheduled in 2020 or 2021 you’re no doubt looking at different options for continuing to put on a meaningful and successful event. We’ve seen and studied a lot of virtual events over the last 9 months and we’ve learned a lot.

One of the biggest decisions you will need to make in planning your virtual event is if you want your event to be live streamed or a scheduled and pre-produced program that premieres at a specific time. Both have advantages and disadvantages and I’ll walk through both options below.

What is live streaming?

Live streaming is essentially video content not previously recorded that is broadcast out in real-time to an online audience. Organizations in every industry are turning to live streaming to reach more of their audiences. Live streaming of church services, auctions, conferences, seminars, fundraisers and company meetings are among the biggest users of live streaming.

There are a lot of ways that viewers engage with live streaming, but the most popular platforms are YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo. Each platform offers its own set of features and it’s possible to send the same stream out to multiple platforms at a time (this is called simulcasting).

Many people are familiar with Facebook Live and the experience of “going live” from a mobile device. In the professional event world, virtual event producers have access to a wider range of tools (software and hardware) that allow for professional cameras and audio to be used. These tools also allow for the use of pre-produced video content that can be queued up to play during the live stream.

Benefits of live streaming

Higher level of trust: The biggest advantage of live streaming is that you’re presenting yourself or your company in the moment. Doing so results in a highly authentic and “natural” experience for your viewers.
Engage your audience in real-time: When you live stream you can tap into other tools beyond streaming audio and video to increase audience interaction. Features like live chat, polling, Q&A, auction portals, breakout rooms or watch parties all add an interactive element to your event and give you instant insight into how your audience is responding to the content you create.
Reach more people than traditional in-person events: no longer is your event limited to the people in your geographical region that can physically attend your event. If you do good work in marketing and promoting your live streamed event, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy larger audience. The more novel and exclusive the event
It’s impressive: a well executed live streamed event will leave your audience feeling like they got incredible value and enjoyment out of what they just watched—that it was an experienced tailored for them where they’re at.
Boost for auctions and fundraisers: Live streaming works well when you have another activity like an auction happening in real time. While

Drawbacks to live streaming

You’ve got one shot: In live streaming there are no re-dos, you get what you get and if their are flubs in your emcee or auctioneer’s performance, you have to roll with it.
Audience Attendance: Your audience may be limited and many live stream events have lower than desired turnout. Your event will be competing for your audience’s attention, time and schedule. You can produce the best looking live stream in the world, but if that new Netlix series drops at the same time, the Seahawks are playing, or it’s an incredibly nice evening you might have trouble getting people to sit down to watch your event. If you go the live stream route, make sure you have a plan to promote the event early and often to ensure the highest attendance possible.
Cost: Live streaming is often more expensive than other forms of video production. Going live requires a full dedicated team to make sure that nothing is missed and that your event goes off without a hitch. It also requires rehearsal time and more work on planning to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Quality: Live streaming in re-time requires that the video feed be compressed quickly to send out to viewers. Most streaming platforms stream in 720p — this is certainly quality enough to enjoy the experience, but if you compare the live stream video with the same content that isn’t live streamed the picture quality will be much higher (HD or 4K video resolution and far less compression)
Latency: another drawback to live streaming is that not everyone in your audience will have the same experience viewing the event. The biggest performance issue with live streaming events is what is know as “latency”—the time delay from when the subject on camera says something and when the viewer actually sees it. Latency makes it difficult to have any kind of precise audience interaction (e.g., bidding on live auction items). Most of the time you can expect there to be anywhere between 2 and 20-seconds of latency in a live stream.

Examples of live streaming content

Each of the following events were broadcast live. Many of the events that Veritas Media produces contain pre-produced segments to add breathing room to the live portions of the event. Note the different styles used in each live stream. Each of these events also used a third party auction site to host their auctions.

Community Action of Skagit County: great use of live chat during the event. See our portfolio for more information about this project.

Children’s Museum of Skagit County: great use of pre-produced content to help to the story of the museum. See our portfolio for more information about this project.

