Promotional video production typically starts with concept development, where the idea is conceived and brought to life. This phase involves everything from brainstorming to storyboarding. An idea has to be solidified into something more substantial than that in order to convey your message to viewers and either excite existing fans or attract new ones to your product or brand. There is a multi-step process that is used in promotional video production in order to make that happen, and we’re going to look at that process today.
The pre production phase of promotional video production involves getting ideas down on paper regarding what you want your finished video to look like. Will you include talking heads, certain locations, themes, music, a specific ‘look and feel’?, etc. - and if so, what order will all of that be presented in? That’s all defined here.
This is a fairly low key point in the promotional video production process, yet it can also have a major impact on the success or failure of your project. This is where you can make sure that all of your ideas are incorporated into the project, and that every element of the production is accounted for, from the visual art work to the voice over for the feature. Performing these checks later on in the process will require many more hours of effort - time that your production schedule might not have - so it’s best to get these issues dealt with here and start your promotional video production project started off on the right foot.
This is where you actually start shooting for your promotional video production project, and if you’ve taken pre-production seriously you’ll be well prepared for production to be a success. A top quality production company will usually have a highly experienced team of video production professionals on their team, as well as a trusted network of other professionals - makeup artists, casting companies, model agencies etc. that they’ve worked with before and trust to help them make your promotional video look great.
The production team will of course have to make sure that all shots needed are captured (so that they can be used at the next stage) in addition to any other demands or restrictions placed on them by the brief for a promotional video production project.All of this can create a long development time for the shoot, which will also require a lot of staff hours. The production phase of promotional video production is one of the main areas where you should be spending money on your project, so it’s also essential that you keep a good grasp of your finances here.
Editing is done after production and it's very different from the production phase itself. As with production, editing staff have to comply with the wishes of the director (who themselves should be working to a client brief) to bring a promotional video to life. Since often so many shots are taken during the production phase, the edit is a great time to evaluate them and pick the best for use in the final promotional video production. (in fact, this is actually a requirement and part of the editor’s task list on most jobs).
The edit is where you select and refine the raw footage that you shot in the previous phase, and add extra elements such as music and graphics into your promotional video production. It’s where you turn great ingredients into a better final product, and add the ‘polish’ to your project - so you can’t afford to rush or under estimate the time needed here.
It’s possible to distribute your finished promotional video production around the world quickly these days via the internet - but that alone won’t make it a success. This is a great thing to do for show reel distribution - you would normally place your show reel on video Library sites after all - but for a promotional video production you also need to consider who the target audience is, and what channels they use (social media, TV, direct visits to specific websites etc). If you do this, you’ll make sure that your finished video production is more likely to be seen by the audiences that will be most interested in it. Fail to do this however, and even if you have created the best promotional video in the world, it might not be seen by many people at all, and bring very little benefit to you as a result.