Corporate Videos
This month’s Pro is Keith Klein, Video Producer at Videocracy, a unit of OnYourMark, LLC. Keith offers advice for planning your corporate videos.
When you decide to do a corporate video, you need to think about what you want your video to represent. Your company of course, but besides that… what about your company are you interested in showing? Do you have a particular product worth mentioning, or is it a service that you provide? In either case, what is the main focus of your video?
Ideas for Corporate Videos
When you start to develop ideas, the best place to start is your website and current marketing materials. Your video should help enhance your website and existing fulfillment materials. Your video can have a similar look and feel as your website and literature, making them go hand in hand. Look at the most important information presented on your website and print pieces; this information should be referenced in your video.
Once you have gotten your ideas put together, start organizing your thoughts. Create an outline of what you want to show and the order it should be shown in. Starting on paper, brainstorming and creating a flow of ideas will help to solidify your plan before a camera crew is hired or tape starts rolling. We’ll work from these thoughts to develop your script and shot list. This way everything will fall into place throughout the entire process of making one or more corporate videos.
Intros for Corporate Videos
The first few minutes of your video are the most important. These moments of the video will determine whether the customer will move on or keep watching. It’s important to grab viewers right away. Once you have them hooked you can start to show them specifics, go into greater detail and show examples of why they should select you or your product. Starting with an overview of your company gives viewers or prospective customers a chance to learn a little bit more about you.
Breaking down your video into sections is a great way to create a flow. Ease one section into another to keep the viewer’s attention level up. If your video spends too much time on one section, or one specific thing, the viewer may start to lose interest. Breaking your video up into smaller sections will help eliminate this.
Once you have your outline, decide how long you would like to spend on each section of your video. Keep in mind your ultimate time goal. If you only want to make a five-minute video, decide what items are worth keeping and what items can be cut. What items do you want to spend more time on, and what items do you want to spend less?
Scripting Corporate Videos
From there you can begin to write the voice-over. We’ll help! The outline and voice-over script are a starting point for deciding what shots will be taken. Devote time to carefully planning the voice over, or narration, and to reviewing our recommendations. We use a stopwatch to determine if you are over or under your time goal. The more you do in pre-planning corporate videos, the more time and money will be saved in the end.
Overall, always keep your goals in mind. What do you want your corporate videos to say about you? With that and early planning, you can have many successful corporate videos.
See Videocracy.com.
What would you like to ask the pro? Email your questions to askthepro@OnYourMark.com!