What is a Scheduled/Premiered Event?

A premiered event is programming that is entirely produced, shot, and edited before it is published. There is nothing spontaneous about this type of event and nothing happens in real time. You basically upload the finalized video file and schedule it to play at a specific date and time.

Even though you’re not live streaming, you can still engage in some of the features of a live stream by creating a “Premiere Event.” Just like the first screening of a blockbuster movie (remember those?) you can promote the Premiere time and give viewers the opportunity to be the first to see the program you’ve produced. If you use a platform like YouTube Premiere the audience doesn’t have the option to rewind or skip ahead in the video until after the full program. This allows you to set up a live chat that can be moderated during the first playback. After the Premiere you can choose how you want to share the content with your audience—in most cases it becomes a publicly findable video that anyone can watch.

Benefits of Premiering a video

Less stress: Producing a live stream event can be stressful, even with a great team. There is pressure involved in bringing all the pieces together to pull it off. WIth Premiered events the production team does the heavy lifting and delivers the final product with plenty of lead time before your scheduled event. The night of the premiere you can be more engaged with interacting with viewers, and enjoying the experience you’ve created!
Maximum control: through the planning, filming and editing process you have complete control over the content and experience and an opportunity to review all content before it ships.
More voices: It’s difficult in a live stream to include lots of different perspectives and voices—especially during COVID-19 where social distancing and occupancy requirements affect how many people can appear together.
Higher production value: While you can get high production value in a live stream event (especially if you include pre-produced content), Premiered content allows you to introduce more complicated and dramatic segments that would be difficult or extremely costly to do live. You also get the advantage of presenting your content in 1920×1080 HD or 4K resolution (unlike 720p that you get with live streaming)
Better evergreen content: a lot of live streamed events are purpose designed to play once to a limited audience. With well designed Premiered content you can create something that will have a longer shelf life and continue advancing your goals long after the first scheduled viewing.

Drawbacks of Premiered Content

No real-time connections with Audience: while you still have the ability to chat live with viewers during a Premiered event, you don’t have the same engagement tools available to interact with you audience. You can’t create polls, take questions (and respond to them) or otherwise interact with your audience. The pre-produced content is static and can’t change during the broadcast.
Not usually ideal for auctions: because of the static nature of Premiered content, you can’t really have an auctioneer giving real time updates on items or fundraising progress. And, by the time some people watch the video it may be weeks after the auction and the information presented in the video irrelevant. Auctions aside, Premieres are still great for general asks and Calls to Action for fundraising campaigns.
Less novel: Everyone has watched videos on YouTube. Just because it’s scheduled and set to Premiere doesn’t really make it that novel or impressive (though there are ways to create a highly engaging experience to counter act this).
Not available on all platforms: Premiering content is available primarily on YouTube and Facebook. It might not be possible to Premiere the video on other platforms like Vimeo, Wistia or more custom players. However, you can always upload the video to other platforms after the initial premiere.

Examples of “Premiered” Content

The following videos (and series) were all fully produced and delivered before being uploaded and scheduled.

Bellingham School District Graduations

Skookum Kids: Eat, Drink, and Be Giving

The Hybrid Event

One approach we’ve seen work well is creating a hybrid event. By pre-producing large portions of an event you can Premiere the video to a large audience, but offer a smaller intimate experience for VIPs. A good example of this technique is Lydia Place’s Handbags for Housing 2020. Lydia Place chose to launch their virtual event as a Premiered video on YouTube with a companion VIP Zoom experience. Event attendees who bought a VIP package received a box with all kinds of goodies and swag from sponsors. They also got access to a VIP exclusive Zoom room hosted by the emcee for the event. The VIP Zoom experience included networking, games and a first look at all of the items being auctioned. The program feed that general attendees were seeing on YouTube was broadcast through the hosts’ Zoom account creating an exclusive event experience for VIPs.

What’s best for you?

