How to prepare for your video shoot with Hunting With Pixels

April 08 · Blog

Self care

You look and sound best when your brain is performing well. There are two things that will help you be the best version of yourself on camera.

Enough sleep. Ensure that you get a good night’s sleep the day before.

You’ll look fresher but most importantly your brain will be much better at handling the cognitive workload of being out of your comfort zone while trying to remember your key messages and connecting to the viewer.

Your brain is going to get a major work out; make sure it’s rested.

Stress free. Eliminate any form of stress where possible.

Postpone a difficult phone conversation, ensure that you only have people in the room that you feel comfortable around, don’t cram too many tasks in the day.

Taking direction

Be selective about who you take feedback and direction from. Trust your own instinct; you’re the expert in your field and you look and sound best if you’re ‘just’ you.

If you get mixed messages during the shoot, you probably have too many people in the room.

Only have the absolute key people in the room and ensure everyone prepared well.

Leaders – beware of how you affect your team

As the team leader, business owner or CEO you might want to be around for the interviews, because you want to be across what is being said.

This can backfire. Simply being present in the room can be a real obstacle for some of your team members to be conversational and authentic.

The same counts for marketing directors. You’re an expert on the messaging, but being too hand on or directive can diminish your impact.

Think of your interview as building scaffolding

Editors can rearrange things; you’re just here to provide the raw material. You don’t need to come up with all the clever sound bites.

You do need to have a clear idea of the structure of what you’re communicating.

Note down the key messages in a mind map or list, and talk around those. Your expertise and experience enables you to fill in the blanks. Trust it.

You’re not an actor.

Learning a script by heart and communicating it in a way that connects to the audience is a skill.

Unless you’re a trained actor or presenter, we don’t recommend trying to learn too many lines by heart.

You’re not likely to pull it off, and it shows in how you present.

Don’t ‘present’. Be present.

Great video content feels like a conversation you have with your audience. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

You can rely on editors to make things concise and accurate. You don’t need to present. You need to be present.

Being present is about being in the moment and focussed. This can be achieved by doing two things;

– Give yourself a bit of headspace before you do your shoot. A walk, cup of tea or some focussed work on what you want to talk about

Eliminate distractions. Shoot offsite if you can. Turn off your phone.

Best shoot times

We all have different rhythms, but generally spoken we’re at our best in the late morning till early afternoon.

This is where our brain is rested and at it’s more creative.

Take your time and relax

Key is that you feel in charge when you’re being interviewed.

We’re here to help you tell your story: make sure you own it, take your time and refine if you feel it’s necessary.

What to wear

Here’s a post on what to wear at shoots:

Lights, Camera… wait. Make up!

Good luck!

Getting reviews right the first time

November 12 · Blog

How to get your project done on time and within budget

We know as a leader you’re busy, so it’s important to plan time to review so this doesn’t become a bottleneck that creates budget or timeline blowouts.

Here are some strategies to save you both in the editing phase of your project.

Plan the time

In our letter of engagement, we mapped out a timeline that includes dates for reviews. We strongly recommend booking an hour per review in your calendar when the project starts. This way you’ve protected your project from interference.

For every 5 minutes of video, expect to spend 30 minutes reviewing and adding notes.

Save time by avoiding double handling

One of the most likely causes of delay and blowouts in content product is unnecessary iterations because things being missed in the reviews. Here are the steps to take to ensure you get reviews right.

How to get reviewing right: be aware of inattention blindness

Inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness occurs when an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight, purely as a result of a lack of attention rather than any vision defects or deficits.

The key to counteracting inattention blindness is to concentrate on one thing at a time. This is something that even seasoned professionals apply to their work: here’s how they do it.

Step 01: Fresh perspective Hat

You can only get the first impression once. Use it well.

Make sure you capture your initial, emotional response before you get into the detail.

Sit back, relax and play the video. Do not start and stop, but play the video like a user of your website would.

Right after watching and before you get distracted by the next think, answer these questions:

What is my gut feel?
Did I understand the message?

• Did it feel dense or too light on content?
  Did it feel  long or short?
  Is there a moment where you felt like clickikng away?
  Is there a bit that you didn’t catch (for instance because of a complex sentence structure or audio issues)

Write. It. Down!

Step 02 – Sound

Play the video in the background,  maybe while making a cuppa. Without concentrating on the visuals, how does the video sound to you?

• Does the music feel right for your audience?
  It is easy for you to understand everyone?

Step 03 – Brand and titles

It’s very easy to miss spelling mistakes, because we tend to skim over titles in the video. Stop the video, read the title and ensure you’re happy with it.

Visuals, written content and audio are processed in different parts of the brain. As a result, if we get swept away by the emotional arc of the video (which is what should happen!) it’s easy to miss that your name is spelled ‘Jon’ instead of ‘John’.

