Learn the craft. Then make it pay.
Free working guides and short courses from the studio floor on how content gets planned, shot, branded, distributed and measured.
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The four pieces that set up everything else.
Guide · 9 min
What professional video and content production actually costsMost agencies won't give you a number until you're on a call. This guide covers what drives the price, typical ranges for common jobs and how to budget so the quote doesn't surprise you.
Course · 9 min
The batch content day: one shoot day, a month of contentFive short lessons that take one planned shoot day through to a month of publishing. Each ends with something you can do today.
Guide · 9 min
The content engine: one production day, a quarter of presenceOne-off videos spike, then disappear. A content engine turns one planned shoot day into months of regular publishing. Here's how it works, and when you shouldn't build one.
Guide · 8 min
Finding your brand voice, then writing like it everywhereYour voice already exists, somewhere between your best emails and the way your founder explains the offer. Writing it down stops the business sounding like a different company every time someone new writes a post.
Production & Content Creation
Planning and making content properly: shoot days, interviews, events, streams and films.
Guide · 9 min
What professional video and content production actually costsMost agencies won't give you a number until you're on a call. This guide covers what drives the price, typical ranges for common jobs and how to budget so the quote doesn't surprise you.
Course · 9 min
The batch content day: one shoot day, a month of contentFive short lessons that take one planned shoot day through to a month of publishing. Each ends with something you can do today.
Guide · 8 min
How to plan a video shoot: pre-production that saves the dayThe shoot day gets the attention, but most of what decides it happens the week before. Here's the pre-production checklist we use: the brief, the shot list, the run sheet and what to lock in before anyone rolls.
Guide · 8 min
Interviews on camera: getting real people to sound like themselvesMost business videos depend on whether the person on screen sounds human. This is how we prepare people, set the room and ask the questions so the real person shows up in the edit.
Guide · 8 min
The event content playbook: before, during and after the room fillsYou've spent months filling the room. This playbook makes sure the content side isn't an afterthought: what to lock beforehand, what the crew captures on the day, and what ships in the first 48 hours.
Guide · 9 min
Live streaming, explained: what a proper broadcast takesGoing live from a phone is easy. A proper broadcast takes gear, crew, connectivity, the right platform, a realistic budget and enough planning to make the live hour uneventful.
Guide · 8 min
What makes a brand film workPlenty of brand films end up as three minutes of drone shots and adjectives. The ones that work share a few habits, and most of them happen before the shoot.
Guide · 8 min
Podcasting for brands: setup, cadence and distributionBrands that make podcasting work decide the format, host, cadence and distribution before anyone buys a microphone. Here's how to plan one, including when not to start.
Branding & Identity
Building a brand that holds together: identity, voice, systems and knowing what to fix first.
Guide · 8 min
Brand refresh vs rebrand: which one you actually needOne is a tune-up and the other is surgery, yet they get sold as the same job. What matters is whether the problem is what your brand says or how it says it.
Guide · 8 min
The working brand system: what your brand guide must containMost brand guides get admired at launch and rarely opened again. A working brand system answers the questions your team has in a normal week.
Guide · 8 min
Finding your brand voice, then writing like it everywhereYour voice already exists, somewhere between your best emails and the way your founder explains the offer. Writing it down stops the business sounding like a different company every time someone new writes a post.
Guide · 8 min
Visual consistency: staying one brand on every channelMost brands don't decide to look inconsistent. It happens one resized logo and one 'close enough' colour at a time. Here's the system that stops the drift, plus an audit that shows how far it's already gone.
Guide · 8 min
Rebranding without losing what you've builtA rebrand should remove what's holding you back without throwing away the recognition and rankings you've spent years earning. Here's how to find where that equity lives and carry it across.
Guide · 8 min
Brand on a budget: what to fix first when you can't do everythingEvery growing business has a longer brand to-do list than budget. The order you spend in matters more than the amount, because the same dollars in the wrong sequence buy attention for a business that can't convert it.
Guide · 8 min
Name your method: productising what your business does bestMost service businesses repeat the same process on every good job. Buyers can't see it because it has no name, scope or price. Here's how to turn that process into a product you can sell.
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Creative Marketing & Growth
Making content earn its keep: channels, email, social proof, retainers, search visibility and how to measure it.
Guide · 9 min
The content engine: one production day, a quarter of presenceOne-off videos spike, then disappear. A content engine turns one planned shoot day into months of regular publishing. Here's how it works, and when you shouldn't build one.
Guide · 8 min
Choosing channels: where your content actually needs to liveEvery channel is a standing production commitment, and most businesses are on too many. Here's how to choose the two or three worth feeding, and what to do with the rest.
Guide · 8 min
The questions to ask before you sign with any agencyA checklist for the buyer. These questions test whether an agency can deliver what its pitch deck promises, and a few of them make agencies like ours squirm.
Guide · 8 min
Social proof that sells: reviews, case studies and resultsBuyers trust other buyers more than they trust you. Here's how to collect proof they'll believe and put it where they hesitate.
Guide · 8 min
What a marketing retainer should include, and how to judge oneRetainers are one of the easiest things in marketing to buy badly. Here's what should be inside one, and how to spot an expensive subscription before you sign.
Guide · 8 min
Making one event feed a quarter of marketingMost event spend buys a room for a few hours. Planned properly, the same event can fill your channels until the next one. Here's the capture plan, the 48-hour window and the 90-day schedule.
Guide · 8 min
Email people open: EDMs and newsletters for real businessesOpens come from a sender people recognise, a specific subject line, a cadence you can sustain and a clean list. Here's how to build each one without tricks or growth hacks.
Guide · 8 min
Measuring content: numbers that mean money, and numbers that don'tPlatforms hand you their numbers, and most of them measure the platform's health. Here's how to tell the metrics that mean money from the ones that just feel good.
Guide · 8 min
One link for everything: portals and approvals clients actually useApprovals scattered across email, chat and file links cost real money in rework and disputes. Here's what a portal needs to do and how to design approvals that clients follow.
Guide · 9 min
Getting cited by AI: search has changed, your website should tooYour customers now ask assistants the questions they used to type into a search bar. Here's how to become the source those answers cite: answer-first pages, consistent facts and an llms.txt file.