Two production companies can be handed the identical brief, the same budget, the same person sitting in the same chair, and give back two completely different videos. Most people assume that gap is talent. Or gear. Or how much you spent. It's almost never any of those. Here's another story I read in Made to Stick (Chip and Dan Heath) that stuck with me (pun intended), and it explains the real reason better than anything I could say about video.
During the Iraq war, American soldiers ate at army dining halls. Big canteens on the bases.
Every one of them ran the exact same twenty-one day menu, from the exact same suppliers, on the exact same budget. Army food is built that way on purpose. Wherever you are, it's the same.
But there was one, out by Baghdad airport, that soldiers started driving to.
And not from the next base over. From the Green Zone, along a road that was one of the most dangerous in the country at the time.
They were risking their lives to eat food that was, by definition, identical to the food they already had.
The guy running it was Floyd Lee. Twenty-five years as a Marine Corps and Army cook, already retired, and he came back for this one.
And here's the part that got me. He didn't change the food. He couldn't. Same menu, same trucks, same everything.
What he changed was sports banners on the walls. Green tablecloths. The fluorescent lights swapped out for ceiling fans with soft bulbs. Servers in tall white chef's hats. One cook sorting the fruit delivery by hand, throwing out the bad grapes, so that one tray looked good.
None of that is food (except for the grapes, but you get the point).
Lee's own line was that he wasn't in charge of food service... he was in charge of morale.
Nobody gave him that job. He decided that was the job.
And this is the part that's about you, not about me.
Whoever writes the brief decides what the video is in charge of.
Not the production company. You.
A brief that's a list of deliverables, key messages, run times and three social cutdowns has already answered that question. It's decided the job is food service.
And you'll get food service. It'll be good. It'll tick every line you wrote.
I've made those. Nothing was wrong with them. That's the part that stings.
So before the next brief goes out, put one more question in it. What do you want someone to feel when it ends?
David Balista is the video director and co-founder of Puggers Video Production, a Vancouver video production company that makes films for foundations, health care organizations and associations, each one built around one real story.
See the work: puggersvideoproduction.com/work
First posted on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidbalista
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