• Double check the spelling
  Is the font correct and aligned to your brand?
  Is the logo up to date? Did we get the branding colours represented in a way that works for you?

Why this approach works

Rushing reviews is a false economy.

Reviewing with three different hats on is a great investment of time; I guarantee you that you’ll make back that time fourfold over the course of your project.

 

 

We Create Connection

July 10 · Blog

Hunting With Pixels is about creating connection.

Connection is the most powerful tool we have to to create impact. When we truly connect to our audience we earn the permission to educate or create value.

Hunting With Pixels exists to support business owners to be the best version of themselves; clear in their message, authentic in their delivery and connected others.

Here’s an example of recent work we’re particularly proud of.

Working with the wonderful Joanne Woo on this video around parenthood was so much fun!

Loved getting the stories from the parents, especially the proud dads. The world is changing.

 

We’re hiring! Looking for organised assistant for social video production company

May 28 · Blog

Hunting With Pixels is growing! We started our Melbourne office 2.5 years ago and are currently looking for an organised, responsible and people oriented person to help create a brilliant experience for our clients, our collaborators and our team.

Here’s the job description

Hunting With Pixels is looking for an organised, disciplined, mature, experienced person who can follow/improve our business processes and manage client queries.

This is a new position being created, there’s no real blueprint to follow so broad scope to make it your own.

About Us

Hunting with Pixels is a small, boutique video production company that specialises in authentic and engaging content. We operate in Melbourne and Sydney. This role if for our Melbourne office, which is located in Fairfield.

We work with larger brands like TEDx, ING, and GE, but our main focus is on established small businesses and entrepreneurs – we love people and their stories and we help them grow their brands with beautiful video and engaging social media content.

 

What we’re looking for

We require someone part time, everyday, so they can develop a broad understanding of all aspects of the day to day. We need you to have consistent contact with all clients, daily if necessary, and be available to assist the Creative Director in managing day to day business ongoings.

This role (and salary) will definitely grow in scope (and hours) as your understanding of the business develops.

Our main requirement is that you support Robert, our Creative Director. He gets extremely busy and by taking care of the administrative tasks and client requests you will be helping him to keep his  focus on the creative and strategic side of things.

You will be the first port of call for our clients: ensuring the phone calls/emails are answered; problems are solved; requests fulfilled to help keep projects moving along and clients kept happy.

And whilst you don’t need to be managing projects, you do need to understand what projects we have on and the type of tasks that need to happen in relation to those projects.

The Offer

Flexible part time: 15hrs over 5 days/wk initially, but we expect to scale up quite quickly to 20+hrs once you are trained and confident in the role. Can occasionally be remote by negotiation: we’ve got small kids ourselves so we can want make sure this job would suit people with children too.

Pro rata salary will be commensurate with your skills and experience.

• Very low key and casual work environment. Large, relaxed, shared home office with garden view.
• Lots of growth opportunities both in terms of learning, responsibilities.
• Flexible work hours.

Start four week trial after 25th June 2018

About you

We’re after someone who can, for example, follow and refine processes (eg: time tracking); suggest improvements to current workflows, problem solve.

Sometimes you might be on your own in the office and will have to have the confidence to answer your own questions, research a solution or take the initiative to ensure the task can be completed.

You need to be entrepreneurial. We’re a small business, so you need to be able to solve problems and come up with ideas for improving things. This is not a role for a minion or an order taker. We’re looking for someone who’s interested in contributing ideas.

You have to be a people person. The role involves dealing with clients varying from small not for profits to CEOs of large corporates.

Prior experience as an office manager, project manager or PA in a small to medium sized business would be ideal. This is a role for someone who enjoys structure and organising. We don’t expect you to know everything, just be interested in learning.

This is not a role for aspiring directors or creatives; if you want to do that work get in touch with us regarding our freelance opportunities.

We use a variety of software: Asana, Evernote, Dropbox, Excel, etc. We don’t expect you to know all of these platforms, but you must be very comfortable around the Apple ecosystem, cloud based software and CRMs.

It would be great if you have affinity with social media – LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Being able to write posts would would be great too.

Looking forward to hearing from you! Email me to apply or ask any questions!

Why We’re Ditching Hour Rates

January 24 · Blog

Why we’re ditching hour rates at Hunting With Pixels

I love spending my time and energy on creating connection, whether it’s by producing content, building strategies or connecting our clients to each other.

 

There’s one thing that never quite worked for me though; proposal writing.

I always struggled to see the link between that work and what we actually do.

It’s not that I have an issue helping our clients understand what a realistic scope for a project is, but I don’t think proposals based on billable hours are very helpful in communicating what the best value is to them.

 

How do you put a price on creating connection?

