Corporate Videos Part 2

How To Make Your Corporate Look Professional

Following on from the last video blog about why a business would need a corporate film, this blog will go into how to make your corporate film look professional.

Planning a corporate film to help promote your business to others can be tricky.

It’s easy to get bogged down in trying to cover everything and often the person watching the video is left bored or confused by the bombardment of information thrown at them.   Here are some things to be aware of when planning your corporate film.

Think About Your Audience:

Don’t think of your audience as a business or the general public.  Your audience are all people and need to be treated as such.  All people want to be entertained and if you want them to watch your video properly then you need to give them stimulating visuals and interesting dialogue.  Use the language of cinema to draw people in as most people watch films so this is the visual language they are used to.

Don’t Try To Say Too Much:

Don’t try to say too much as it will confuse your audience.  Make your video focused and easy to understand.  A picture says a thousand words so make sure you storyboard your film before you shoot and include lots of cutaways and still images to emphasise the points you are trying to make.

Music:

Music is a powerful tool which can help an audience connect to your video emotionally.  It can also liven up what might otherwise be a very dry part of the video.  When choosing your music, make sure that you have the right licence to use it.  Otherwise you may be restricted as to where you can show your video which would be a great shame having worked so hard on it.

Production Value:

Remember that this video represents your company so production value is key.  Good ways to give your video that professional Hollywood look is to use steady-cam shots & crane/jib shots.   The use of cinematic lenses with shallow depth of field (out of focus areas) really helps as well.  Another way to add production value is cinematic colour grading.  This can be a really useful post production tool to make your video look exciting and unique.  Titles are very important.  If your lovely new video has horrible low resolution titles then you will ruin all the good work you have done.  Use particle effects in post production to create stylish transitions for the titles.

Call To Action:

At the end of your film you should include a ‘call to action’.  This gives the person watching your video a way to find out more about your company or even better, use your service or buy your product.  A great way to achieve this with video is to put hot-links on the video itself.  This means all your audience has to do is click the link on the video and they will be taken to the relevant place.  The benefit of this over putting the links below the video on your website is that the links will remain visible, even when people are not watching the video on your website and instead using a video sharing site such as Youtube.

Post submitted by Tom Kelly of Kelly Images.