Running a Small Video Production Business during the Covid-19 Pandemic
With the Covid-19 pandemic running rampant through the United States in the last few months, we’ve been affected along with everyone else. Some have had it better, and many have had it much worse, so I’m thankful that both Jen and I have been healthy and able to work either from home, or while exercising proper social distancing.
I wanted to share how the business has been affected, what we’ve done to cope, and what we’re going to do moving forward to keep ourselves, as well as others, safe.
How we were affected directly
Three of our biggest client industries took a HUGE hit from the coronavirus; travel, adventure, and education. Travel + tourism has suffered everywhere due to travel restrictions and also how this content is normally filmed. Travel media almost always features restaurants, bars, museums, events, and other public places, but these places are at half-capacity or empty now. Some states have mask orders as well, and even though we support that 110%, it just doesn’t make for good tourism visuals when people are wearing them, even in the background.
The adventure and climbing industries saw some losses this year, and the big annual trade shows closed down. This has meant fewer marketing dollars and tighter budgets for most brands. Luckily we were still able to do some remote post-production on a series of retail infomercial type videos for Ground Up Sales:
Several education projects that were slated to be completed or start preproduction for in the spring, have been indefinitely postponed, with no clear restart date on the calendar as schools may or may not resume in-person classes in the fall.
Luckily we were able to collect unemployment insurance, as well as a small SBA disaster relief loan advance! I’m used to small stretches without work, but this was the largest lapse I’ve experienced in a combined 15 years of running a business, and freelancing before that.
Wrapping up past projects
As work started to slow down, we of course used that time to finish existing video and photo projects, including finalizing a distribution deal for Gone Tomorrow, the Story of Kentucky Ice Climbing. We had to do some re-cutting of a few scenes to get it ready, but now it’s available on Vimeo on Demand, Amazon, and a few others.
Film Festivals
Several film festivals we had planned on attending shifted to remote viewing, so we ended up participating in both live and pre-recorded events. Mike was asked to virtually host the Louisville Wild and Scenic Film Festival event, so we provided a number of pre-recorded segments for inclusion into their program.
Changing our workflow
We stayed tuned to what our state government and the CDC were recommending, and we officially re-opened for business on May 11th, following orders for distancing and mask wearing. We’ve now built this in to all of our work contracts, and are making sure that folks realize we’re doing everything we can to be safe, and keep them safe as well. Our camera kits are now always packed with a large bottle of sanitizer and extra masks.
Strategic Planning
We took on a few volunteer projects during that time to keep our skills sharp, and one project in particular was this Covid-19 video for the RRGCC (Red River Gorge Climbers Coalition).
Moving forward though, we know that we’ll have to work even harder than before to cultivate new clients, and find ways to work with existing ones, even when budgets have been slashed.
We’ve left ourselves open for a broader range of projects, and have been making longer-term plans with clients to provide content that will be usable for a longer period of time, rather than doing multiple projects in a season.