I was in Cooktown on a stills job, nothing to do with video, when I met a teacher named Katie. Outgoing, loved the job, obviously good on camera. I thought she'd make an excellent promo video for Teach Queensland, so me being me I shot the thing. I was there for stills, not video, so I had no audio gear and no tripod. I ended up propping the camera on a stack of paint cans and getting it as close to Katie as I could, since there was no microphone to rely on. We fixed the audio properly in post.
A month of nothing, then three days
I shot the interview and the b-roll, drone footage included, and delivered the raw material to Teach Queensland. Then it sat. It took about a month for the right people to find the budget. Not a full production budget, nowhere near what the shoot would usually cost if you used an agency, but enough to get Lumberjack onto the edit. Once the money was there, it moved like any other job: three days and the first cut was done.
The result
It's one of the best videos Teach Queensland has made in years, and it cost them next to nothing to finish. The expensive part, someone being in the right place with a camera, had already happened. The only thing standing between raw footage and a finished video was an edit, and that's the part that's actually affordable. It was circa $1,000 to get that done and dusted. Think that through. A job in Cooktown, accom, flights, travel. It was less than the cost of the flights. Hell why wouldn't you. My point is this. If there's a story. Shoot the thing and then we can worry about the end later.