RFP for production companies – What would you want?

[Mike Smith]

You have to decide what your priorities are, in terms of cheap, good or fast … No doubt you have an approved budget level in mind.

1 Shortlist companies based on quality of work.

Build a long-list of possibles, from the COW, contacts, local trade directories, web, wherever.

Review reels from companies you could work with, whether local or, perhaps, via remote link if you are used to remote working. Try to see at least two whole videos, and avoid compilations of effects, clips and highlights.

Probably unless you are selling to designers and video techs it’s editorial quality that you want to prioritize : do their videos tell interesting, compelling stories that move audiences like your target audience?

2 Qualify your best preferences can work in your price range.

Contact your best preferences and ask for budget range information – what did the productions you liked cost their clients, and what is their floor price for a x-minute your-style production. They may resists telling you too much, but at this stage you just want to know if they can work happily in your approved budget range.

3 Prepare a brief covering everything you, as a producer, would want to know.

Delivery requirements. (DVD? webfile? Master material? Edit timelines? Copies? Whatever you want) Audience. Objective. Any specific desired content or style pointers. Stuff you like. Related web, ad or print material you use. Resources you can supply in terms of people, places, contacts. Schedule – and make this realistic, allowing for your buying and admin processes. Target budget. How many people / companies you are inviting.

If you are really going to choose on price, tell them. And when people build to a price, they need to know what corners it’s OK, or not OK, to cut. So tell them.

Caution, though: you’re heading towards a process that supplies just *exactly* what’s requested and contracted and nothing more – so if you don’t spec a tripod, don’t expect one. And if you change the spec after contract, what extra charges will you face?

You have to decide if you are aiming to build a conflict-oriented, price-dominated negotiation – you’d better be good at this, since your suppliers will be – or are trying to find creative, committed film-makers interested in making a fair return on producing the best work they can for a given project, client and budget. This will influence who you approach and how you approach them, who you choose, how your videos come out, and the eventual overall cost.

There’s a lovely example from the UK building trade (one of many great examples), where a museum contracted marble cladding to fit in with an existing marble area, using the common name of the marble in the contract. One cute contractor offered a much cheaper price than the others – and got the job. The marble went in (it costs millions) – and didn’t match. When the client complained, the contractor was able to prove that the material he used matched the contract spec (though not the common usage of the term in dispute). The contractor was not liable, and the museum had to choose between accepting the mismatch of paying heavily to have the work redone …

3 Invite your top 3 or at most 4 to tender proposals.

Include a personal covering note or email. Explain what of their work you liked, and why.
If they ask for a pre-meeting to discuss and start research, say yes.

[Brian Tetamore]

“If you are really going to choose on price, tell them. And when people build to a price, they need to know what corners it’s OK, or not OK, to cut. So tell them. ”

That’s good.

And yes, the standard MO is to go with the lowest priced qualified bidder. Unless, we can argue that a more expensive bid is worthwhile. The Ad Agency has asked that we create an RFP that allows us to compare apples to apples, so I’ll likely put up specs that are exact, but make it clear that could change based upon final scripting and thus the final bid.

Any thoughts on that? Maybe we just contract for the script and pre-production first, and then settle on the project contract from that?

The Visual Rabbi
TheVisualChurch.com
“Crafting Visual Messages to Engage and Persuade”

[Malcolm Matusky]

Do you have a completed and approved script? If not, your RFP is moot. Depending upon how a script is written, budget can swing wildly.

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Brian Tetamore]

Yeah, that’s my current line of questioning. Do I contract with a company or script writer to write the script and then put out an RFP? Or, could I contract with an RFP for a suitable production company based on experience, demonstrated storytelling, gear specs, daily EFP rates, hourly edit rates and so forth, and then once the script is green lighted, write up a contract for the production?

The Visual Rabbi
TheVisualChurch.com
“Crafting Visual Messages to Engage and Persuade”

[Malcolm Matusky]

Being that you are the client, that’s your call. Buttttt….!!!!
Bidding on an RFP without a “locked and approved” script” is an exercise in futility for a production company. If you want to hire a Producer to get the entire job done for you, for a fixed amount, that is a different story, but from your posts it seems you are the executive producer so it’s your responsibility to hire a scriptwriter and then contract with a production company. Otherwise everyone will be unhappy with the finished product, as it is unlikely it will be the same scope as you envisioned it.

