Review: video.Market7.com
Preproduction
This set of tools consists of a team "building" module in which the project owner invites members to join the project; a project brief module, which consists of a questionnaire that helps the team plan production elements; and a script module, where team members can collaboratively write, edit, and storyboard the production script.
In the build-a-team module, the team members must be added manually, as there isn’t an LDAP or an OpenID allocation from which to draw contact or resource information.
Invites take less than a minute to be received; if an invitation is not received immediately, another invite email can be sent from the team list. Once an invitee accepts the invite, he or she can be assigned a role, which we’ll discuss a bit later.
Actually, Market7 uses the terms "team" and "resource" differently than most resource planning tools. From Market7’s standpoint, resources are defined as available member hours, not inanimate objects. This is key to understanding how to use the resource module that appears in the production section (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Resourceallocation is important for anyproject, and Market7's resource toolcompares budgeted versus actualdollars and time, as well as trackingbasic task list completion.The project brief is similar to the basics of a business plan in that it contains a set of predefined questions that need to be answered, the results of which will assist in planning for both the production and the distribution methods. The project brief answers what, where, who, why, when, and how—questions that address overarching subjects such as video length, target audience, production timeline, audience call to action, and availability of existing assets.
This list is fairly comprehensive; it’s a good starting point, but I think it would be helpful to have estimated budget segments for preproduction, production, postproduction, and distribution costs. In addition, a very rudimentary part of the process that’s often overlooked lies in the "what do you want to be created?" section: determining whether a linear video makes more sense than an interactive game or even a sheet of paper in terms of audience effectiveness in getting the message across.