The most expensive mistake organizations make when commissioning a video isn't going over budget.

It's bringing in the production company too late.

I've seen it many times. A communications team spends weeks, sometimes months, defining the concept, getting internal sign-off, writing the brief, building the timeline. Then they bring in a production company to execute it. The problem is that by that point, the decisions that most affect quality and cost have already been made. Without production input. The location that looked great in the planning deck isn't filmable. The timeline doesn't account for post-production. The interview format the team envisioned won't work for the story they're trying to tell. The budget was set before anyone who understood production had seen the scope. None of these are failures of planning. They're failures of sequence.

A good production company isn't just an executor. They're a thinking partner in the development phase, the people who can tell you early what's possible, what's not, what will cost more than you expect, and what simpler approach might actually work better. Bringing us in after the plan is set means we spend the first weeks of a project quietly managing the gap between what was promised internally and what the budget will actually deliver. Bringing us in during the planning phase means that gap never opens.

If you're commissioning video this year, for a conference, an institutional film, a financial services piece, anything, the first call should happen before the brief is written. Not after. That's the conversation that saves you money, time, and the particular pain of presenting a finished product to leadership that almost got there.

Kathleen O'Heron is CEO and co-founder of Jynx Productions, an independent video production company serving broadcasters, institutions, and financial firms.