The best stories come from personal experiences and corporate video production can help you tell yours. You can bring your story to life to connect with your employees, customers, and followers. And really, that’s what it’s all about.
The production of corporate videos deserves a little extra attention – if your video doesn't engage your audience, then all your time and effort will go to waste. By partnering with a reputable video production company you can create high-quality videos that will impress your target audience.
Making videos is a subjective process that requires a lot of effort. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't execute it, it won't get off the ground.
Benefits of Corporate Video Production
Watching a brand's video has convinced 84% of people to buy a product or service. And having a well-produced corporate video can:
- Engage your audience
- Make a powerful impact
- Inspire action
We don't want to sound like a TV commercial pitchman, but that's not all!
Improve SEO
When you take the time to add in video SEO, you’re going to boost your SEO altogether.
- Use a target keyword when naming your video file.
- Incorporate the keyword naturally into the video title.
- Optimize the video description
- Use relevant keywords in videos tags and organize your video into categories.
- Add subtitles and closed captions.
Having a well-thought-out video SEO strategy will take a bit of time but it will be worth the effort.
As we’ve mentioned before, you will increase your overall search engine ranking when you implement video SEO. And the more Google-friendly your website is, the higher it will climb on the Google ladder.
Not only that but you’ll also get…
Increased Website Traffic
Engaging content leads to longer visits to your website. The longer people stay, the more trust you earn from Google.
With these higher customer retention rates, Google will realize your site has valuable and high-quality content.
Google starts ranking you higher when they notice users are sticking around. What makes this important? The majority of searchers never scroll past page one of Google, so you'll want to be where the action is.
As you start to rank on page one of Google, your organic traffic will increase.
Types of Corporate Video Production
Testimonial Video Production
Client testimonial videos are often used for building trust. They allow a “behind the scenes” look into what it’s like to work with you and your brand.
This type of video shows a past customer sharing their experience working with your company, promoting your brand, service, or product.
Video testimonials usually:
- Share a bit of background about the business or challenges the customer faced so viewers understand the reasoning behind a customer's recommendation.
- Include video clips of interviews as well as supplementary footage. It may be the customer using your product or service. This provides more visual context for the audience and also allows you to hide cuts in the edit.
- Avoid "scripted" responses: Giving customers pre-scripted responses to questions or having them read off a teleprompter will normally ruin any attempt for "authentic" sounding content. During the interview, the moderator should ask questions that provide more "conversational" responses and pose a question in different ways to get the response you're aiming for.
Animated Video Production
Don’t be fooled, animated videos aren’t just for kids! Animated videos are the best approach to explain difficult concepts in a way that’s easy to understand.
What makes a good animated corporate video?
- Keeping it short and sweet
- Scripts that are well-written
- Solving a customer's problem
- Staying true to your brand
- Ending with a call-to-action
Our brains are hardwired to process video content because images can be processed 60,000 times more quickly than text. This is why animated videos are so effective at simplifying complex ideas.
Since the majority of people won't take the time to read pages of text, an animated corporate video will certainly capture their attention (especially if it can break things down quickly and easily!).
Live-Action Corporate Video Production
Live-action video is a term used to define video content that is captured on film (or digital media) and is not animated. This is typically captured on location and can feature casted talent, or fellow employees.
This type of video is best suited for highlighting a company's leadership or demonstrating the use of your products. The beauty of live-action videos is that they can be whatever you want them to be! Fun, informative, entertaining... The world is your oyster.
Why do live-action videos work?
They’re engaging and grab the attention of the viewer. Live-action videos that tell real stories are more relatable and creates a lasting emotional connection with your brand.
The best way to motivate customers is to let them know how your business can have an impact on their lives – and quickly. Since they don't want to be bombarded with too much information, live-action videos are a fast and effective way to leave an impression.
Recruiting
If they aren't already, recruitment videos should be an important part of your recruitment strategy. With a well-designed recruitment video, you can easily reach your ideal candidate.
An interview can be nerve-wracking for a new recruit because they don't know what to expect. But a recruitment video puts those worries at ease! Recruiting videos can:
- Promote your company in a personable manner
- Demonstrate your company's culture
- Give insight into what your company is all about
- Ensure your messaging to new potential recruits is consistent
If your recruitment video can speak directly to your ideal candidates, you will spend less time sorting through resumes that aren't a good match.
Corporate Video Production: The Process
The production process for corporate video production should follow the same three stages as any other type of video production (pre-production, production, and post-production). However, there’s one step that should happen before any of this which is often overlooked.... the production brief.
The Production Brief...
A production brief will serve as the foundation of your production and should be completed regardless of if the video is being produced in-house, or if you’re planning on contracting a professional video production company.
The production brief doesn’t have to be super long or complicated, or even have a lot of creative details... but what it should do is communicate the following succinctly:
Production Brief Questions...
What is the high-level objective of the video you’re producing? For example, a recruiting video may have an objective like “The objective of the video production is to give prospective job candidates a better idea of our company culture.”
- Who is the target audience? - Try to be specific with this one... are you targeting new college graduates or seasoned professionals?
