Week 1
The question list
What your audience actually searches and asks, turned into one question per clip. You approve the list, and it becomes both the shoot plan and the posting schedule.
Videography · Social-first and short-form · Sydney
Social media video production in Sydney
The businesses that post consistently are almost never the ones filming constantly. They filmed once, properly, and have been publishing from it ever since. That is the whole trick, and it is a production decision rather than a social one.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like your following.
1filming day feeds a month
16clips from a single day
Captionedbecause most of it plays silent
Sydneycrew, studio and edit suite
The short answer
What is social media video production?
Social media video production is making short vertical video for Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts: usually 15 to 60 seconds, captioned, filmed to be watched without sound. Done properly it is produced in batches, so one filming day in Sydney yields a month or more of clips rather than one post.
That batching is the entire difference between a business that posts consistently and one that posts twice and stops. Nobody sustains filming something new every week around an actual job. Almost anybody can sustain one planned day a month, because it is a diary entry rather than a habit.
We plan what to film from what your audience actually searches and asks, using the same research behind our search work, so the clips answer real questions instead of chasing a format. Because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into filming. It sits inside our wider Sydney video production service.
The difference
What kind of social video is worth making?
Not all of it is. The useful question is not what will perform, which nobody can answer in advance, but what will still be worth having in six months if it does perform.
What earns its place
- Clips cut from filming you were doing anyway, which cost almost nothing extra
- One real question answered properly, which stays true for years
- A customer or a founder saying something only they can say
- The thing you explain on every sales call, filmed once and sent from then on
What usually is not worth it
- A trend that will be over before the edit is approved
- A studio day for a single post, which is the most expensive clip you will own
- Reposting the television ad vertically and hoping nobody notices
- Volume for its own sake, which produces a full feed and no enquiries
On what to publish and in what order, our guide to short form strategy works through it properly. This page is about producing the clips.
The cost
What drives the price of social video?
How many days you are on camera, and how many finished clips come out of each. The filming is a fixed cost; the number of pieces it produces is almost entirely a planning decision.
A batch day
One day
One planned filming day producing a month or more of clips. The commonest brief and by a distance the best value per finished piece.
Monthly programme
Recurring
A day each month, so the feed never runs dry and the look stays consistent. Also the point at which the setups get faster because nobody is deciding anything twice.
Cut from a bigger shoot
Add on
Vertical coverage captured during a brand film, event or product shoot already booked. The cheapest clips you will ever get, because the crew is already standing there.
We quote a fixed price after a free consult, based on the number of finished clips rather than hours. For indicative Australian ranges across every kind of video, see our guide to what social video costs.
What moves the number, in order
Almost all of it is decided before the day, in how the filming is planned rather than in how it is executed.
- Filming days, and whether they are standalone or attached to another shoot
- How many finished clips come out of each day, which is a planning question
- How many people appear, since each is a setup and a microphone
- Location changes, because each one costs an hour of setup
- Captioning, graphics and any animated overlay
- Whether we deliver monthly or all at once
Sixteen clips is a planning outcome, not a filming one
Two crews can film the same person for the same four hours and one leaves with four usable clips while the other leaves with sixteen. The difference is a list written beforehand of the questions to be answered, one per clip.
Without that list, a filming day becomes a long conversation that has to be mined for moments afterwards, which is slow, expensive in edit time, and produces fewer pieces than anyone expected.
So we build the question list from what people actually search and ask, agree it with you, and film against it. The list is also the cheapest part of the whole job to change.
The scope
What you receive from a social video day
Delivered ready to post, because a clip that still needs work before it can go up is a clip that sits in a folder.
Vertical clips, ready to post
Each one cut, graded, captioned and exported at nine by sixteen, named so you can find the one you want without opening twelve files.
Square and wide versions
The same clips at one by one and sixteen by nine where you need them, for the feed, the website and email, cut rather than cropped.
Burned-in captions
On every clip, because most social video plays silent by default. Plus separate subtitle files where a platform prefers them.
The question list
What we filmed and why, one line per clip, agreed with you first. It doubles as your posting schedule.
Hooks and alternates
Two openings for the clips worth testing, because the first two seconds decide far more than the rest of the edit does.
The full footage
Labelled and handed over, so next quarter's clips can be cut from this quarter's day without filming again.
