Proposal
Academy of the Holy Family
Spring 2021
INTRODUCTION
After our consultation call, it sounds like AHF would like to start by making a 4-minute Overview Video and then consider making other pieces of content in the years that follow.
OVERVIEW VIDEO STYLE
Here is the Overview Video we made for St. Lawrence Seminary High School in Mount Calvary, WI. It ended up being 5.5-minutes long and touched on the Community, Academics, Extracurriculars & Faith Formation. Otherwise, the shortest Overview Videos we’ve made have been 2.5-minutes long, like this one that we just did for Oelwein Community Schools in Iowa.
ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS
Beyond longer-form Overview Videos, here are three of our other most popular types of content. You can see all six main types of videos on our Story Types webpage.
360 Virtual Tours
Click here to see St. Lawrence Seminary’s tour full screen in a new tab. It has a side menu, students on campus, and sound effects throughout. It also showcases their Music Video and four 30-second Ads, which we recycled their unused footage into the following year.
Another great tour example is this one for Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis. It has a top-menu style and includes their Overview Video as well as these 10 short mashups where we reused their old footage to quickly show the various spaces in action.
Beyond that we recommend checking out our Tour Features webpage to see all that we can do.
Music Videos
We made this for Notre Dame Academy, an all-girls high school in the Cincinnati area. I highly recommend checking it out since it’ll probably feel the most like your school. And we shot this whole Music Video as well as this 360 Virtual Tour for them in one day (to give a sense of what we can accomplish in 14 hours).
Intro Video
This was for Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. It introduced their theme for the year, “Greatness is Calling” and expressed how their community was able to stick together throughout the pandemic. I share that, because we just made it for a big-name high school, but here’s probably my favorite Intro Video that we made for the Diocese of Kalamazoo (Michigan) Catholic Schools.
WHY ELEVATION POINT
School videos are what we do! If we’re not the best education content creator in the Midwest, then we’re not going to stop until we are! :)
Here is our Portfolio as well as all of our Client Testimonials to see the difference we’ve made so far.
Virtual Tours Made
Schools & Districts Served
School Videos Made
PRE-PRODUCTION
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” ~ Ben Franklin
One of the hardest parts of video production is just setting yourself up for success.  Luckily, we’re OCD here and have a weird passion for building beautiful spreadsheets! :) We SYSTEMize everything to Save Yourself Stress Time Energy & Money.
 1) Consultation Sheet – We filled out yours already and started organizing & quantifying all the interviews, footage & production days we’ll need.
2) Interview Coverage – More than just who & how many, what story topics should each person speak to? How long will each interview take? And do we have at least two people speaking to each topic to ensure a great response? Those are the types of questions this sheet answers, which most overlook.
3) Production Schedule – Scheduling is highly collaborative and clients often need to book most of it themselves. So we need to work together through a simple interface and I think we’ve built the perfect solution! :)
YOUR UNIQUE STORY
We’re often asked how we’ll accurately capture and tell our prospect’s story. And while we put in a lot of time and effort behind the scenes, it’s a pretty simple process from your perspective.
The Outline
We’ll flesh out the story outline on our next phone call where you’ll elaborate on each topic and we’ll type out everything you want us to say.
The Interviews
We’ll also fill out the Interview Coverage chart where you’ll identify the best people to speak to each topic.
The Questions
I’ll go back through the story outline and reverse-engineer each paragraph into 3-5 questions that will get each person to establish, differentiate, justify, and personalize each point.
The Editing
We’ll cut up, organize and rank every sound-bite, and then stitch one great word/phrase after the next. There’s usually a seamless audio cut about once every 2-seconds in our videos to make everyone sound perfect & concise.
Ultimately, it’s no accident that all of our videos have a consistent level of quality. It’s because we take each project through a huge process that produces great results every time.
PRODUCTION
We show up and record like everyone else, but there are a few things that might set us apart.
Highly Physical
There’s a time and a place for stiff, boring tripod shots, but we love adding life and energy to the camera a lot more. :) Watch any of our videos and you’ll see how much we move!
Small Crews
We often work alone as a one-man band, which will save you a lot of money in extra travel and crew costs.
Long Days
When you hire us for a full production day, you’ll get us for up to 14 hours (and you’re welcome to hand us off to other colleagues over that time). The point is, the more we pack in, the less we’ll have to travel out, and the more money you’ll save.
Wireless Monitor
Our cameras can connect to a smartphone app via WiFi so you can sit around the corner and watch everything we record.
Radios
Additionally, we can both have earpieces so you can speak up in real time if you have any thoughts or suggestions.
POST PRODUCTION
Them
Most editors cut the whole video together, offer 2-3 rounds of revisions, and then charge for more. But…
1) Why should you pay extra if the editor is way off?
2) Reworking the whole video can easily blow past deadlines.
