Plan for Multiple Outputs Before Pre-Production Begins
The most common mistake businesses make with video production is briefing for a single deliverable — the two-minute brand film, the conference highlight reel — without thinking about how the footage could serve other purposes. By the time the edit is done, the window to capture additional material has passed.
Repurposing works well when it is planned from the outset. The framing of shots, the structure of interviews, the pacing of the edit — all of these decisions need to account for multiple outputs if the repurposed content is going to be genuinely good rather than a compromised version of the main piece.
What One Shoot Can Realistically Produce
From a single well-planned production day, it is realistic to produce the following — provided the brief accounts for them upfront:
Core Deliverable
- Full-length master film (typically 2–4 minutes for a brand or corporate video)
Cut-Downs for Paid and Organic Social
- 60-second version for LinkedIn, YouTube pre-roll, or Facebook
- 30-second version for Instagram, paid social, or broadcast
- 15-second version for Instagram Stories, YouTube bumper, or TikTok
Format Variations
- Square (1:1) reformats of the above for Instagram feed and Facebook
- Vertical (9:16) reformats for Instagram Reels, TikTok, and Stories
Additional Assets
- Individual interview or testimonial clips (if contributors were filmed)
- A teaser or trailer of 10–20 seconds for pre-launch use
- Captioned versions for sound-off viewing on social platforms
- Still photography (requires a stills photographer briefed on the day, or high-resolution frame grabs where quality permits)
- A B-roll library for use in future content, presentations, or other videos
Sound-off viewing is now standard on social media. A significant proportion of social video is watched without audio. Any cut designed for social use should include subtitles or captions — ideally burned into the video rather than relying on auto-generated captions, which frequently contain errors.
Why Retrofitting Doesn't Work
Trying to create a vertical social cut from a film that was shot entirely in landscape 16:9 framing nearly always produces a compromised result. Key subjects get cropped. Graphics sit in the wrong part of the frame. Text overlays designed for widescreen become illegible on a phone screen.
The solution is simple: tell your production company before the shoot that you need vertical cuts. The DoP can adjust framing to protect the centre of the shot; the director can ensure key action happens in a zone that works across multiple aspect ratios. This costs nothing extra if planned in advance. It is expensive and time-consuming to fix in post.
The Interview Efficiency Principle
If your shoot involves on-camera contributors or interviews, brief them thoroughly on the key messages you need them to cover — but let the director run the actual interview. A skilled interviewer will draw out multiple usable quotes on each topic, giving the editor several options per message. This single discipline can transform an hour of interview footage into a rich library of individual clips usable across multiple pieces of content.
Ask contributors to answer in complete sentences without referencing the question (e.g., "The thing I find most valuable about working with London Creative is..." rather than "It's..." — the latter is unusable as a standalone clip). Most contributors haven't been on camera before; a brief on-camera briefing before filming begins pays dividends.
The Brief That Gets You There
Before your production company enters pre-production, make sure your brief includes a complete deliverables list — not just the hero film. Include every format, duration, and aspect ratio you need. Ask the production company to confirm that the shoot plan accounts for all of them. Review the shot list before the day if one is available.
A few hours of planning before the shoot is worth significantly more than a few days of remedial editing after it.
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