How to prepare the materials for your video project

Most delays in a video project don't happen in the edit — they happen before it, while materials arrive in pieces: footage one week, the logo the next, the corrected data at the end. Gathering everything before production starts is the single change that most shortens delivery times.

Start with the story materials. Any existing footage (even unpolished), photographs, previous videos and, if the project involves science or technical content, the source documents: reports, papers, datasets. We read the sources directly — that's how accuracy is built in from the first draft rather than corrected afterwards.

Then the brand materials: logos in vector format (SVG or AI), brand guidelines if they exist, fonts and any mandatory elements such as funder logos or disclaimers. International cooperation projects and EU-funded work usually have strict visibility requirements — share them at the start, not at the review stage.

References are more useful than briefs. Two or three links to videos you like — or dislike — communicate tone, pace and style faster than a page of adjectives. They don't need to be from your sector.

Finally, the practical details: who approves, how many review rounds you expect to use, deadlines tied to events or campaigns, and the languages and formats you need (subtitles, vertical versions, cutdowns). Knowing at the start that a piece will also live on Instagram changes how it's shot and edited.

We've condensed all of this into a one-page checklist you can download from our resources section and share internally with your team before a project kicks off.