When we film for the Restaurant Owners Uncorked video series, we get about 30 minutes of interview footage. I edit out what I think are the most interesting or useful comments made by each owner, and we produce three separate 1- to 3-minute videos. That means we use three to nine minutes of the interview, and you never get to see the remaining twenty to twenty-five minutes. The videos we produce with those three to nine minutes of film are in color, have music, and contain b-roll (background footage) that matches the content of the audio (if an owner talks about happy customers, we show happy customers).
When I do my edits, I normally have a sense fairly quickly of which comments I think we should use. But when I edited the interview we did with Mike Schatzman of Union Sushi + Barbecue Bar in Chicago, I had a hard time selecting only three segments. He said a lot of things I wanted to share, but some of them covered topics that are not good topics for b-roll. For instance, I don’t know what kind of footage to show when Mike talks about restaurant funding. We could come up with something, but it would be to forced.
So, for Mike we’ll wind up with the standard three fully-produced videos, but we also decided to create four unedited, black and white “raw” videos. Here’s his first raw vid. I asked him what he thinks about Yelp…
(If you are reading this in email and don’t see the video, it’s here)
Other raw vids featuring Mike cover the topics of seeking advice from other successful owners, rules of thumb regarding funding for your restaurant, and how good service matters perhaps more than good food. His two remaining fully-produced videos cover the importance of having a solid business plan, and how inexperience can be a positive as a restaurant owner. We’ll be popping his vids up all week. Enjoy…
Wil