If I look at what we do on a day to day basis, almost none of it can we expressed by an hour rate.

How do you capture intent, focus, and seeing creative possibilities in a spreadsheet?

How do you put a dollar value on empathy, caring for the details or creating a positive environment for the interviewee?

Do we become more empathetic or creative if we get more dollars?

The idea of money as a motivator or a tool to improve performance has been thoroughly debunked by Daniel Pink’s book Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

In the research that Daniel Pink did, one of the findings was that money has a negative impact on work that requires creativity and cognitive ability.

How impact is created

It is the behaviours like focus and empathy that make the difference between producing a bit of content and having impact.

Hunting With Pixels is not the sum of camera+operator+editor=video.

We’re first and foremost a company that focusses on people and on how their behaviour can positively impact their ability to connect.

 

I don’t think that can be captured in an hour rate.

Partnership and collaboration=impact

 

We do our best work with clients who approach the work as a partnership to create the outcomes that help their organisations grow.

I believe adding billable hours to that equation undermines that partnership and puts restraints on collaboration.

The billable hours approach potentially creates an adversarial relationship where one party benefits from spending hours while the other tries to control cost. This is why some people don’t like lawyers.

When we’re paying people by the hour, we’re asking them to go through the motions, not to create great work.

Let’s compare the two options;

Billable hours – Just doing, not thinking

The approach of billable hours:

• Puts the focus on activities instead of outcomes. On deliverables instead of benefits.
• Discounts our expertise and misaligns the incentives of both parties. It turns Hunting With Pixels into a labour force; it pays us to use our hands instead of our heads and hearts.
• Incentivises micro management and a drive for ‘efficiency’ which kills the creativity and innovation you need. Micro management is also hugely time consuming for leaders.
• Disincentivises both parties from thinking about the benefits to the other; is what I’m doing today having a meaningful impact?

Partnerships – Thinking and doing

In 2017 we’ve run a few pilots for our new subscription model and have seen a remarkable shift in behaviour and attitude.

• It makes ‘failure’ ok. Without billable hours we see our clients get more creative and innovative because there’s no penalty for trying something new.
• We lose the fixed mindset. If we fixate on deliverables of content, we fixate the content itself. If we open things up, our brands don’t rely on one or two unchanging ‘hero pieces’ but instead we create conversations through ongoing content creation. We move from a Big Speech to a conversation with our audience.
• ‘Busy work’ becomes a deliberate effort to create value.
• Financially projects end up less front heavy.  By spreading the cost, there’s significantly less risk for our clients, which buys everyone time and breathing space to course correct where necessary.

Going from the Big Speech to a conversation

 

A subscription doesn’t mean that there are no deliverables.

Typically, we set a number of key deliverables in the first three months. From there, we work on turning the speech into a conversation by creating spin off content like Vlogs, ‘how’ to’ videos or other Facebook video updates.

As we do this, we further refine the key pieces based on the data we get from analytics.

Measuring value

We exchange a fee for measurable impact.

To be able to do this, we need to work with you on understanding exactly what success looks like.  Impact can be clicks on your video, traffic to your landing page, better retention of your policies or happier customers.

So how do we price?

We price on our experience on how value has been created in the past.

This approach gives our clients a benchmark for both the quality of the work and outcomes that can be expected.

We don’t measure the value of our relationship with an hour rate – we look at how we can have a positive impact and what the value of that impact is in terms of ROI.

No big proposals and contracts – how will that work?

Just as well as proposals have worked  in the past; someone spends a week putting it together, no one reads the proposal or terms and conditions, and then we work things out during the project. Sound familiar?

A subscription doesn’t mean you’re flying blind; instead of a big proposal, we create a detailed content plan so that everyone knows what we’re working towards.

.. and here’s the small print

• Minimum engagement is 3 months; you can’t get anything substantial done in less time.
• Cancel or change the subscription any time.
• We need you to be present and engaged with the project; we don’t work for you, we work with you.

How much does it cost?

Subscriptions are tailored to what your needs are.

On the higher end you can spend $5-6k/month for a ‘all you can eat buffet of video’ for a larger business, on the lower end we have subscriptions starting at a few hundred bucks for video blogs.

So what are your Big Plans for 2018?

So if you’ve got big plans for 2018 and like the idea of a partnership that offers you low risk, create outcomes and a meaningful impact get in touch.

If you sign up for a subscription before the 1st of February you can donate a homepage video that we create to a NPF or startup of your choice.

Drop me a line if you’d like to know more. We’d love to connect.

 

PS: there are exceptions.  Sometimes you just need doing work, not thinking work. If you have a one off shoot or a simple edit of a few hours we offer fixed project rates.

Authenticity – would I lie to you?

July 06 · Blog

 

It takes courage to be honest. It takes humanity to do it well.