We work with clients across the country, and recently I realized that many of our clients, even some we’ve worked with for years, have never visited our facilities here in Welcome. Which is a shame, because we really have a very cool place and I love to show it off. Since we take a lot of pride in doing fun and innovative things for our clients, I wanted a fun and innovative way to show folks our headquarters. I happened to see a video on TV where a drone was used to tour a building, and I really liked the result, so I thought a “behind the scenes” drone tour of our place would be a great way to go.
I’m no expert in video production, however, so making this video was a learning experience for me. In this blog, I’d like to share what I learned, which I call my “Four P’s of Video Production.” If you decide to do a video about your company, these may be helpful.
The first P is for Professionals, as in “Use professionals!” These days anybody can make a video using their smartphone, but that doesn’t make it a good video. I took my idea to my friend Angela Levine at Connect Marketing, who has done some video work for us in the past, and she hooked me up with Matt Mandarano at Down Fenix Media, who is an expert at making this type of video, and Matt brought in Austin Joffee, a local professional photographer with lots of experience using a drone. With Angela as the producer, Matt as the videographer and Austin handling the drone, we had our team of professionals in place.
The second P is for Planning, as in “Have a plan!” I naively thought we could just take a camera and walk it through our facility, but Angela quickly told me that wouldn’t work. She and I sat down and discussed all the things we wanted in the video – our offices, our print shop, our fabrication department, our show cars, an aerial shot of the whole facility, and so on. Then, at Matt’s suggestion, we storyboarded out the whole video. (That means we made drawings that showed each shot, so the video guys would have something to follow.) We figured out the sequence of shots, who would be in each shot, what they would be doing, how long each shot would be – well, you get the idea. The planning took a while, but it was worth it. You don’t want your video people just sitting around on the day of the shoot while you decide what they should be shooting.
The third P is for Personality, as in “Make sure your video shows your company’s personality!” I wanted our video to be fast-moving and fun and cheery, which is how things are here at JKS. Your company may be more serious, or more tech-focused, or whatever. But the video should reflect that, and it should be part of your planning, because it will help the video people decide how things should be shot.
The fourth P is for Patience, as in “Making a good video takes time, so have some patience!” Our video is short and moves quickly, but it actually took a few weeks to make. There was the planning, coordinating the shooting so it didn’t interrupt our work, and then the actual shooting itself, which was spread out over several days. We shot using the drone first, outside the facility and in our larger spaces, like our workshop and show car area. Then, because using the drone was impractical in our office area, we used a hand camera there to create the look of the drone. When it’s all edited together (which also took a couple of days), it flows seamlessly. But you have to be willing to take the time – and have the patience – to do it all right.
So that’s my little tutorial on making a video. It turns out it’s not as easy as you may think. (Luckily, if you’re a client of ours who’d like a video made of your experience or event or whatever, we can do it for you and save you the hassle of doing all this stuff yourself.)
Here’s the end result. I hope you like it!