November 2009 – Feature: Put Your Money Where It Counts

How to cut costs on a DRTV show–without wishing you hadn’t

By Jack Gordon

How can you reduce production costs for a DRTV commercial without sabotaging its quality or its chance to succeed?

Let’s complicate the question. Suppose you’re going to film an infomercial. You know up front that you will want to test multiple offers: different bonuses, different pricepoints, different product configurations. If the infomercial is a hit, you will want to create short-form DRTV spots to follow up. You’ll also want video clips that work well on the product’s website and perhaps other online venues. You might even take the campaign to international markets.

Knowing all this, how do you hold down costs on the original production in ways that aren’t going to come back to bite you later when you have to re-shoot footage that you could have grabbed the first time?

A good place to start is with a realistic idea of the budget you’ll need for the type of show you want, says James Kunitz, president of DV Creations, a DRTV production house in Santee, Calif. A half-hour infomercial in a simple sit-down interview format–think of health- and wealth-tips purveyor Kevin Trudeau–can be produced for as little as $40,000, Kunitz says.

But to play in the market for products requiring demonstrations and testimonials–especially those in the health, fitness or beauty categories–the entry-level cost is usually around $250,000. “You just aren’t going to compete against a product like Proactiv with a $50,000 show,” Kunitz says. “So the question really is, how do you cheat the budget? How do you spend $250,000 and walk away with what looks like a $400,000 show?”

How indeed? Experienced DRTV producers agree that it boils down to a matter of knowing where to cut corners–and where not to.

The People
Never skimp on a scriptwriter, producers agree. Using the best writer you can find will ensure the quality of your show and ultimately save you money. An excellent lighting person also is essential, especially for food and beauty products. The photography director should be top-notch. And the show’s host should be the best you can afford.

Above all, DRTV producers stress, make sure that the person in charge of the production–the director or producer–has experience with planning, shooting and editing DRTV programs. Do not entrust your show to corporate video producers, crews from local cable TV stations or producers of general-market commercials, no matter how attractive their sample film clips.

The point is self-serving, of course, but no less valid. Joan Renfrow, president of Onyx Productions Direct of Los Angeles, puts it this way: “Quality in DRTV is not about whether you can shoot pretty pictures. DRTV is a tool to make people pick up the phone or go to a website. A lot of companies can shoot commercials, but they don’t have a clue how to script and shoot a show that’s about motivating, demonstrating and encouraging people to buy. They don’t even know how to cut it right. Your product will suffer, and you’ll bring it to me to fix.”

The place to save money on people is further down the skill chain. For instance, Renfrow says, a first-rate wardrobe specialist may well be worth the money, but “the chief wardrobe person doesn’t necessarily need a specialized assistant at $450 per day to make pickups and returns. You can use a $200-per-day production assistant for that.”

Put the Dollars Where They Count
A lot of time and money gets wasted by fussing with and second-guessing elements that have no bearing on a DRTV commercial’s selling success, says Collette Liantonio, president of Concepts TV Productions in Boonton, N.J. A client will show a rough cut of a commercial to friends and family members, “and everybody turns into an expert.” They want different music or a different wardrobe for the host–and costs start to balloon.

A fabulous-looking host, striking attire, familiar music that viewers might love or hate–all of those things usually just rob attention from the product. Unless you’re selling music, Liantonio says, the last thing you want in a DRTV show is your spouse’s favorite song. “That’s just distracting. It should be elevator music, not an element you actively listen to. Don’t waste time in the edit suite, at $300 per hour, playing around with the music. Just use needle drops.”

The trick is to “put the money where it will impress the viewer,” Liantonio says. This depends heavily on what you’re selling. If it’s a fashion product, then what the host wears is important. If it’s a hair product, put money into the models’ hair, clothes and styling. If it’s a kitchen commercial, shoot it in a trendy, upscale kitchen, with a stainless steel refrigerator. If food plays a role, by all means spend money on a good food stylist.

“I recently saw a commercial for nail polish where the models had ugly knuckles–and feet with heavy make-up that didn’t hide the flaws,” she says. If you’re selling nail polish, for heaven’s sake put it on attractive fingers and toes. “Hire hand models and foot models,” Liantonio says. “That’s why they exist.”

How Much to Shoot?
Do you want a DRTV show that not only has the best chance to become a hit on its own, but also to anchor a long-lasting campaign, with short-form spots, changes in the offer and so on? This sounds counterintuitive, says Alex Dinsmoor, VP of marketing strategy for Santa Ana, Calif.-based production company Script to Screen, but 95 percent of the time, the most cost-effective strategy is to “spend more time shooting up front, so you make sure you get all the creative elements you’re looking for.”

You will almost always come out ahead, Dinsmoor says, if you “get more footage in the edit bay.” Why? You’ll have more options. “And it’s always more expensive to go back and do it again.”

More is better when it comes to demonstrations, testimonials, host segments, product shots “and any ways to prove that the product does what we say it does,” Dinsmoor says. There is no way to know up front “which combination of elements will resonate with the consumer. So it’s good to have the option to test more of them.”

Renfrow and Liantonio echo the more-film-is-better theme. They point out that production crews normally charge by the day, not by the hour. You won’t save money by sending the crew home early, but if you keep shooting, you might get the magic shot–the key testimonial, the perfect take on a demo–that makes the whole campaign click. Even a few hours of overtime are less costly than coming back another day to pick up the shot you didn’t get.

Yes, editing time is expensive, the producers admit. But the answer is not to shoot less. The best ways to save editing time, they say, are to use digital cameras that transfer footage directly into the editing bay, keep meticulous records of which shots are where, send edited segments online for client approval–and, Dinsmoor adds, streamline the client-approval process in any way possible to eliminate delays.

The odd man out on this point is Kunitz, who argues against the more-is-better philosophy, warning that it can add more costs than value. The biggest variable in the cost of DRTV productions, he says, “comes down to how much you shoot. It’s the raw footage. If you overshoot to account for every thought that comes into your mind about something you might use if you go international, for instance, that gets very expensive.”

He agrees that one always should shoot to allow for different pricepoints and offer configurations. “But we try as much as possible not to overshoot stuff…. If you plan well, have a good writer on board and everybody agrees on a script, that’s how you can save a lot of money.”

How Much Green Screen?
Producers agree that shooting products and likely bonus items against a green screen is a great way to save costs when you will want to configure different offers for testing. Testimonials and other elements also can be shot against a green screen to save on travel costs and location set-ups: Film satisfied customers against a green screen once, then edit in backgrounds that put them anywhere from a tropical beach to a snowy mountaintop.

But filming people–as opposed to static packages–against a green screen is not for novices. Some esoteric technical issues involving lighting, camera movement and other variables can destroy the illusion that a host or testimonial giver is really out in the snow, for example. Kunitz and Dinsmoor both warn that a show’s quality can suffer when green screens are overused.

“If realism is something you’re really concerned with for a scene, and you want to show a woman in a house, put her in a house,” says Kunitz. The technology surrounding green screens is now so good that viewers won’t be able to explain why they sense something is wrong about a scene, he says. “But they’ll get a feeling that something about the person is fake.”

And that’s not a feeling calculated to make viewers pick up the phone.

Jack Gordon is Electronic Retailer magazine’s editor at large.