Corporate video production is simply the art and science of creating corporate communications tools that are stored on DVD or in streaming video format. These audio-visual materials are separate from advertising videos in that their target audience is generally very focused, such as with training videos or motivational videos. Some promotional videos meant to be viewed by specific groups of powerful businessmen, such as to sell an entire company to another or to convince a much larger company to use yours as a contractor, also fall under the desmesnes of corporate video production.
CVP is a powerful tool for presenting information that focuses on professionalism over swagger, cleanliness over attention-seeking, and information density over 'sound bites'. Modern companies often engage a corporate video production firm to create works that show off their mission statements, recent successes, and media moments as well as simply safety videos and financial data presentations.
Corporate video production is popular because it does three things very well:
1. It makes learning easy
It does matter if you're teaching new employees the rules of the road or showing experienced managers how to implement best practices most effectively, video should be your medium of choice.
2. It saves time
People inherently remember more when they're exposed to information in more than one format at a time. When you present your information via video, you greatly reduce the chances that you'll have to re-present the same information to the same audience at a later date.
3. It unifies the message
Being able to show every employee from Seattle to Singapore the same corporate video means there's less "telephone game" and more accuracy to the message getting passed down from upper management to the trenches.
So what's the basic process? It's broken down into three parts: preproduction, production, and postproduction. Most people only think about the middle step when they consider the vagaries of corporate video production, but the pre- and post-stages are equally if not more important overall.
Preproduction is the phase during which scripts are written and storyboards are made. Actors are chosen, the budget is decided upon, and casting calls are made. This phase can last between 24 hours and a week depending on the complexity of the video.
Production is the actual filming of the video, during which camermen guide cameras, actors deliver lines, and a director controls the whole shebang. For a typical corporate video, you can expect this phase to last about an hour for each 5 minutes of finished video.
Postproduction is that time when editing -- voice editing, film editing, special effects if any, animations if any -- is performed. Depending on complexity, you can expect postproduction to last anywhere between 72 hours and 2 weeks.
Some people also include Distribution as an often-unspoken 'fourth' step in which the video is put onto a medium like a DVD or a webpage, and that DVD or the URL to that webpage is distributed to all of the people who are the intended audience for the video. Getting a hundred DVDs burned for shipping out to your branches across the country might take a few days, but setting up a streaming video site and uploading the videos shouldn't take an experienced web video expert more than a few hours.
All told, the complete corporate video production process shouldn't take any less than a week -- if it does, you probably don't have the right corporate video company. Much better to pay a little more and/or wait a little longer and make a deal with someone that you know can get the job done in time.