Game Plan

Once you’ve decided that a video is the most compelling way to express your message, sentiment, or product, and you’re considering Row Four Productions as your producer, you will experience a very personal and particular creative process.

Premise:
We do not subscribe to the notion that selected people are creative.  Therefore, we treat our clients as if they do have an ability or appreciation of artistry, and approach them on the basis that we must come to some meeting of minds about our particular creative process.  And so, we have written this short, concise expression of our working process for the benefit of mutual understanding and the best final product possible.

Need:
It begins with a desire on our part to completely understand the client’s need.  This is accomplished by an intense series of interviews with participants and individuals responsible for the final video. Many believe they understood each other and were speaking on the same levels, but in truth were not.  Together we will seek to find a direction that leads to a simple one-line claim we want the viewer to conclude by the end of the piece.

Concept:
We then assimilate the need of the client and begin to translate it into a written video context for your review. Every conceivable media format is considered. It is the time to decide setting, whether or not talking heads, voice-overs, still or sophisticated moving images, is the approach. You can be assured we will not go down the path of the ordinary - and your video will not look like all others in your market.

Design:
When approved, a production schedule follows that finalizes the elements of the concept.  Who, where, and how images and thoughts will reach the screen are formatted.  Crews are hired and directions are set.  Narration tracks, if any, are recorded and loaded into the computer for digital editing. Music is auditioned, and “rough cuts” are placed on the “time line” of the editing program.

Implementation:
The editing process begins.  Hundreds of choices are made.  They are not always rational - they are often instinctive based on years and years of storytelling in this medium.  Various directions are explored.  Because of the latest technology in digital editing, this experimentation is encouraged and easily redirected. A client review is scheduled prior to the burning of the final DVD version.  We welcome suggestions, believe that there is creativity in all, but recognize that art by committee can be disastrous if taken to extremes.

More often than not we follow our instincts rather than reason, so our choices are not always explainable.

Our creative process is informed as much by courage as by skill.  

We appeal to an aesthetic in our audience.  
Our past successes give us the confidence to trust that process.

-Row Four Productions