Ask what the video is for

A woman in Doha who teaches chess to children decides she needs a video. Everyone with a business seems to have one. She books a videographer, picks a morning at the community hall, and asks her students to wear matching shirts.

It will be a good video. The light across the boards will be lovely. The edit will be tight.

What nobody has asked is what it is for.

Is it meant to fill the Saturday morning class, which is half empty? To show parents that screen-tired children will sit still and think for an hour? To let adults who never learned know they are welcome too? Each of those is a different video. The first needs a time and a day. The second needs a quiet room and a child frowning at a board. The third needs a grown man at a small table, slightly unsure, and smiling anyway.

Without the question, the video becomes a thing made because things like it get made. It gets posted, it gets a few kind comments, and there is no way to tell whether it worked, because nobody decided what working would look like.

We are good at the making part. Most people can get a competent video shot, a website built, a launch organised. The skill is everywhere now. The scarce part is the sentence that comes before: who is this for, and what do I want to be different after they see it?

It is a strangely easy question to skip. It feels too obvious to say out loud, and answering it honestly sometimes means the expensive thing is not needed at all.

But it is the only question that tells you, afterwards, whether the effort was worth it.