The Executive Guide to Planning a Successful Corporate Video Shoot
A corporate video should not be seen as an artistic endeavor with commercial objectives added to it. Rather, it is a commercial investment that requires cameras. If business leaders perceive it the first way, the result will be a video that may be aesthetically pleasing but ineffective – no new leads, no impact on the audience, and no measurable profit. The strategizing process is just as important as the filming.
Start With A Measurable Objective, Not A Concept
The initial discussion you have about any corporate video should be about KPIs, not aesthetics. Are you looking to pull in inbound leads? Lower onboarding time for new employees? Establish trust before a sales visit? Each of these intentions will deliver a distinctly different video with a distinctly different structure, length, and call to action.
A creative brief that doesn’t identify an exact outcome is essentially nothing more than a pretty collage. Before you approach any vendor, your internal clients need to come to a consensus about what achievement will be, in number form – a conversion rate, a click-through, a decrease in support calls. Getting everyone on the same page at this phase is the best way to keep them from sniping at you with unreasonable and expensive edits during post-production.
Build A Pre-Production Timeline That Respects The Process
A minimum of two weeks before production is needed for pre-production, but most projects have a week or less. You can’t properly source locations, plan talent logistics, prepare shots, or even finalize a script when you’re pressured to jump straight into shooting. Only with pre-production time can you perfect logistical planning, prepare for shooting, and anticipate problems before you step on set.
Storyboarding is often overlooked in the rush to film as well. A sequence of shots doesn’t have to be well polished. It doesn’t need to be artistic. Simply sketch a rough outline of the shots and run them over your script. Does the story move? You’ll quickly see if what plays in your mind is actually too short, too long, or doesn’t fit when you go to show it to someone else. This can save you thousands in wasted production time by working out your vision ahead of time.
Audit Your Location Before You Commit To It
Most of the location problems don’t have a visual nature but an acoustic one.
HVAC systems, noise from open-plan offices, street traffic, echoey hallways – these components quietly steal your video’s production value and you may not even know it. Bad lighting you can fix in post. The hum of an air conditioning unit or fluorescent light isn’t something you can edit out, and fixing it in post-production can get expensive and create even more audio artifacts.
Get to a potential location and turn off the systems you can control. Stand still and listen for two minutes. Try to be quiet and then make a short recording on your phone. Play it back through a good set of buds. If you can hear the room’s ambient noise on your phone’s mini microphone, your camera will pick up even more on a professional condenser.
If your actual workspace just has terrible acoustics and isn’t going to work, let that go. A new location that is 100% on brand is always better than a great looking room that sounds like a parking garage.
Prepare Your On-Camera Talent The Right Way
Leaders and experts who deliver lines from memory often appear stilted while doing so. The performance may be correct, but the conviction is lost in translation. Instead, provide talking points to your spokespeople – short, bulleted concepts written in the tone of how your presenter would naturally speak.
Share your on-air talent the talking points two days beforehand, not two minutes before going live. Recommend that they also try to reinterpret the points in their own way. If possible, make it to the shoot. Rehearse several different ways the concepts can be incorporated during the record time and leave it up to the editor to decide.
This is one more area where marketers working with professional teams in commercial video production in Rochester NY often see improved outcomes. A local filming squad with experience in business media interviews is accustomed to helping a camera-shy management member to relax.
Use Real B-Roll, Not Stock Footage
Using generic stock footage of people shaking hands or typing on laptops conveys one message to a viewer: your brand wasn’t interested in letting them see who you are. That certainly doesn’t inspire confidence, especially in video footage for local or industry-specific markets.
Actual B-roll of your team, your gear, your shop floor, or your product is like a magic elixir against doubt. All other things being equal, people will believe what they see you do over what they hear you say (by a polished voiceover artist, no less). And you’re not alone in thinking that – 86% of business video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website, and trust in their product.
Decide on your B-roll shots in advance of your shoot. These are not things you just happen to tape while you’re in the area. Any more than your interview, they should be planned, scheduled, and spent time on.
Your Video Has A Shelf Life – Plan For It
A well-made corporate video doesn’t expire in six months. The footage you capture today, edited correctly, can be repurposed into shorter social cuts, website headers, and presentation assets for two or three years. That longevity depends on shooting with more content than you think you need and having a distribution strategy before the edit begins.
Know where the video will live – your website, LinkedIn, a paid channel – and what version each platform requires. A 90 second LinkedIn cut and a 3-minute website version comes from the same shoot day if you plan for both upfront.
