YouTube Channel Agency Hack for Video Production

17th March 2022

When looking at creative for your brand and its social media channels, we recommend a ‘Nose to Tail’ approach to video production. In this blog, Creative Producer Jim Eveleigh helps you to get the most out of your filming budget, not just in terms of populating platforms with content, but also in terms of creating quality, consistent, and educational content that is on-brand. As a YouTube channel agency with years of channel management experience, we use a comprehensive video strategy to effectively create YouTube video content at no extra cost. So what is ‘Nose to Tail’ I hear you ask?

Back at the turn of the century, a book was published by a cook called Fergus Henderson, owner of the now legendary (and Michelin starred) St John restaurant in Spitalfields market, London. In his book, he details the philosophy of ‘Nose-to-Tail eating’ – his approach to all that he does.

In principle it’s simple – instead of the way in which most restaurants butcher and serve, only using the ‘prime cuts’ for the plate, Fergus uses every possible part of the animal in a variety of creative, unexpected, and innovative ways. Ostensibly this is out of respect for the animal (a pig in the case of the book), but of course, it also brings some exceptionally tasty dishes to the plate which would otherwise have ended up in the bin. And let’s not ignore the fact that by using alternative cuts, it not only provides an interesting dish, but it also saves the restaurant money.

So what has this got to do with filmmaking and content creation? Well quite a bit actually, especially in the case of YouTube and beyond…

Rethinking YouTube Video Production

The idea of going out on a shoot, editing the output for the ‘prime cuts’, and creating a single film to then discard the rest is a wasteful and expensive way of creating content, like taking a fillet steak and chucking the rest away.

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But again, this isn’t just about butchering for the steaks and then thinking up ways to use the rest afterwards – for optimum efficiency you’ll want to have a full plan before you even start. Let’s return to our video analogy – by having a full content strategy in place before you leave home, you can design your shoot, your edit, and your associated assets to be as efficient as possible with the most possible uses.

Let’s look at a typical brief:

The Filming Brief

“We are a brand looking for a piece of content to show the versatility of our product for our website. We also need an agency to help us build and manage a popular YouTube channel. We think this will work best with a presenter showing members of the public how to solve the challenges they have with our product. We imagine there to be three or four members of the general public bringing their questions to our presenter.”

Video production

Your content strategy will enable you to plan for all content cuts across all channels.

Now here’s how we’d ‘Nose to Tail’ it:

The ‘Fillet Steak’ Content

The video described in the brief will probably be a maximum of five minutes. Alongside this we have a number of shorter cuts to be used for adverts, snippets, teasers and as we will have known this in advance we ensure that as we shoot we are considering all possible aspect ratios to ensure compatibility across multiple platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok etc.

The ‘Chops’ Content

The main video produced can then be recut into a series of shorter ‘how to’ videos – again with all aspect ratios considered and cut for. This is a good and efficient use of that video content, as in order to have achieved enough options for the ‘Fillet Steak’, we will have shot more than we needed for that single-use. With the addition of a voice-over, some graphics, and a little edit resource.

The ‘Sausage’ Content

We don’t end there though – from all of the content we captured (and more that we will gather in subsequent shoots) we can create YouTube videos to manage your YouTube channel. Focusing around themes such as ‘Top 5 Hacks’, ‘Top Tips’ and similar, which we should think of as the Sausage content – tastes good, everyone loves them, but may not be at the top of your restaurant menu. These are very fast to cut and very popular – I’m talking video again, not sausages.

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The Freezer Content

We also planned for a little more of the editor’s time post-shoot which they will use to start a beautifully structured library of all of our video assets – now we know exactly what we have and where it is. Our next shoot will be even more efficient and be planned around that project’s ‘Filet Steak’, whilst plugging any gaps in our video menu and continuing to stock the freezer.

So from that initial shoot we have created:

  • One x main film i.e. The Filet Steak. Versions of the Filet Steak for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok plus teasers and adverts.
  • Three x ‘how to’ films i.e. The Chops. Bitesize versions for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok plus
  • One x Youtube video i.e. The Sausages. Quick and informative cut down productions for YouTube and other social media channels
  • Your video library i.e. The Freezer Content – The beginnings of a well organised and consistent video asset library

The Watchout

In order for an efficient video content strategy to work, and to serve you well as we build it, we need to ensure we are all in agreement ahead of time in terms of your brand and creative presentation. This way when, in six months, we are pulling together content from your library (The Freezer) for a compilation video all of the cuts will sit alongside each other without style changes or issues.

In conclusion

By agreeing your style and strategy up front, and planning every shoot for optimum output we can make more from less – and leave little to nothing on the cutting room floor. So if you’re looking to use video to promote your business, our ‘Nose to Tail’ approach at Hurricane will get you more for your money. YouTube video production may seem like a ‘nice to have’ but with our approach, it is more achievable than ever. Get in touch if you’d like help with your video content strategy and video production.

Get a feel for how we can help you with an initial chat. (1)

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