As you can see, there is a lot to think about as you plan your virtual event. Start by asking yourself what your goals are and how important real time viewer engagement is. Both live streaming and Premiered events can create incredible experiences for your viewers.
If you have questions about live streaming or pre-produced content check out our other resources like our Virtual Events page. Our team is also happy to talk with you about what might work best for you given your goals and challenges.

Oct 13 2020

How much does video production cost?

One of the questions we get the most is, “how much does video cost?” While we have a number of products that are turnkey and carry flat rates, we’ve found that many of our clients want a customized project unique to them. In this article, I hope to shed some light on the mystery behind video production pricing. If you’re looking to produce a live stream or virtual event, you might also find this page helpful.

Our pricing philosophy

Our pricing is based on a simple hourly studio rate of $110/hr for every crew hour devoted to your project. So, if your project requires 10 hours of planning and scriptwriting, 20 hours of production and 20 hours of post-production, you’d be looking at a $5500 project. Unlike many video production companies, we don’t add any additional fees for equipment rental, studio space rental, music licensing, data storage, or media buy fees.

6 factors that affect the scope (and price) of a video project

Production Value. Scroll through Facebook or YouTube and you will quickly see a broad range of video content. The quality of online video ranges from selfie videos shot on a phone to high-end commercial content shot on the best cameras with professional actors. For your business, you’ll need to ask yourself what kind of quality you want to strive for and what you want your customers to take away from the experience. All of our projects are done using professional-grade equipment and we guarantee that your video will look and sound great.
Time needed: The amount of time a project takes is closely tied to the production value of your project. The amount of time needed is determined by looking at the following questions: How much pre-production planning, logistics, and scheduling is required for your project? How many people are needed on filming days to execute the vision? Is there additional travel time that needs to be accounted for? Are there special editing techniques, animations, motion graphics, or color processing that is needed to complete the project? Most of our productions also take weeks, if not months to complete, if something needs to be turned around quickly or last minute it will cost more.
Talent: We encourage businesses to use their own spokespeople as often as possible because it lends itself to a more engaging and authentic experience. But, for some projects, you might want to bring in professional actors. If this is important to you and your project it will add costs associated with auditioning the talent and fees related to working with them. Sometimes working with professional actors require purchasing rights to use their image for a certain amount of time.
Style: Will your project be a simple video shot in our studio on a solid colored background or do you want to film on-location? Will the video be live-action, animated, or a combination of both? The style you choose will affect the overall price of the project and can vary substantially in cost for the same final duration. For example, a 1-minute how-to video presented in our studio will cost a lot less than a 1-minute custom animation with a professional voice over.
Duration: This is a tricky one because the amount of time required to produce different types of videos varies. We could record and edit a one-on-one conversation with a representative from your company interviewing a thought leader in your industry and that 20-minute interview could cost $1500. Creating a 30-second commercial ready for broadcast, however, might take four days of production and cost $10,000.
Out of scope fees and change requests: proper planning usually takes care of these additional costs, but sometimes things happen: your branding changes, you need to cut a feature you highlighted in the script or rename it after filming, the stakeholder that was on vacation for two weeks suddenly has a different idea for the project. We include two rounds of revisions in all of our edits. If additional work is needed beyond this or the project scope changes, additional fees based on our hourly rate are incurred.

Base pricing for our services

So, you can see how each video project is a bit different and that you will have some unique variables in your own project to consider. What follows is a place to start with 10 of our most popular videos to give you an idea of what is possible and included at different price points.

Hero Video $5500. A hero video is designed to increase the fame of your brand and quickly communicate who you are and what you do. A well-made hero video will last you for years to come and is an integral part of your outward-facing communication. A typical hero video requires at least 1 day of production and usually multiple locations.

Testimonial Video $1500–$3000. Testimonial videos are a great way to capture your customers endorsing your product or service. These videos can stand on their own or be used as a part of a series. We can also combine multiple testimonials into a Testimonial Highlight Reel. The most impactful testimonials include an interview with your customer/client/donor and footage of them on-location in their environment.

Product/Service Overview $3000. Showcase a key product or service. This video typically requires a half day of production to capture interviews/teleprompter delivery and additional footage on-location.

