Corporate Video Production
Corporate Video Production used to be all about grabbing a quick talking head with the CEO after a three-bottle lunch, editing some Getty handshakes clips with time lapse cityscapes. Played once at annual conference and then quickly forgotten.
This democratization of video has opened things up considerably though, access to high quality stock,
inexpensive editing tools and easy free publishing tools means everyone’s able to declare themselves experts in corporate video production.
Of course, there are still some horrendous results, as this generic brand video, by dissolve brilliantly shows:
What is a Corporate Video?
It’s a pretty baggy term, and often used pejoratively. Once upon a time those that could made TV Commercials, those that couldn’t made corporates. But then media exploded, diversified, the internet arrived, and big brands became their own channels.
A corporate video is a business talking about itself / products or services to a specific audience rather than to the general population. So that might be internal communications, training videos, or a new product announcement. Here’s a very contemporary take on the corporate video we made for BNY Mellon:
What About Business to Business?
B2B doesn’t need to be boring! Since video is such a persuasive format, we anticipate real growth in product and marketing videos for the burgeoning B2B sector. Here’s an of example of a film we made dealing with
a tricky subject (non-relational databases if you’re interested) in an engaging way. Gone are the familiar corporate video tropes. It’s full of colour, bounce and has lashings of personality:
How Much Does Corporate Video Production Cost?
Every corporate video project is different – or at least should be – so there’s no such thing as a standard price. As with most creative & film production, you’ll find a big range of prices and standards of videos.
We think our work is priced competitively, but we do have high standards and employ some really great talent. Our team have over a decade of working together, so we have experience of coming up with solutions for a range of budgets.
There are a few things that do influence the price of your corporate video that you might want to think about:
Content. Do you have a story crafted in your head, or do you need us to develop the script and messaging with you?
Approach. Is there an existing look and feel we should be following? Will we need to create all elements from scratch or will we receive assets we can use?
Talent. Will the video need a voiceover or will in be interview led?
Location Filming. Does the project require location filming, if so, where and how many days filming are needed?
Rights and usage. Talent and music agencies will need to know what platforms and regions you will be posting the videos. You’ll need to agree the usage rights before.
Duration. You might love your product so much you want to make a 15min film, but we’re going to persuade you to keep it short.
Music. If you want Kanye to do tunes for you then it’s going to hurt the wallet considerably more than if you go for a library track. Audio is super important, so don’t skimp on the sound design, either.
Schedules. Keeping the production time down can really help to keep costs down. So if you need to get everything signed off by your boss’s sister’s cat every time you amend a graphic, it’s going to really slow things down.
How Long Does It Take to Make a Corporate Video?
Of course it depends on how ambitious we’re being with the production, but for a 1-2 minute live action edit with some motion graphic elements we’d expect that to take around 4 weeks. Here’s the drill:
1. Fill in the brief. Yeah we all want to get stuck in right away, but this initial part really helps us establish your goals, mandatory CI stuff, and anything else grown up and important we need to focus on. Write the script and visual direction. This is the genesis of the whole film, where we get the story going. Normally we can crack it in a week, sometimes it’s two.
2. If we’re doing animation – Style frames & motion test. Here we hand over to the people with interesting hairstyles and alternative life-choices to do the cool stuff. We’ll give you a half-dozen or so frames at ‘final’ quality (sorta depends on the style, but normally always final) and a short motion test. Then you lavish us with praise and we get on with it.
3. If we’re doing live action – Location Filming. We’ll get out team together to film with you on your premises or the another suitable establishment.
4. Edit. This is the part where we pull the main bones of the edit together so the content and flow is right.
5. Compositing. After the picture edit is complete we’ll add any graphic design, image treatments and animation to the video. We’ll also do the colour grade.
6. Music, sound design, mix. Get your beats on and wrap it all up. This part really does bring everything together.
7. Publish your corporate video and wait for the awards to start rolling in.