I’m giving you all sorts of good tips and tricks to think about to make your creatives and department hum properly. Or maybe you’re the single media guy trying to convince your bosses why they should or shouldn’t do something. To keep another factor in mind, and this is really the root and the key is organization. Not just the process or the people, but the media as well.

If you shoot internal video and external video, you’ll need a good idea on how to organize your media. Are you storing projects? Where, how and in what formats? We used to shoot using tapes, and now it’s pretty much all digital. Are you keeping backups and hard drives available for re-edits? Do you need to spread assets between creatives? Can you walk media assets between the creatives or do you need network storage, library check ins/outs and more? If you change a campaign, how easily can you re-render a project, or did you film something with a now defunct employee and are in danger of losing all of that footage and data?

That might be not so costly for a large company and campaign, but it can be devastating for a small company and one creative. Reshooting the same elements all over again not only wastes time, but becomes ineffective if you didn’t learn the lesson and shoot with actors in the first place. That’s actually the reason behind using talent. You get the professional results you want faster and easier. And if you’re smart, you’ll use multiple cameras, scenes, and more to make sure that you get the most out of those shoots you paid for. Even paying for b-roll online isn’t guaranteed to give you the same results or license-make sure you check those before you launch any b-roll into campaigns.

So use waivers, talent forms, and organize your media into a smart and effective way to utilize it. If you ever need footage to pull from, it’s much better to have a working library instead of scrambling to find and shoot footage every time you need something. It saves time, effort, and stress on everyone’s part.

YOU may feel like arguing and saying-isn’t that what the video guy is there for? And yes, you are partially right. But think about how much storage you’ll need if you need to continue to shoot and add up footage. It takes away from new edits, it costs more money for storage capacity, and it also continues to leave more assets to organize and dead ones to still deal with.

If you want a new creative to walk in to an established company with no footage, no media to guide him, and starting from the ground up, that’s fine. Put a smart plan in place to deal with everything that can be produced and you won’t be surprised later when the problems arise.