- What are the key points you want to communicate through the video? - try to keep this to three or less... any more and you’ll risk going too long and lose your audience trying to cram too much in.
- Where will the video live? - is this for use on your website, in presentations, for promoted social media ads, etc...
- What are the expected outcomes from the video? - Going back to the previous example of the company culture video, the desired outcome of the project might be a video that helps entice more job applications from your pool of ideal job candidates, and less from those that aren’t a good fit for the culture and whose resumes may be clogging your HR department now.
- Finally... how will you measure success? - This one is very important... will you have a clickable call to action at the end of the video that will take the viewer to a microsite? Those clicks could be the way you measure success, or perhaps just the change in website traffic is enough... the more you can tie success directly to the video, the better. A vanity URL or 800 number only used in your video that redirects to another page are other easy ways to attribute conversions.
Additional items to consider...
You can add more specifics like budgets and creative concepts in this stage, or save those for when you start pre-production with a separate “creative brief”... ultimately, getting the production brief signed off by all project stakeholders before you get started will allow your corporate video production to run smoother and will serve as a key point of reference as you make decisions through all stages of production, and help to re-center you if your messaging starts to stray.
Pre-production is the first step...
When your production brief is green-lit by all project stakeholders, you're ready to start pre-production. In pre-production, you're planning out all the details required for the execution (Production) Stage. If you haven't yet established the creative approach (treatment) and budget, you'll want to start there.
If you're working with a video production company, they can typically use the production brief and any existing branding to help build creative concepts which may include"style frames" to give you a better idea of the visual direction they see for the video creative approach. Some video production companies may only be able to produce one "style" of video such as 2D character animation, while others may be able to produce all styles... keep that in mind as you approach a potential partner.
Once the creative format is established, you'll typically either fall into scripted (which can include live-action or animated video), or non-scripted (editorial video like talking heads where dialogue in the video is from interview excerpts). For scripted content, you'll start by building the script, while non-scripted editorial videos may have a rough story arch outline developed, with interview questions to support them.
After your script or outline is developed, you'll go into the storyboarding process for scripted animation videos, while live-action videos may have storyboards, shot lists, or both depending on the budget and specific production needs. It's also at this point where higher-end live-action productions will go into additional steps such as production design, casting breakdowns, props, locations.... and more. It's important in this phase that all your branding is provided to the creative team so they can make sure they're incorporating the most up-to-date assets into the video if needed. Once all the creative is approved, you'll be ready to move into the next stage.
Then comes the fun part: production.
Now it’s time to put all your plans into action!
For animation and narrated videos, production can start with getting final voiceover reads from the voiceover artist you cast in pre-production. Additional production activities for animated videos may include character design from concepts created in pre-production, then on to rigging characters for motion. Ultimately you’re starting by building all the individual pieces for each scene, followed by laying out the pieces, and finally bringing each scene to life with motion.
For live-action production, you’ll be following the schedule and shot list you developed in pre-production to bring your storyboard to life! For larger budget productions, you’ll quickly learn why it’s important to have specialists and departments focused on their parts of the production.... and if you’re short-staffed, you’ll really feel it here. If you have a lot of scenes to cover, make sure you stay on the schedule you created as closely as possible so you don’t run into overtime with video crews or locations. If you have a large enough crew, your 1st Assistant Director (1st A.D.), will make sure you’re not falling behind.
When you’re shooting non-scripted interview content and b-roll, make sure you leave enough time to capture adequate b-roll footage with not only a variety of content but varied shot framings from tight to wide... this will give your editing team more options in post-production.
And the final step, post-production:
For animated videos, since all of your individual scenes were built in the production stage, in post-production you’ll be assembling them together, ensuring the scene transitions are smooth, then adding any finishing touches or effects to really bring it home.
Scripted live-action videos with dialogue will start with organizing all your shots in your editing software, then assembling each scene with the best takes. If your script is performed by a voiceover artist, you’ll simply organize your footage to follow the narration to build your visual story.
Non-Scripted editorial videos may start by transcribing interviews and assembling a “paper edit” of the narrative using the text transcriptions, then putting together all the selected parts from the paper edit into the main assembly. B-roll is then overlayed on top of this where it’s needed to illustrate the point the speaker is making visually, as well as to hide transitions between different shots and speakers since it will likely be out of order.
These are the basic parts of post-production that most productions will include. For larger budgets, you may have additional post-production stages such as visual effects, color correction, music scoring/composing, and sound design to name just a few.
About Levitate Media
Our ability to walk a client through the production process painlessly makes us stand out from other companies. The approach we take creates a strong partnership for clients who want minimal involvement to clients who want to be heavily involved throughout the process.
Whenever we take on a project, we are 100% transparent with the costs. And you can expect a finished project ON TIME with constant communication.
Have questions about our process or want to discuss what video style will work best for your corporate video? We'd love to hear from you! Adding a corporate video to your company's marketing mix will help you stand out from the crowd. Let's talk more about what will work best for you and your business. See some of our most recent work here.
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