A couple of decades ago PR work was mostly about drafting texts and various (mostly text-based) communicational materials. The world has changed a lot since then. To tell you the truth, I never thought I would one day write a blog post about tips and tricks for corporate video production.
Our world has become one giant cineplex. A few years ago we thought the process has reached its climax, but audiovisual contents have since become even more popular on the internet. There is an abundance of influencer content, unboxing and product review videos, gamer walkthroughs and behind-the-scenes videos to name but a few of the new video genres.
Naturally, companies also try to make the streaming playlists, and videos introducing companies, factories and manufacturing lines are becoming more frequent. The quality of the end products, however, as a film critic would say, follows a heavily fluctuating pattern. Despite video recording and editing tools becoming cheaper and more accessible, you can still often come across lame corporate videos that resemble the amateur visuals of the 80’s TV series TIR and border on meme material. Below we have compiled a few recommendations that can help you avoid the most basic mistakes.
Top 10 tips for producing corporate videos
- Have a proper budget!
- Unfortunately, no good will come of grabbing a smartphone and making a quick recording.
- You need an expert crew that has professional equipment. Shooting the video may even take more than one day.
- The video will not necessarily require the budget of a feature film, but you will need to allocate financial resources for the production.
- Come up with a story!
- “We have a few hours now, and we need the video by tomorrow. Let’s roll!” No surprises here, this is not going to work.
- You need to define the message of the video. You have determine what story you want to tell the audience.
- Then you need a detailed script. You have to decide how you want to tell the story.
- It is best to involve the crew in scriptwriting, because they can have a lot of helpful ideas.
- Cast
- The people in the video (managers, staff members) will become the faces of the company. It is a good idea to involve them in the video.
- It is important to cast people who, through their appearance and their delivery, best represent the corporate values.
- Talk the messages over with the people who have lines in the video.
- Music
- It is always very tempting to save cost by using free stock music in the video, but in most cases it is best to resist this temptation.
- There are instances where stock music is okay, but overall it is better to set a budget aside for a higher quality soundtrack.
- Corporate Identity
- The corporate video is an element of corporate communications, and as such should be in line with corporate identity (logo, colors, fonts, etc.)
- The video producers should be provided with the corporate visual guidelines and the various graphic design elements.
- Visual effects
- A few visual effects (creative text effects, a funny title, etc.) can really boost the video, but use these effects moderately. Too many visual effects can be counterproductive.
- Mind the duration!
- Consumers’ attention span has decreased drastically and their ability to focus on on-screen content may be less than a minute.
- Even the most thorough corporate or factory introductory video should not be longer than 90 to 120 seconds.
- Make a subtitled version!
- Younger generations watch muted videos (because they are watching videos on smartphones), so you need to make a version where all the narration and speech is subtitled.
- Copyright
- Only use licensed music and visual content. A copyright infringement case can be very embarrassing for the company.
- Use the video on as many platforms as possible
- The video should not only be posted on your website but on Facebook, YouTube and all other platforms, too. (Share your publishing plans with the people appearing in the video. They should know in advance that they will appear in a video that was not meant for just an internal company meeting.)
Many of the above tips may seem obvious to a lot of people, but from what I have seen, a lot of videos fail to follow if but one of these 10 recommendations. If you are looking for someone to help plan your next video or are looking for a crew to implement your idea, feel free to contact us at info@probako.hu.
