Start Your Professional Video Making Career

What you'll learn in this video business course

• Choosing a goal: production company or freelancer, and which role (production, camera and sound, or post-production) you want to be known for.
• Thinking like a business owner: advising the client, putting the client first, and talking about what a video does for their business instead of your gear.
• Building three service packages (bronze, silver and gold) that a client understands without a gear list, and why you start with the most expensive one.
• Pricing: working from a base hourly fee, adding equipment, converting it to half-day and day rates, and adding a commission when you hire a freelancer. Jordy works through the numbers using Belgian taxes and tells you to redo the maths for your own region.
• Contract basics: day price and extra hours, included revisions, an upfront payment, a scheduled delivery date and usage rights.
• Finding clients: business networking events for production companies, a portfolio and targeted emails for freelancers, and internships as a way into the film industry.
• Landing a job: researching the client, touring their business, naming a price in the meeting and following up on the quote.
• Running the production and edit: briefing the client during the shoot, collecting assets, handling drafts and revision rounds.
• Growing: Google reviews, using clients as references, asking for introductions and staying in touch.

How the course is built

There are 11 lessons with a total runtime of about 54 minutes. Jordy talks you through each step in order, from the first goal to the second client, using examples from his own career: event videos, corporate videos, weddings and a BMW franchise as the example client. This is a talk-through course. There are no project files and no software to open.

Who this course is for

It is for you if you want to start a video production company, or want to work as a freelancer in the film industry, from camera operator or video editor to the crew of bigger productions. The two paths differ, and the lessons say which parts apply to which. The landing-a-job lesson, for example, mostly applies to people who run their own production company and deal with the end client directly.

It is not a filmmaking technique course. Jordy says he does not go into how to film or set up lights, and that sales technique is a topic for other courses. He also calls this course a guide that stays shallow, because running a business is learned through experience.

What you need

No software is taught or required. Come with a goal you are willing to think about: Jordy asks where you want to be in five years.