The Dirty Business of Video Production
- Benjamin Harry
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Video production is often glamorized: sleek cameras, creative direction, big-name clients, and viral success. But behind the polished final cut lies a side of the industry that rarely gets talked about. The messy, exhausting, and often unethical realities that creatives face every day - The dirty business of video production.
The Reality
From tight deadlines to vague contracts, video production can quickly turn into a stressful environment. Creatives are expected to deliver cinematic results under conditions that would make any other industry pause. Yet, because passion fuels the work, these challenges are often brushed aside as “just part of the job.”
5 Ways Creatives Struggle in Video Production
1. Increased scope disguised as “Creative Flexibility”
What starts out as a simple brief often snowballs into endless revisions, additional shoot days and expanded content without additional pay. For new creatives, this can be overwhelming as they cannot charge the same as an experienced creative who has been in the industry for ten years or so. They are just expected to “make it work”, often under a strict timeline. Alison Wyman (2025) wrote a fantastic article around the financial insecurities freelancers faced, with nearly half earning less than the national living wage.
2. Late Payments (or No Payments at All)
Late payments is not new phenomenon for any freelance worker or business owner, but the impact it can have on new creatives within our industry can be overwhelmingly demoralising.
As a new creative, cashflow is a heaven sent, but chasing invoices for weeks or months from your first job can make it difficult to sustain your business, let alone grow one, which is why creatives often find themselves working full-time for companies without exploring their passion first.
3. The Role of AI is Undermining Creative Value.
Artificial intelligence has rapidly become a major talking point in video production. In some cases, clients underestimate the time, skill, and cost involved in producing high-quality creative content. As a result, they turn to AI-generated visuals or automated tools as a shortcut, particularly for social media.
While AI can be a useful tool, it has also contributed to a growing perception that creative work can be done faster, cheaper, and with less human input.
A year ago, AI-generated video was widely embraced as a novelty. Now, there’s a noticeable shift. Audiences are becoming more aware, and in many cases, more resistant to content that feels artificial or lacks authenticity. Take Coca Cola’s Christmas advert, although a portion of viewers liked the post, a large portion of the comments were directed at the “AI slop”, expressing negative opinion towards this new technological marvel.
But the ethical concern appears to be directed to how it’s used. When AI becomes a replacement rather than a support tool, it risks devaluing the craft, the creative process, and the people behind it, which is why it is important to understand the technology, respect it, but not let it consume how we produce creative content.
4. Lack of Clear Contracts
Landing a project as a new creative is a very exciting time. The client seems sound, and everything gets agreed over a few messages or quick call. But you haven’t signed any formal contracts, no proper breakdowns, just a general “yeah let’s do it”.
When you’re new, it can feel daunting to set out clear contracts for what you can do within a set timeframe and budget, and before you know it, the project looks nothing like what your originally agreed to, and there’s nothing in writing to fall back on.
We get it, you don’t want to scare off your first client by being “too formal”. But a clear agreement protects both sides of the arrangement. It sets out expectations, avoids awkward conversations later, and makes the whole process smoother.
5. Undervaluing Creative Work
Creative work is still seen by a lot of people as something that’s “fun”, rather than skilled. There’s this idea that because you enjoy what you do, the pay somehow matters less.
But the years spent learning, working on set for free, networking, the cost of equipment, the hours spent editing over the slightest colour grade. The mental energy it takes to create something good.
These are the reasons why we find ourselves with 1/3 of creatives wanting to leave the industry, because lowering prices to get work, feeling stuck, meanwhile the workload increases and the money stagnates.
But undervaluing creative is a culmination of everything we have spoken about, and if it isn’t valued, the quality drops, people burn out and the ones who could’ve been great either leave or never get started.
Why Ethics Need to Be Better
When unethical practices become normalised, it damages the ecosystem of our industry. As spoken about, people leave, clients receive inconsistent results and then trust breaks down.
Ethical video production means:
Transparent communication
Fair compensation
Realistic expectations
Mutual respect
How Are We Changing The Narrative?
At Dawn Star, we’ve seen how these challenges affect our creatives, and we’ve built our approach to actively solve them.
1. Clear, Upfront Scoping
We define deliverables, timelines, and expectations from the start. No ambiguity with outlined clarity for everyone involved.
Creatives deserve to know what they are doing, as do our clients. And to support both, we work with new creative’s on our projects, allowing them to express their creative flare.
For our clients, it can be daunting not know who is going to be working on your content, which is why the creatives we use have experience in the trade you specialise in. For instance, if you’re in construction, we will use a creative who either specialises, or has worked on numerous construction projects so they know the scope and creative direction to take.
2. Transparent Pricing Structures
Our pricing reflects the real value of creative work. Through our client portal, clients can see how their work is progressing throughout the month, where your money has gone, what it has been spent on and the success of the project.
For our new creatives, our basic pricing structure is £15 an hour, above the national living wage, and depending on whether you have specialised in a certain craft, our payments can be much higher.
If our creatives work over 40 hours in one week, they are entitled to overtime, climbing to £20 an hour for basic pay.
3. Strong Contracting Practices
Every project is backed by clear agreements that protect both creatives and clients. But every contract is different to appeal to our creatives and clients. This is so we can manage each situation differently, keeping to the specs of the client and ensuring ethical consistency for our creatives.
4. No More Late Payments
At Dawn Star, we’ve been on the receiving end of late payments, and it’s not something you forget.
Waiting weeks (or months) to be paid for work you’ve already delivered is frustrating at best and financially stressful at worst. It throws everything off. Rent, bills, reinvesting into your work—it all depends on getting paid when you’re supposed to.
That’s exactly why we’ve made it a non-negotiable.
Our creatives are paid weekly, and if a client pays us late, that’s our problem, not yours.
We don’t pass that pressure down the chain. We take responsibility for chasing payments and handling those conversations ourselves, so our creatives aren’t left stuck in limbo or put in awkward positions.
We’ve also built in accountability on our side.
If, for whatever reason, we don’t meet our own payment promise, we add a flat 5% late payment fee on top. No excuses. It’s a standard we hold ourselves to because we know how much it matters.
At the end of the day, it comes down to respect. If you expect people to show up, deliver, and care about the work, the least you can do is pay them properly and on time.
The Future of Video Production
By raising ethical standards, we create better work, stronger relationships, and a more sustainable future for everyone involved, as the goal isn’t just to produce great content, it’s to build a company where creatives can succeed without sacrificing their well-being.
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