The Production Room was founded in 1995 as one of the first full time digital commercial recording facilties on the central coast of California. We started with 4 stereo tracks, 16 mb of ram and a 250 mb hard drive. A lot has happened since then. Today we're focusing on ways to serve clients who are creating web based media content. This includes strategic planning to integrate the benefits of traditional media, web design and IT solutions into new programs produced especially for on-line consumers. Join in the conversation. Throw rocks at glass houses. Share your vision of the future. This is the most progressive time in the media arts since Johannes Gutenburg invented movable type!

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Summer Sunshine and Blue Skies

Summertime brings us so much to do. Sometimes it's tough to keep both eyes on the ball when the kids are out of school, we're working overtime to earn a summer break or even just a day at the beach.

One issue that comes up often these days is how to create time efficiency and cost effectiveness for our clients while meeting important business deadlines.

Here are some things we suggest to clients who need to complete projects on time and on budget. This can help especially when summer time and production money is at a premium.

We work with clients to include their input on budgets for talent and studio time. We offer consulting and up front planning on studio costs and talent fees. We often include careful script review and session planning. We find we're able to identify script questions and problems in pre-production that we might otherwise have to solve on the clock in a recording or editing session. We offer thirty day billing for our established clients and we now accept credit card payment for ISDN service and clients who want to establish credit.

Getting the right voice and the right read is critical. We invite clients to join us in the studio or by phone to session direct talent with us. This helps avoid expensive additional time and talent fees to re-track projects. We also think it helps clients appreciate having professional voice talent on each session we do. It simply takes less time to work with talent that can take and hold direction.

Script and talent issues are the most common reasons that projects go over budget.
Sometimes these costs simply cannot be avoided. But the best way to manage costs is to have a bullet proof script and a clear understanding of your production needs before recording begins. And as always, you can't expect to buy a Mercedes Coupe at a Chevy price. So if you need all the bells and whistles, it's best to plan for that up front.

We work for our production clients and our job is to represent your issues on every project. We're happy to have you put the job in our hands and trust our judgememnt to complete it to your satisfaction. But if you need to manage a complex project on a tight budget, plan on working with us from the start to help you get the most for your money.