How Much Does It Cost To Produce A Dog-Training or Dog Camp/Travel Documentary Video?
The Blog
at: http://
dogvideography.blogspot.com/ contains a book excerpt of the first chapter and introduction, table of contents, and budget for producing a video about dogs. Also see the book titled,
How to Video Record Your Dog's Life Story: Writing, Financing, & Producing Pet Documentaries, Drama, or News is published by ASJA Press, an imprint of iUniverse, Inc (http://www.iuniverse.com). July 2007. ISBN: 978-0-595-45798-4. Browse the book to see table of contents and read a chapter excerpt at the publisher's site at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-45798-3.
Almost anyone can make a video of a dog by aiming a camcorder in enough light and taping or using a DVD or other means of recording video to a drive. If you don’t want to make a salable video, you can make an amateur family dog video and upload your video to Google or UTube. The first point to remember is not to point the lens into the sunlight. Your back should be against the sun when you video record. And there should be a minimum of background noise.
If you do want to make a salable dog video, for example how to train your dog, or what happens to dogs at dog camp, spa, daycare, training puppies, agility, dog-show preparation, traveling with dogs, camping with dogs, working with guide dogs, or dogs with jobs and therapy dog training, you’ll need to think about a budget larger than a camcorder, a reel of tape or a DVD disc or flash drive. Whatever means you choose, save your video to your computer’s hard drive and to a disc or flash drive.
You’ll need a good master video to work from. When using tape, the more copies you make, the worse the copies look when you view them, in most cases. So decide whether your budget allows you to buy an industrial-quality video camera, a high-end amateur video camcorder, or a simple family video digital eight or DVD-type camcorder.
If you can work out deals with students of video production at local colleges or community colleges, and even some high-school media programs, you can find low-cost or free camera help in exchange for college or school credits and work experience references.
A low-budget video production runs around $7,000 to $8,500, depending upon whether you write your own script, get a free script from a student, or work in reality television genre using a general script denoting scenes and locations of various training commands. The low-budget video/documentary form included in this chapter works with an approximately $7,500 budget.
The blank budget forms are for use with a low-budget documentary reality video for dog training or care, and for a more expensive dramatic production that includes dramatizations using actors to recreate training possibilities and situations resembling a dramatization of a real-life event commonly found in events and situations that occur at dog camps, dog spas, dog daycare, or training encounters based on your experience or the experience of the dog and trainer you are video recording.
You’ll need a script at least to follow and focus on the various episodes and segments you’ll edit whether you use reality events or dramatizations. Also see a 30-minute free video on Google at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=747577967687269615 on planning the budget for dog
videography--recording in video your dog's life story. The author also has written several other books on scriptwriting, playwriting, and novel writing as well as how-to book and nonfiction writing techniques.