Creativity is in people’s minds on how strong they are in their imagination to produce innovative videos. Especially since video production is such an audience-intensive feat, the lack of sufficient outlet took a toll on it over the past years. With the advent of social media platforms like TikTok, there is an overload of video creations being shoved down people’s throats yet hardly any of it is quality creative content. Ironically, we have learned that the earlier notion of having sufficient time on hand to be creative may not be accurate. So the question arises… how do video production teams stay creative in a sea of repetitive content.
What is the nature of the Video Production field?
To tackle this problem we need first to understand that video production is not just the process of compiling visuals, but rather everything that goes into it starting from an idea to research, data gathering, execution, and post-production until the brainchild is ready to be introduced to the world.
Video production is the process of generating video content that includes not only the capturing of videos with a camera but also images, clips, static and motion graphics, adding sound effects and music where needed, editing, and adding captions and titles to spice things up. Conventionally, the video production process is categorized into three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production.
However, conventionally, the video production process is categorized into three phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. It is led by a crew of creative experts who collaborate to capture/gather, compile and then edit to lead to the final product.
There are hurdles associated with each step and creative burnout tops the list. In cold reality, no amount of persistence, passion, and labor can shield against reaching a creative block.
Secondly, since the work of a video producer is exhibited openly, it is always at the expense of criticism by each viewer. More eyes mean more mouths and more mouths will have more talks. Not all criticism is constructive. In fact, in this highly competitive environment, most criticism can feed into the notorious cancel culture. Thirdly, since there is a team involved, it can be tricky to keep everyone on the same page. Creatives tend to take their work personally as it is a reflection of their mind and personality nonetheless and hence may refuse to go with the type of flow that doesn’t resonate with their ideology. Now, last but not the least, finding the right tools for the job and being able to organize and systemize the workforce and clients to be able to work in tandem with each other.
How to stay creative
It may not seem obvious, but improvement begins from within. According to certified psychology journals, the Big 5 Personality Traits, if stuck with, lead to a successful career and a stress-free work environment which ultimately leads to the generation of creative new ideas.
Those traits are:
- AGREEABLENESS: translating into flexibility to flow with others as a show of respect towards them.
- CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: follow the rules and be mindful of the impact of your product.
- EXTROVERSION: being social and making connections – we all know how useful that can be in the media business.
- NEUROTICISM: openness to negative emotions rather than banking thoughts until they bottle up.
- OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: crucial for video production to stay relevant to modern trends.
Now let’s talk about creative burnout, no one wants to go through with it, yet everyone does at some point in their life. Even though, creatives are lucky enough to pursue their dream job they do reach exhaustion point. Passion merely increases their threshold for burnout. So how do we overcome this plight? We do that by getting to the root of the problem. Try to understand why you are feeling this way. Has your work been repetitive? Are the working hours too hectic? Has your ego taken a hit? This also ties in with susceptibility to feeling inadequate after condemnation.
Writer Nathalie Sejean explains burnout in a beautiful metaphor by saying:
A creative burnout is not a fatality, it’s an injury. You haven’t dried up your well of creativity, you’ve overworked your creative muscle. You forgot to stretch it. You repeated too many times the same movements, over-developing sections and weakening others.
Just like a cramped muscle, one can always bounce back to creative health by just some “time-out”. Give yourself a much-needed break. Everyone has taken a break from some project at some point, only to come back sometime later with refreshing clarity. This is because your brain got to release the tension it was cooking for so long and is now ready to take up challenges. But how much time off, you ask? Well, it varies from person to person. You need an afternoon, take an afternoon off. You need a day or two, take it. You have been too hard on yourself for too long, take an entire vacation. Look within. Accept yourself and your needs. Self-care is a basic human need and is not synonymous with being lazy, spoiled, or selfish.
