- Selections happen in a few busy weeks. How do we get a year of content out of them?
- Film more than you publish while people are in front of the material. A slab yard walk, samples on a counter, a client choosing between two door profiles: shot in March, those clips carry through July, and each one has a natural follow-up when that stone is templated. Ask permission for the footage at the same appointment, while the client is easy to reach.
- Can we post a project while the owners are away for the summer?
- Settle it in the agreement before the job starts, while the client is still in town. Even with permission, keep the street, the exterior, the gate and any panel out of frame. A recognizable house is one thing in a metro where people live year round and another in a county where a post effectively announces which house is empty until November.
- What should we publish before clients close their houses for the spring?
- The shutdown list. What to do about traps that dry out, how to leave stone and cabinetry in a closed house, what temperature and humidity setting to leave behind, and what to ask a caretaker to check. It is the one piece of writing an owner will save on the way to the airport, and it puts your name in front of them again in the fall.
- A client in Old Northwood wants a bigger kitchen window. What do we say publicly?
- Explain the order of operations, not the outcome. In a designated district an exterior change is reviewed before it is built, hearings run on a fixed calendar, and that calendar is what turns a spring decision into a summer start. Point owners to the city for their own address and their own scope, and let the post be about timing rather than approval.
- Our studio content is starting to repeat itself. What keeps it useful?
- Change the subject rather than the room. Compare two door styles against the eras this county actually has, follow one slab from the yard to the template, take apart a drawer box, show what a finish does after a humid summer. The studio is a set, and a set is only boring when you keep filming the same scene in it.