3 Reasons to Plan Your Stills Approvals Before Filming
By The ImageApprovals Team ·
With everything that goes into making a film or TV production, thoughts of stills and talent approvals can easily get pushed to the bottom of the priority list. However, knowing your approvals plan in advance of going into production can save you significant time and money in the long run.
Here are three reasons why you should be thinking about stills approvals during pre-production.
1. More Accurate Advanced Budgeting
Everyone likes a well organised and budgeted production. If you know how many days of stills photography you have on your production, you can lock in your approvals costs before a single frame is shot.
ImageApprovals charges by shoot day, not by number of images — which means you can budget correctly in advance of any stills being taken. There are no surprises when you reach post-production, and no scramble to find unallocated budget when approvals need to happen fast.
Engaging with your approvals team early also gives them the opportunity to advise your stills team on file naming conventions and delivery procedures that will make the entire workflow more efficient and cost-effective.
2. The Ability to Manage Approvals As You Go
When you plan for approvals from the start, you unlock the option to manage them in-house within 24 hours of photos being taken. This in-production approach has several advantages:
- Beat the paparazzi by helping you get first-look images out there sooner.
- Drip-feed content throughout the entire production process, keeping your marketing momentum going.
- Talent can review images on their phones in their downtime. Breaking approvals into bite-sized daily batches keeps cast engaged with their images — and means you avoid the risk of pushback when you present thousands of images to approve after they have wrapped and moved on to another project.
Managing approvals as you go keeps the pressure low for everyone involved and means your publicity team has approved assets ready well before delivery deadlines.
3. No More Lost or Mystery Images
If someone asked you to find image DSC0956.RAW from your last production, would you instinctively know what it was, when it was shot, and where to find it? Without a structured system in place from the beginning, the answer is almost certainly no.
By engaging with an approvals team before shooting begins, you can ensure your photographer and publicity team receive clear guidelines on effective file naming and folder structuring from day one. The result is a well-organised image library that makes fielding requests from stakeholders and publications fast and straightforward — both during production and long after it wraps.
Without that structure in place from the start, productions routinely lose hours to inefficient image requests, duplicated work, and assets that simply cannot be located when they are needed most.
Of course, if you would rather tackle talent approvals as a single pass at the end of production, that works too. The important thing is to get in touch with us at the start of production — so you have a clear, fixed price agreed and your stills team has the delivery guidance they need before cameras roll.
Do you have a cast with stills approval rights? Want to prevent your team losing hundreds of hours to inefficient working — and keep your talent happy with an easy-to-use online approvals system? Request a demo to see how the ImageApprovals platform works, or reach out for a no-obligation quote.