Promotional Video Production

A promotional video – or promo – is a video used for businesses or organsitaions for the sole purpose of promoting a specific product, event, service or initiative. Promotional videos can take the shape of many different styles and formats. They can be made in live action or animation. But whatever the style or format they need grab your audience’s attention and draw them into wanting to learn more. Some of the different types of promotional videos we make are: Product & service  information videos, Explainer videos, Product launches and Event & conference videos.

A business promotional video is a useful  marketing and sales tool designed to introduce, inform and educate your audience/ customers about your services and products. A good promo video will be well structured, be precise, direct and able to get across all the key information about your business. As well as making a compelling case for people to use your services and/or products. This can be achieved through company insights, a well written voiceover script, case study examples and/or customer testimonials.

A lot of planning and thought goes into filming a promotional video, well it does at Picture Lock Films. We consider everything from the location/s, permissions to film, risk assessments, who the contributors should be, how long we need to film for and even the weather. Also equally important is what we want the finished promotional film to look like, including its length. We’ll prepare shooting scripts which cover, not only what we need to shoot for your promotional video, but how we might transition from one location to another or move onto a new subject. If we are interviewing staff or customers then we’ll prepare a list of appropriate questions in advance. For further reading on how we work  see our blog post all about choosing a video production company. 

Before filming commences we will have agreed dates and locations, plus any potential contributors needed, as well as how many days will be required to capture all the footage. On the day of the shoot, we will arrive at the agreed location at the agreed time, in advance we will have shared our call sheet/ schedule with you so you are aware of the day’s filming activities. We’ll identify the best places to film, then set our kit up and get cracking. Depending on the nature of the film we may start-off by filming the GVs (general views) of the business in operation. Or we may kick-off with the interviews, it’s all project specific.  For further reading on what to  expect on a shoot see our blog all about production terminology. 

What’s inside, or the content, of your promotional video will have been discussed prior to filming, but a good promotional film should cover the following, at least:

Who are you? And what is your offer & USP?

What sets you apart from the competition?

What can customers/ users of your business/ service expect?

The messaging will be backed up with the appropriate footage  and interviews to give insights and real world examples. In some cases to ‘land’ and cover as much information as possible a scripted voiceover may be required. At our initial discovery stage we will have bottomed out your minimum requirements & aims for commissioning us to make your company promotional video which will ultimately inform us of what to include in your promo.

For us, any promotional video we make must have a story with some form of structure to take the viewer seamlessly from A to B. It also should be able to engage the audience within the first 10-20 seconds. If it can’t do that, then it’s not doing its job correctly. At Picture Lock Films we think a promotional video should be eye-catching, have great pictures, be well edited, use music and graphics. And if it does have audio you’ll want to hear what the speakers and any voiceover is saying clearly so we ensure it’s properly mixed prior to delivery.

The costs for your promotional video will be entirely governed by the ambition & scale of your project; plus the locations. Needless to say, we will be as cost effective as possible and look to achieve any economies of scale ensuring we deliver value for money for your promo. All our costs are calculated on the days required to deliver your promotional corporate video/ animation. Again, all this will have been discussed at our discovery & proposal stages of our corporate film making process. As an approximate guide: Animation and Infographic content can cost upwards of £750 to £2500 per minute (this will depend on the nature and complexity of the animation required.) Live action filming can start from between £550/£1000 upwards per minute (a minimum minutage to achieve this sort of cost per minute figure would be content that’s 3 minutes and above). As with any promotional /corporate video costs are dependent on the locations/ travel/ camera equipment needed/ length of filming needed to get the content/voice over artists and the number of days needed for all the editing etc.