3) No editor will ever know your community as well as you do. And the more decisions they make on their own and the more bold and artistic they get, the greater the chance you’ll have more notes for them in the end. So it’s as if this whole workflow encourages safe, bland & generic editing.
vs. Us
Every editor goes through a process, so why not include the client along the way? That’s what we do. We edit “Cut 1.0” and then send it over for feedback. If there are any notes, then we edit “Cut 1.1″… “1.2”… done – and we move on. Each round takes about a week and we’re usually done in a month. No surprises and no additional costs.
And that way you’re involved and can help us make far more unique & specific decisions that reflect your community. That’s what our clients always tell us – “Oh my gosh, this feels so much like our school!” – and it’s because we collaborated the whole way through.
Cut 1.0 - Story
To start off, we just cut the interview sound-bites together and make everyone say what we want them to say. :)
Cut 2.0 - Music
We think music is one of the most important parts and that’s why we’ve already searched through over 15,000 songs. We then whittle the very best down to the top 3-7 for you to pick.
To hear our broad range of musical styles, check out our Music Types webpage.
Cut 3.0 - Footage
Here we insert all the visuals. Up until this point, we’ve just been listening to audio so this is where you’ll really start to see it all come together.
Cut 4.0 - Graphics & Sound
We’ll add sound effects, do a custom opening and closing animation of your name & logo, and then add other lower-third (nameplate) graphics for all the interview subjects.
Cut 5.0 - Color Correction
This is where we white-balance all the footage, remove any color casts, and boost the overall contrast and saturation. We rarely receive any notes at this point so after the first cut here, we’re usually done!
DELIVERABLES
(included)
Videos
We record in 4K (3840 x 2160) and deliver all final videos in Full HD (1920 x 1080). That way we can zoom in and reframe shots in post production, which always looks a lot better.
It’s also estimated that less than 5% of YouTube videos are watched in 4K and that you need at least a 42-inch monitor to even see the difference. (…so just saying… there’s a lot of hype :)
Marketing GuideÂ
We also give each of our clients a free video marketing guide with 24 ways to share their content each year. It’s like a checklist to help you develop your own marketing strategy and maximize your exposure.
& ADD-ONS
(extra cost)
Closed Captions
85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound, so if you don’t have captions, you’re missing a lot of viewers. You can always make these yourself or we can create captions files for you to upload in 15-seconds or less!  ($100 per final minute of video)
Pictures Pack
We can pull 100-400 of the best stills from all of your original footage and then line them up in a Google Sheet for you to check off which ones you want processed. That way, you’re also getting a professional photographer at a fraction of the cost!  (starts at $400 for 40 pictures and then it’s $10/ea. after that)
Footage Logging
If anyone on your end would like to edit and work with the footage, then we can provide our organized and ranked work as well as apply basic color corrections to save a lot of time and trouble. ($300 per whole production day)
INVESTMENT
Based on our discussion and some of our possible options, here is a two-column quote with the differences highlighted in yellow.
And this includes the Spring Semester 10% Discount, which would be applied if we shoot before July 1st in any given year.
Let me know if you’d like to adjust the line-items any further.
Low-End
The left column shows if we were to get 1.5 days of video coverage as well as if we lost the Closed Captions file for the video. This would be cutting it close for coverage. For reference, the St. Lawrence Seminary Overview had 2 days of coverage and Bishop Chatard’s had 4 days.
High-End
This would have 2 whole days of coverage. (I would probably recommend 2-3) Plus, if you think you’d like to recycle unused footage into more content down the road like a lot of my past clients have done, then adding a little more coverage up front could be a safe move and save AHF some money in the future.
OUR FOCUS
More than a video, let’s make a difference.
We know professional videos can be expensive and we know what it’s like when budgets are tight, but more than the cheapest option here, we’re trying to be the best.
Because with all the content online today, it takes something pretty powerful to actually make a difference. We can speak from our own experience on this. We scroll past average-to-bad videos all the time. It’s the ones that really resonate or blow us away that make us want to share it or reach out to learn more.
Those are the kinds of videos that truly move people. They’re the ones that inspire real change. And while they take more time, effort and money to make, our clients always seem to think they’re worth it in the end.
– Kevin Domer
Partner & Producer
Elevation Point
OUR FOCUS
More than a video, let’s make a difference.
We know professional videos can be expensive and we know what it’s like when budgets are tight, but more than the cheapest option here, we’re trying to be the best.
Because with all the content online today, it takes something pretty powerful to actually make a difference. We can speak from our own experience on this. We scroll past average-to-bad videos all the time. It’s the ones that really resonate or blow us away that make us want to share it or reach out to learn more.
Those are the kinds of videos that truly move people. They’re the ones that inspire real change. And while they take more time, effort and money to make, our clients always seem to think they’re worth it in the end.
– Kevin Domer
Partner & Producer
Elevation Point