Checking a Miami video company before you hire: what the reel hides, and how to take a reference

Updated: September 11, 2026

Every reel looks good

A showreel is ninety seconds of the best shots a company has ever made, cut to music, with the failures left out. Every Miami video company has one, and every one of them is impressive. That is the problem: the reel tells you what the company can do at its best, in the edit, once. It does not tell you whether they answer emails, hit deadlines, handle a difficult client contact, or do work like yours on a budget like yours. This guide is about the checks that do tell you those things: how to read a portfolio, what to ask for beyond the reel, how to take a reference properly, and which small tests reveal how a company actually works.

Reading the portfolio

Ask to see full projects, not the reel: the complete finished video, the way the client received it. Then look for the things a reel hides.

• Work like yours. A company that makes beautiful music videos may never have produced a forty-minute training film with compliance review. Ask for three full projects in your category (corporate, event, product, nonprofit, whatever it is) and at your budget level. If they cannot show any, they have not done it, however good the reel.
• Recency. Reels carry shots for years. Ask what was made in the last twelve months, with the crew that would work on your project.
• Who actually made it. Small companies collaborate and freelancers move around. "Was this produced by your team, or did you shoot it for another agency, or edit someone else's footage?" is a fair question and an honest company answers it plainly.
• The middle, not the top. Ask to see a project they consider ordinary. Everybody's best work is good; the ordinary work is what you will most likely receive.
• The parts that are not cinematography. Sound, graphics, captions, the pacing of a long piece, whether the interviews are clear. A reel is shots; a project is all of this.

References: how to take one that means something

Companies give the references they choose, so the value is in the questions, not the names. Ask for two or three recent clients with projects similar to yours, and call them; email answers are polite and empty. Fifteen minutes, with these questions:

• What was the project, the budget range and the timeline? (Confirms it is comparable.)
• Did it deliver on time? If not, why, and how was that handled?
• Did the final cost match the quote? Were there change orders, and did they feel justified? Our guide to change orders and scope creep explains what fair ones look like.
• How were revisions handled? How many rounds, how fast, and did they push back on bad feedback or just execute it?
• Who was your day-to-day contact, and was that the person who pitched to you?
• What went wrong, and what did they do about it? (Every project has something. A reference who says nothing went wrong is either lucky or not being candid.)
• Would you hire them again, and have you?

Also ask the company for a reference from a project that had problems. A company willing to give you that has nothing to hide, and the reference will tell you how they behave under pressure, which is the thing you actually need to know.

Checks that take ten minutes

• Response time. How long did the first email take to answer, and was the answer useful? Pre-sale responsiveness is the best you will ever get.
• The quote. Is it itemised and specific, or a single number? Our guide to comparing quotes apples to apples shows what a good one contains.
• Questions they ask you. A company that sends a quote without asking about audience, deliverables, timeline and approvals is guessing. One that asks a lot of questions is planning.
• Insurance. Ask for a certificate of insurance. A company that cannot produce one within a day is not working with venues that require it, which limits where they can shoot.
• Business basics. A registered business, a physical presence in South Florida, a contract they send unprompted. Our contract checklist covers what should be in it.
• Online reviews, read for pattern rather than score: repeated mentions of missed deadlines or surprise costs are data; a single angry review is not.

The small test project

For a large or ongoing engagement, the most reliable check is a small paid project first: a single social clip, a short interview, a one-day event. It costs a fraction of the main job and shows everything a reel cannot: how they schedule, how they behave on set, how they take feedback, how the invoice compares to the quote, how the files arrive. If the retainer or annual arrangement is what you are considering, our guide to retainer versus project pricing suggests starting exactly this way.

Warning signs

• Only the reel; no full projects on request.
• References who all turn out to be friends, family or the same client.
• A quote far below the others with no explanation of what is different; see our note on negotiating video pricing for what a low number usually hides.
• No contract, or a contract with no revision, delivery or ownership terms.
• Pressure to sign quickly, or a discount that expires today.
• The person who pitched will not be on the project and cannot say who will.

Checking us

Miami Video Company sends full projects in your category and budget on request, including the ordinary ones, and gives references from recent clients, including one from a project that had a problem, with permission to ask them anything. Our quotes are itemised, our contract goes out with the first proposal, our certificate of insurance is available the same day, and we are glad to start with a small paid project before a larger engagement. If you are shortlisting companies for a Miami production, ask us for the projects and the references and put us through the checks above. More about the company is on the about page, and the rest of our buyer's guides are on the blog.