Google My Business Video $350/$850. Stand out on Google with a 30s video for Google My Business. This video is an easy add on ($350) to any other video package since we can utilize your existing footage. Ordering this video by itself requires 2 hours of on-location production time and will cost more in post-production ($850).

30s TV Commercial $5500. TV commercials can vary significantly based on the scope. A basic 30s spot can typically be produced with one full day of production.

Thought Leadership Interview $750. Utilizing our studio space is a great way to create an affordable video. We make it easy to arrange a time to come into our space with a customer or industry thought leader to facilitate a one-on-one conversation. We provide a 3 camera talk show-like experience and light editing so that you can start using the content right away.

Remote keynote/interview recording $750. In the age of Zoom and virtual connections, we now offer the ability to record someone from a distance in a high-quality video call. Now you can include anyone, from anywhere in the world in your conference, virtual event, or video. This fee includes scheduling a time to film as well as the editing to add in lower third titles and switch back and forth between the host and interviewee.

E-Learning Video Course (Starts at $10,000). Creating an online course for your business is a big deal. We can work with you to come up with a plan based on instructional design best practices. Our studio offers a versatile space to film your content and give you the consistent and professional image you want.

Virtual Events $3,000 / $6,000 / $9,000. We have three different tiers for virtual events and a number of add ons to customize your package. More information about our virtual events is available here.

How can I get the most value out of working with video?

As you can see above, video can be expensive. Therefore, focus on creating the assets that will have the biggest return on your investment. We can work with you to plan out your video marketing or communication strategy. Video amplifies your existing efforts, so take a look at the channels that you want to bolster and your desired outcomes, and create content with that in mind. With focused planning and execution, your videos should pay for themselves in no time.

Bundles. One of the coolest things about video is that it can be recycled and reworked for years to come. Out of a single day of filming, you can create dozens of different deliverables. We encourage you to bundle projects together to save on production time upfront. You might just want a Hero Video for your website, but why not interview a few of your favorite customers, include a few sound bites of them in the Hero Video, and create a longer form case study or testimonial video to put on your site? While you’re at it, we can also provide you with a series of clips for you to share on social media. Ask about our Brand Builder Bundle—a $10,000 package that sets you up with everything you need to get started with video.

Build your own stock library. When you work with us, we store all of your project footage (and back it up) so that in the future you can incorporate it into new projects at no additional cost. Many of our clients find that once they have a few projects under their belts, it’s faster and less expensive to cut together new videos because they already have so much great footage captured.

A note on intellectual property and footage licensing. We believe that you should be able to do what you want with the footage we’ve captured for you. If you’d like a copy of your footage we can provide it to you on a hard drive which includes a license for unlimited use of the footage. The fee for this service is $500 or 5% (whichever is greater) per project. Please note that working with our footage requires knowledge of video production codecs, color correction and professional hardware and software that can process the footage. We do not license or provide copies of any project files.

Arriving at a price for your project

When you’re ready to get started with a video project we’ll work with you to ensure you’re getting the most value out of your investment. We’ll walk through the following steps to arrive at a price and scope of work that feels good to you.

The Discovery Meeting: The first step is our complimentary discovery meeting. Here we’ll ask you about your goals for your business and listen to the ideas you have for using video. It’s important in this meeting for us to have an accurate understanding of your working budget so that we can provide recommendations to maximize your investment and let you know what is possible.

The Quote & Scope of Work: at this stage, we’ll have a solid idea as to how we can best serve you and advance your goals. We’ll put together a document that outlines what we talked about in the Discovery Meeting and our approach to working together. We’ll also include a breakdown of the deliverables and scope of work that we’ll agree on.

Sign Off: once you sign off on the quote we’ll get started with your project. Additional deliverables and add-ons can still be incorporated into your project for an additional fee.

Ready to get started?

Video production pricing can be confusing. Hopefully, this article helps to demystify our pricing for you. We’re always happy to chat and walk you through any questions you have about planning for your video project.