The budget all depends upon the script: ie, “the aerial view of the factory shows the CEO getting out of the limousine….” well that shot cost $5,000.00! or “from across the street pan across the expanse of the factory and zoom in on the sign…” that shot cost $50.00 You get the idea.

From my perspective I pass on all RFP’s because if you don’t want me to make a film about you, then I don’t want you for a client. I am a person first and a company second; but that’s just me. There are plenty of production companies who will bid on any job, they are companies first and people second! That’s the nature of the business, I run a “boutique” shop, not a large concern by any stretch of the imagination. I am a “creative producer” in H-wood speak.

If this process is daunting to you, hire a producer, get the script locked and then have the producer write the RFP for you and evaluate the bids. Pay him and then retain him/or her/ to monitor the shoot as it progresses till finished product is delivered satisfactorily.

Malcolm Matusky, MBA
Malcolmproduction.com

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Malcolm Matusky]

Forgot to mention, what is your budget? If it’s $10~20K just hire a local shop and hope for the best, if it’s a couple of times that you can go through all the hoops.

Malcolm
http://www.malcolmproductions.com

[Brian Tetamore]

Good stuff. Thanks for the input.

What makes video so difficult to bid is the fact that the final product is invisible until it is scripted. So, yeah, I’m leaning towards getting a script done before a contract.

The Visual Rabbi
TheVisualChurch.com
“Crafting Visual Messages to Engage and Persuade”

[Mark Suszko]

Malcom has shown you the way:

Without at least a proper Creative Treatment, or the script that comes out of the Treatment, you have no compass or map for any part of the trip.

The Treatment process allows everyone to get a really good grasp of the type of imagery to be captured, the number and type of people in the cast, the number and type of locations, and thus one with some experience can get a real idea of the time involved in getting all these shots and then editing them. And at the treatment stage it costs nothing to make changes with a pencil line, versus the expense of re-shoots in real life. This is why I say a good script-writer and treatment do not cost; they SAVE money. And help guarantee success.

May I recommend a great book on this by a friend, Now in a second revised edition,
John Morley’s handbook on corporate script writing:

https://www.amazon.com/Scriptwriting-High-Impact-Videos-Imaginative-information/dp/0595449387/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299438608&sr=1-10

contains among many good chapters, a walk-thru of the Creative Treatment process, that will help narrow down your costs and save you headaches and money.

[Richard Cooper]

IMHO, our take on RFPs is this, we just walk away…. Just not worth our time…. This may seem a sour attitude, but the reality is this: If a company putting out the RFP is only concerned about the lowest bidder, then they get what they pay for and they deserve what they get.
You would be best to develop a relationship with a creative shop that does excellent work, one that you trust. The PAY THEM to produce a video for you. The lowest bidder very rarely works to the clients advantage…. I leave you with a short, but true story….

We spent close to 40 hours over the course of a six month period developing a concept with a potential client, a state agency. Every one was excited. They came to us SPECIFICALLY because they saw our work and said “WE WANT THAT!!!” They said that they really wanted to proceed in this direction “stylistically” and they were convinced that we were the only house that could accomplish this specific look, so we developed a solid concept with them for a highly stylized video to promote said agency. It was all a go. I even threw in some extras to sweeten the deal for them… and just as we were to sign the contract, they said “…oh, looks like we need to put out an RFP but don’t worry, we want you to do the video, we just need to jump through the hoops”

So when we received the RFP from my “friends” at said state agency, I was surprised to see that their RFP was literally a “cut and paste” of our original proposal, right down to the payment terms, the little “extras” we proposed to sweeten the deal… even the time line we proposed!
So, we sent in the response to the RFP with the numbers that we had discussed… I think it was about a $20-$30,000 project. Not huge, but certainly not chump change… We get a response three weeks later… They had decided to go with another company and thanked us for submitting…. my jaw hit the floor when I saw that the winning bid had underbid us by $1200.00….

What did they get for their $1200 dollar savings?… a video that was 6 months late and stylistically not even CLOSE to what was originally discussed. I don’t even think they shot it in HD!! Not to mention that the video was never used for its original intent. We never did see it once anywhere that we had discussed for distribution and exposure… and I will leave you to imagine why the video was never used.

But it seems that they got the video that they deserved.

[Mark Suszko]

Richard:

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.:-)

The enemy of what we do is the “commodity mindset”; the idea that creative work can be commoditized just like buying cases of oil, pallets of copier paper or desk chairs or standard PC boxes. The wrong assumption made by those individuals is that our work product is totally uniform from company to company, person to person. Nothing could be further from the truth.