We’ve managed international video teams remotely for a variety of projects. That means we direct and produce from our office in Washington, DC while the local team executes our production plan. We then edit all the material in-house to produce the finished video. This was the approach we took for a video we recently completed for itrek, a non-profit organization that brings diverse groups of future leaders to experience Israel on unique peer-led trips during graduate school. This story focused on Niruban, a past participant who as a result of his itrek experience, decided to take up his own mission of peace-building in Jakarta by trying to foster diplomatic ties between the world’s largest muslim majority country Indonesia, and the world’s only Jewish majority country Israel.
For this project, timeline and budget did not allow for sending a video team from the USA, so we needed to source and manage a Jakarta-based video team. Here are steps to efficiently and effectively working with remote video teams, which we employed on this project and developed over the years:
Finding the Right Team
Sourcing a remote video team that can implement your vision and visual brand is the most important and often most difficult step. If you already have reliable and trustworthy contacts in the region, that’s a great place to start. Either they are a talented crew themselves, or can steer you in the right direction to high quality individuals or teams. If you don’t have any contacts in the region, you’ll have to resort to a Google search. We’ve found that searching for terms like “video production studio”, “documentary production company”, “documentary videographer”, along with the city or country you’ll be filming in a good place to start. Then you can drill down into the results and check out work samples. They key is to find samples that most closely match the style you’re hoping to achieve. So if you are going to produce an interview heavy video, make sure the teams you’re interested in have great interview examples. If you want something a little more creative or evocative, look for good examples in that style. Hiring a team that has a stellar commercial sample, but few examples of the authentic cinematic documentary-style you are looking to achieve is going to leave you disappointed. If there’s a work sample that resonates with you, ensure that the crew you are hiring indeed shot that same sample, as opposed to another freelancer hired by the same production company. If a Google search is leaving few desirable options, the documentary online community D-Word can also be a great place to find crew around the world.
Managing Pre-Production
An air-tight pre-production plan is more critical than ever because you’re not going to be on the ground to ensure your vision is adequately conveyed. Focus your energies on communicating to the team your intended narrative and artistic approach. We usually avoid dictating specific gear like cameras and lighting (other than requesting a large-sensor cinema camera and professional sound and lighting gear). You want your local team to work with the equipment they know best, and not have issues on the shoot because they’re using unfamiliar gear. Ideally you’ll already have a treatment and shot-list to discuss with the local team, and often they can advise on any issues that could crop up that you would not be aware of like location issues, any permits required or best times of day to film (due to traffic, light, etc.). On the itrek shoot, the local team made us aware of bad traffic times and locations in Jakarta, so that we could adjust the production plan to avoid wasting time. But the more detailed your treatment and shot-list are the better, as you don’t want the local video team guessing what elements they need to shoot. Of course you should give them creative license to capture things in their own style (which is hopefully why you picked this particular team in the first place), but your goal is to set them up as much as possible for a seamless production. Make sure to include a call-sheet with locations, contact details of subjects and on the ground clients, a detailed shot-list and a list of interview questions.
Production and Post
If you’ve done your pre-production correctly, then the day(s) of the shoot should go as seamlessly as possible. Things always end up changing on the ground, but a well prepared team will know how to adjust on the fly because they will understand your vision. If possible, try to be available by phone during the production in case there is a hiccup and you need to work with the crew to readjust the production plan – eg. subjects don’t show up, a location is shut down. Sometime this is not possible, depending on the time difference. With the itrek shoot the time difference was 12 hours so we could only be available for a few hours of the shoot day. You also want to make sure your local team has a clear plan in place for sending you all the video assets. Are they buying a drive and shipping it to you, or uploading via dropbox or similar? For the itrek shoot we had the team upload a compressed version of the main interview so we could get a transcript made quickly, and then they sent a drive with fast shipping via DHL, maintaining a backup until we confirmed receipt and transfer. And don’t forget to plan for payment – either via bank wire, PayPal or something like Transferwise. These considerations may add small budget line-items that you should account for early on with your client.