There is always meditation and yoga to try, and one can see that most creatives resort to this method to influence consciousness and release stress. Then some methods have been shown to work for everyone regardless of their profession. While music calms the nerves, it may also inspire an upcoming creative video production project. Try changing your workspace. Maybe you have been stuck inside four walls for too long. Go out for a walk. Go grab lunch with friends. Sit in a cafe to work, or a park. Nature is the most inspiring teacher after all, and setting the right scene is crucial for video production.
Creativity comes and goes. But, it never comes by forcing it. So, if you feel like you are going no further forward, turn your head elsewhere! Move on! Reboot yourself by changing the project or the type of activity entirely. Most importantly, completely unplug yourself from responsibilities during non-work hours.
If you’re feeling overburdened, know that it’s alright and even necessary to define boundaries with demanding clients. Saying “no” to unreasonable demands can not only have a positive effect on your mental health, it can even put you in a place of dominance and keeps you in charge of your schedule and life. Isn’t that what we all strive for?
So crumple up that shame and toss it in the nearest trash can. You are not lazy if you are putting limits on your goals. You are not inadequate if a few projects didn’t attract as much praise as you thought them to get. You are your best friend and your most sincere ally. A pessimistic mind will only cloud your judgment and allow the burnout to stay longer, eventually leading to your own downfall. A healthy mind is a creative mind. To stay creative, one has to take criticism as an opportunity to improve oneself. Tough feedback is where growth occurs.
10 creative tips to improve the quality of your creation:
- Lighting: should be appropriate to the feel of the video and plenty, the sun is your best buddy.
- Color: color dictates the mood of the story.
- Background: be careful about the background, messy and cramped backgrounds can be distracting.
- Video editing program: choose a good software that makes your job easier rather than hectic, preferably something that combines all the tools you need in one place.
- Editing: keep it simple; adding different effects can be fun but looks unprofessional.
- Noise Cancelling: improves voice quality.
- Rule of Thirds: The rule of thirds is one of the most basic principles of film composition. Imagine that there’s a 3-by-3 grid laid over the field you’re filming. Instead of placing your subject right in the middle of the shot, you should place your subject along with one of the lines of the grid. The points where the lines intersect are particularly strong areas of focus, so situate important elements of the video there, if you can.
- Lens Choice: vintage or modern, cine or photo, aperture, sharpness.
- Angles: shoot from a variety of angles to add spice.
- Promote: creating videos is only half of the process: post-production promotion constitutes the second half. All great works start with an idea but in the modern age, an idea only exists if made to be publicly known.
Final Thoughts
Imagine you have won the aforementioned personal battles, and you find yourself blocked by yet another boulder; the disorganized working of your creative crew. A properly organized timeline helps creatives prevent stress by streamlining their work from unnecessary clutter. And that’s where we come in!
KROCK.IO is an amazing platform for video production companies that helps to manage creative teams through visual communication with clients at every stage of the production process. This platform allows you to manage tasks, assign people to projects, and control work performance at each stage and in each version. It allows you to focus on creativity while seamlessly managing your project all in one place. It helps you monitor the workload of each team member, assign individual tasks, add freelancers and keep track of all stages. You can do this by building a custom pipeline for every project you manage, using a visual board with all the steps, assignees, due dates, and deliverables. A dashboard is available to keep track of all your projects in terms of progress. With the dashboard, you can visualize everything in one place: deadlines, team progress on every task, and client reviews. It is built by creatives for creatives!
KROCK has various plans to offer to start as low as $7.99 per month with 5 GB storage to $55.20 per month with 100 GB storage. The PRO plan for our PRO creatives costs $79.20 per month with 250 GB of cloud storage. Choose according to your needs and leave the stress of keeping track of everything behind. Use the spare time to focus on yourself and keep the creative juices flowing.
Current pricing plans can be found on this page.
Check out more articles on Krock blog:
- Interview with Isabel Wiegand
- Guide to improving feedback management in 2022
- From a side project to the main business. Interview with Liz Hermann
- How much video editor should charge in 2022
If you’re having any trouble or need any help, let us know.
