Nowadays, many videographers employ themselves as freelancers, armed with the skills they have gained from previous experiences. And because of their low pay rates, they are more attractive to companies who wants to search for more affordable video services like filming commercials, shooting a corporate video or making an explainer animation.
While freelancers are seen to be the inexpensive option, they are still some fields that a freelancer lacks as well as the limitations that they would face when producing a video alone for their clients. This is not the case for video production companies.
While they are more expensive to hire, they offer a lot more benefits when it comes to the production of their work. Here you will find reasons as to why production companies are better than freelancer videographers.
Equipment
Freelancers may have the expertise to perform their designated work, but it doesn’t mean they have the proper equipment. Videographers would definitely have their own camera and other necessary equipment with them at all times, but compared to production companies, freelancers don’t have a variety of tools to choose from and they may be short of having the right resources to fulfil their task.
While hiring a production company is costlier, you’re not just paying for their service, but also for their equipment. Ranging from high-end cameras and photographic lenses to lighting gear and recording microphones, it is always worthwhile to have an assortment of filmmaking materials, so the production team would be able to work smoothly with the right tools and produce a high-quality product in mind.
Experience
While freelancers may be cheap enough to hire for their services, it doesn’t mean they have the right experience for the task. You may find yourself hiring them believing they would finish their job as expected, only to find the end result unsatisfactory or unfinished. Different freelancers offer different experiences, but one mind simply isn’t enough to create a high-tier product.
Hiring a production company on the other hand means that they are offering a crew rather than a single individual. It also offers a diversity of experienced workers that join together as a team, combining their skills and knowledge. They would assign and hire professionals of different specialties to help in their video production to ensure the smooth completion of the work given. If experience is better than knowledge, than a multitude of them is better than one.
Transparency
When hiring an expert to work for you, it’s necessary to do a background check on them. A freelancer’s portfolio may seem promising but it is also unreliable. You may not know the conditions of how they achieved their work or if they still have the right equipment for the job or it could simply be scripted to their advantage. Not all freelancers are scams but they may not offer the best of their abilities on their own.
Production companies are required to be transparent with their background to give the employer an understanding of how their potential product may look like in the end. There are more reliable as you may ask other customers that have used their services for their opinion, as well as view their previous work to judge whether they’re right for the job. When hiring a workforce, it is important to know what they can offer before knowing what to expect.
Process
Video production is a step-by-step process. It starts with the pre-production stage, which consists of writing, storyboarding and scheduling. It then follows with the production stage which is mostly filming on a set or a physical location. Finally, there is the post-production stage that focuses on editing, music and special effects or motion graphics if necessary.
While there are freelancers that could work on all the aspects of filmmaking, it wouldn’t be as polished as it would be a rushed one-man job. A video production company’s workflow is based on the 3 stages of filmmaking, with different crew members specializing on each field. This doesn’t just mean that the production would be smoother and faster, but it also ensures that the quality is maintain from the first step to the last.
Timely
Another risk of hiring a freelancer is that that may not get to complete their work on time. Some freelancers accept more than one job in one time, so they may not be focusing on what you assigned to them currently. Because they’re doing multiple jobs at once, it’s possible that the end product may come out as rushed, incomplete or poor in quality.
The workflow of a production company is well designed to create the product with the right resources in a timely manner. And even when they are given multiple projects to work on, they would reasonably allocate their resources and crew to these projects so they could finish them on time as well as maintaining the quality of the work given. A guarantee of a final product is good, but a guarantee of a timely product is even better.
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