The return
One planned day, or filming for every post?
This is the decision that determines whether a social video programme survives its third month. It is not about budget. It is about how many times a year somebody has to organise a camera.
The programme that survives is the one that fits in a diary
Every business that has stopped posting stopped for the same reason. Not because it did not work, and not because the budget went. Because filming became something that had to be arranged again every week, by someone with another job.
One day a month is a calendar entry. It survives a busy quarter, a staff change and a holiday, because the work of deciding was done once and the filming is simply booked.
The compounding is the same argument as the rest of our work: the second day is faster than the first, the archive keeps producing, and the analytics tell you what to film more of next time.
The process
How a social video batch gets made
Two weeks to the first delivery, then a rhythm. The only slow part is the first one, because that is where the look and the question list get settled.
Week 1
Look and setup
Where we film, how it is lit, what is in the background. Settled once so every future batch matches without anyone thinking about it.
Week 2
The filming day
One location, minimal changes, working down the list. Short takes, several angles, and alternates for the openings worth testing.
Week 2
The rough set
Every clip cut and sent as a set so you can see the month at once rather than approving sixteen things individually.
Week 3
Captions and finish
Grading, captions, any graphics, and export at every ratio you post to, named for the schedule.
Ongoing
Review and refile
What performed decides what goes on the next list, and the archive gets cut again before anyone books another day.
The brief
What to ask before you book social video
Social video is the easiest thing to buy badly, because volume is easy to promise and quality is hard to judge in advance. These four questions get past that.
How many finished clips, and how do you get to that number?
Ask for the arithmetic, not the promise. The answer should describe a question list written before the day, because that is the only thing that turns four hours into sixteen usable pieces.
Are they delivered ready to post?
Captioned, graded, correctly sized and named. A clip that still needs work before it goes up will not go up, and the programme quietly dies in a shared folder.
Can we cut this from a shoot we are already doing?
Very often yes, and it should be offered rather than waited for. Vertical coverage captured during a shoot already booked is the cheapest social video that exists.
Who owns the footage, and can next quarter come from it?
The archive is most of the value. If the raw material is not handed over, every batch starts from nothing and you are renting a habit rather than building one.
We are happy to answer all four before you commit. For what to publish and in what order, our guide to short form strategy is the companion to this page.
Start here
Ready to fill the feed properly?
Tell us who you are talking to and what they keep asking. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- A question list: the clips worth filming, one line each
- An honest count of how many finished pieces one day would produce for you
- A fixed price per batch, with the delivery formats and turnaround written down
Good questions
Social media video FAQs
What is social media video production?
Social media video production is making short vertical video for Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, usually 15 to 60 seconds, captioned and built to be watched without sound. Done properly it is produced in batches, so one planned filming day yields a month or more of clips rather than a single post.
How much does social media video cost in Sydney?
We do not publish a single figure, and we quote by finished clips rather than by hours. What moves it is how many filming days, how many pieces come out of each one, how many people appear, how many locations, and how much captioning and graphics each clip needs. Cut from a shoot you have already booked, the clips cost very little extra.
How many clips can you get from one day?
Around sixteen from a well planned day, and four from a badly planned one, with the same crew and the same hours. The difference is a list of questions written beforehand, one per clip, rather than a long conversation that has to be mined afterwards.
Do we need to appear on camera ourselves?
It helps a great deal, because a named person outperforms a logo on every platform, but it is not the only option. Customers, team members and the work itself all carry a clip. What does not work is a feed with nobody in it.
Should the video be vertical?
For Reels, TikTok and Shorts, yes, and it should be filmed vertical rather than cropped from a wide frame, because the crop is visible and the framing is always slightly wrong. We film for every ratio you post to in the same setups.
Do the clips need captions?
Yes. Most social video plays silent by default, so a clip without captions is a clip most people scroll past without knowing what it was about. We burn them in and supply separate subtitle files where the platform prefers them.
Can you cut social clips from a shoot we already have?
Usually, and it is worth asking before booking anything new. Existing footage from a brand film, an event or a product shoot very often contains several good clips, and cutting them costs a fraction of filming fresh.
How often should we post?
Consistency matters more than frequency, and a monthly batch that keeps going beats a weekly plan that stops in March. Pick a rhythm you can hold through a busy quarter, and let the archive cover the weeks when nothing new is filmed.