What is the Minivan Roadmap?
In today’s world, where content is king and customers only give you so much time to capture their attention, video is everything. It’s the ideal way to introduce people to your brand, and a truly inspiring video should spark their interest while succinctly communicating your company’s message.
If you’ve never partnered with a production team before, you naturally will have some questions about the process. We get it—we’ve been there before too. It can be hard to trust your brand message with another team. But few things are as gratifying to us as partnering with clients to create content that reflects who they are and what they do—all while delivering results for their business.
It’s not the destination, but the journey that gets you there
You’ve probably heard the adage “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step.” And while this is true of any partnership, at times, it can be challenging to know what that first step should be.
Over the years, we’ve developed our tried and tested roadmapping process to bring some structure into creativity to develop solutions for your company. While every company has a different map for understanding your business, we’ve seen a lot of success with our holistic method.
Here’s our five-step process to get the journey started.
Step 1 - Schedule a mapping meeting
Our first step in the process is to schedule a time for all of us to sit down face to face and get to know you, talk about where you’ve come from, and establish where you want to go. We’ll discuss your challenges and goals, and from there, create a map to guide your journey.
While it might seem more efficient for this process to take place over email or through a brief questionnaire, we find a lot of value in taking the time to connect with our clients. We want to get a holistic view of who you are to ensure we’re in sync every step of the way. So how exactly do we do it? We listen to your brand story and goals and ask probing questions that really get to the center of your problem. This way, we leave the roadmap meeting understanding your biggest issues and feel like we understand your brand well enough to solve them.
Step 2 - Develop a wireframe
We have our version of this process called a “wireframe” which, much like storyboarding, takes all of the goals and objectives discussed in the initial mapping meeting and outline a story that gets you where you want to go.
These wireframes serve as an audio-visual outline for the work we’re going to do together. Any shot, location, character, or sound byte that we’ve dreamed up gets put through the wireframe to further develop your story. Of course, we want your feedback along the way. We’ll work collaboratively with you throughout the process to make sure we’re developing a story that reflects the wireframe and your goals as a whole. The end result of this stage? Aligned vision, outlined deliverables, a scope of work, and an understanding of how this project will accomplish our goals.
WARNING
This is where great stories can stall, but we’re here to answer any questions or address any hesitations you may have. If you find you’re getting stuck imagining how this project will come to life, just let us know! We want to keep the momentum of your project going.
Step 3 - Creative R&D (research and development)
Now that we’ve established your wireframe, our team will start scriptwriting, mood boarding, casting, location scouting, selecting our crew, and more. As we move forward through this step, you’ll start to see each element of your story seamlessly come together. In a matter of weeks, we’ll become experts on your industry, geographical area, or company mission and find creative ways to express them to your audience. This is the part where the rubber meets the road, our momentum kicks into high gear, and the story starts to come to life.
Step 4 - Production
Whether we’re keyframing an animated sequence, conducting interviews, or capturing drone footage, every moment of the production process is an area where we can push the envelope and expand our curiosity to give your story momentum.
This is the point of the process where all our strategizing and planning turns into a tangible product. We film, animate, and edit with the roadmap in mind, making sure we’re still adhering to your story. This is also where our creativity can really come to life—we’ll travel wherever the story takes us, mount a camera on a car just to get “that shot”, or transform small rooms into full commercial film sets. Whatever it takes to execute your vision, we’re on it. You can rest easy knowing that your project is in good hands.
Step 5 - Media in motion
You made it! Your video has been expertly produced and artfully edited, and now, it’s ready to be released into the world. We format all our content for multi-purpose distribution so you can share it wherever and however you want. This is the part where we can pull out that original roadmap and watch it come to life right before our eyes.
If you’re ready to get this road trip started, hop in and see what Minivan Productions can do for you. Schedule a mapping meeting if you’re ready to see how we can bring your vision to life.
