How to Start a Production Company

In the digital age, the world is full of video content. Whether it’s to entertain, advertise or inform – video is an immensely useful tool for brands, corporations and individuals to gain exposure. This has created a massive and endlessly diverse market for video production, and in 2018, 14,815 production companies were operating in the UK alone.

Starting and running your own production company can be challenging if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal. It’s a highly competitive business that requires a lot of dedication and time investment on your part.

But if you have a knack for video production, and a will to work hard to reach your goals, you have a good chance of achieving success. We’ll go through the necessary steps about starting up and running a successful production company. Find out what skills you need, essential considerations to keep in mind, and how to legally establish your business.

What is a Production Company?

In its simplest terms, a production company handles the physical production necessary to bring art to life, whether it be film, television, video games, music, music videos, or even comics. Often production companies are either approached to create a project or develop projects in house from scratch.

What Qualifications Do You Need to Start a Production Company?

While you don’t need to have any specific qualification to start your own production company, video production requires a lot of technical knowledge and skills that can take years to master. Many people choose to specialise in one particular area such as camera operation, lighting or sound and will have a background or education in the medium. If you have no experience or formal education in video production, it might be wise to take a course or a degree to get vital foundational skills that will help you establish your business.

You’ll also need to have other attributes to run your own business successfully. These include leadership, organisation, financial management, and the ability to be able to sell your production services to prospective clients.

How to Start a Production Company

One of the most critical steps when creating a production company is creating a production company business plan. Without a business plan, starting a company may be easy, but growing it in a sustainable way will be incredibly difficult. Putting your business plan on paper will help you and your team gain a clear direction on the company with actionable steps and will also help you to get funding from investors. It helps to make your business plan as specific yet realistic as possible and should include the following:

Identify Your Niche

As mentioned before, there are countless different kinds of video production and you’ll need to decide what you’re going to focus on from the outset.

Research Your Competition

Once you’ve decided what arena you want your production company to play in, it’s time to research production companies like yours that are working, and others that are not. Carefully research other production companies in your field to see what the market looks like. It’s important to find not only production companies producing the content you hope to create but also production companies operating within the same budget.

Branding Strategy

When it comes to branding your production company, you’ll want a name that says the most about your brand in the fewest amount of words. In many ways, production company names epitomise a production company’s brand. You’ll also need to consider how you will market your company to reach your target clients. Will you have a website? What social media platforms will you utilise?

Set Financial Goals

Of course, the only financial goal that matters is to be profitable. However, when starting a production company, it’s important to roughly estimate how much of the profits you want to reinvest back into the company each year. In the early days of starting a production company, it’s necessary to reinvest most of your profits back into the company. While it will cut into your weekly paycheck, it allows the company to keep chugging along to more lucrative jobs.

Business Legal Structure

Before you take your first paid job or hire your first employee, you have to set up your production company as a legal entity . Choosing the right one is crucial as this will affect filing your taxes on your production.

What Equipment Do You Need to Start a Production Company?

Once you know what kind of projects you’ll be undertaking, you can decide what type of equipment you’ll need. If you intend to outsource things like camera work and sound recording to freelancers, their daily rate will probably include the cost of renting their equipment. As every project is different, your costs will depend on the brief you get from a client, but you can bill them for any extra charges incurred from locations, equipment or workers.

If you do intend to buy your own equipment, then these are the essentials:

• Camera - the cornerstone of your operation and worth investing some time and money in. Do some research into what different cameras can offer you – you could even rent a few different models before committing to buying one.
• Tripod - an essential but inexpensive piece of kit to get steady, professional shots. Different ones support different camera sizes, so make sure you check the mount size and maximum load before you buy.
• Editing software - you can do most basic video editing on free software, but as you grow and take on more challenging projects, it’s worth investing in a more professional tool.

Create a Portfolio of Example Work

When your company is initially starting out, you may want to produce some shorter and cheaper proof-of-concept samples to show off your company's voice and your team’s capabilities. Short videos and clips can be great selling tools for convincing studios and investors to finance full-length projects.

Ready to Form Your Production Company?

If you are ready to start a production business, it’s time to form your company. You can create a limited company or go the sole-trader route. Deciding and completing your company formation can be the most challenging part of starting a business, but it’s crucial to your success.

Are you ready to start a production company? At Mint Formations , we help you form your limited company or self-employed business and take away all the stress that comes with starting a business. We’ll secure your brand name and get your company registered fast so that you can start doing what you love.

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