Corporate Video Production

Beyond the Board Room (And Out of the Bored Room)

Stuart Sweetow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317425472
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Film e video

In this updated edition of Corporate Video Production, Stuart Sweetow teaches aspiring and seasoned videographers how to make imaginative corporate videos with eye-catching designs, rhythmic editing tricks, and essential scriptwriting and interview techniques. Readers will learn how to shoot on location or in a studio, work with employees-turned-actors, find new clients, and produce online videos and podcasts for corporations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. Additionally, this new edition has been updated to include discussion questions, chapter summaries, and professional tips, and to cover live webcasting, mobile devices, shooting in 4K, micro-videos, micro-cameras, and storytelling techniques for corporate social responsibility programs. A companion website features downloadable forms and further resources.

1 Case Studies

DOI: 10.4324/9781315689883-1

Introduction

Digital media and broadband connectivity have influenced the evolution of video production in corporations. Rather than distributing programs on physical media such as DVDs, many companies store (or “host”) the media on computers, and deliver by way of CDNs (content delivery networks) or satellite transmission. Employees watch these videos via live streaming or VOD (video on demand). In addition, live videoconferencing has become an alternative to videotaping meetings.

While in past years organizations built their own TV studios, many video managers now prefer to film on location with portable production gear. Some organizations decentralize video services and train individual departments to use their own camcorders and editing software. Nearly all of the Fortune 100 companies have their own YouTube channels, creating further need for in-house video production. Social media outlets (including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) offer opportunities to distribute videos to the general public, and this gives corporate video managers a major responsibility: literally to form the corporation’s image.

Companies vary in how they structure their in-house video services. Corporate video units are sometimes called media departments or form part of larger communications departments or divisions. In some cases they charge their client departments for their services and operate as if they were an outside production studio. At other organizations, the video manager needs to propose each year’s budget to the company-wide budget committee. Some video units get their funding from several different departments, and those video managers may have to juggle their priorities.

What challenges does a video producer at a large corporation face? Managers want television quality, but often don’t understand the costs involved in achieving this. Planning, research, scripting, hiring talent, producer and director time, other crew and staff time, post-production, and distribution all contribute to large production budgets. The task of many video managers is to educate their clients and the department executives about the resources that are needed to produce top-quality video that is both effective and compelling. And, most of the time, the video manager needs to find creative ways to produce a video within a limited budget.

Another challenge is getting the client to commit to sticking to a production timeline and reviewing elements as they become available. The video producer needs to be clear with his or her client about the phases during production where the client’s input will be needed. If the client is not ready to review materials, there is a risk that the production may not be completed on time.

Let’s take a look at some of the larger corporate video units headquartered in the United States to learn how they operate. You’ll see that there is a wide range of video services that in-house departments offer, and the opportunities for employment or contracting are as varied as the companies themselves.

Corporate Social Responsibility: “Google Earth Heroes”

Video producers with high ideals who want to have an impact on the world sometimes shun corporations as they turn to documentary production. At some companies, however, the corporate video team will take on the task of documenting their firm’s demonstrations of social responsibility. Such is the case at Google, the Mountain View, California company that spearheads the “Google Earth Heroes” project. According to Google, this is “a way to celebrate the individuals and organizations that have used Google Earth in their efforts to effect change.”

One of Google’s video productions documents how Google Earth helps to track the movements of elephants in Kenya. The Google crew filmed an interview with the founder of the group Save the Elephants, and in the YouTube video he explains how Google Earth links to the organization’s remote tracking system. With B-roll of the elephants trekking across the Serengeti and animated graphics keyed over images from Google Earth, the short video serves both as a documentary discussing the problem and as a corporate public relations piece to publicize the Google product. To protect the elephants from poaching or droughts, if an elephant stops moving during its migration, Save the Elephants sends a Google Earth file that shows where the elephant has stopped. Then the Kenyan wildlife patrol can dispatch officers to investigate.

Another video that the Google video team produced shows how the U.S. Forest Service uses Google Earth to track fires and plot the path through which a fire could spread. The video, also distributed on YouTube, includes animations of Google Earth displays. The Google video team shot interviews on location with Forest Service personnel, who explained that climate change is contributing to fires happening earlier in the year, that the fires are larger than they once were, and that they burn more intensely. Google Earth helps the Forest Service’s Aviation Coordinator to track planes in the air from different agencies and coordinates the firefighting effort. B-roll clips of aircraft and fires add to the visual variety of the video.

A series of short, snappy YouTube videos, titled Life at Google (www.youtube.com/user/lifeatgoogle) helps new employees and recruits to get an inside view of the half-million-square-foot Googleplex. Using rapid video montages of employees on the job, accompanied by their voices, and with quick shots of staff on camera in the studio, the viewer learns about the corporate culture at Google. You can view more of Google’s videos on the company’s official YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/Google.

Google’s video team is part of the company’s marketing and communications department. The Studio G Team, according to Google,

consists of video production and operations professionals who harness their creativity to produce a variety of engaging, on-message ‘Googley’ video communications. We produce these videos for the YouTube audience, and examples include product launches, product demos, branding videos, and executive speeches. Our talented and creative staff shares the ideals of Google’s mission, which is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Videos Documenting Community Service at Scotts

Scotts (makers of Miracle-Gro fertilizer), in preparation for their 150th anniversary, developed a community-based growing program called “Grow 1000.” It is part of a Pasadena, California, urban neighborhood revitalization program where the company aims to “find green spaces in unexpected places.” In one YouTube video (https://youtu.be/bG_nyaUtQz4?list=PLCiwgyeBDmd85Ncu0pdoY-pFEdsXRbAVw) the firm demonstrates how they teamed up with a Brooklyn neighborhood organization to harvest rainwater for rooftop gardens.

Scotts dominates the fertilizer industry with $2.4 billion in sales and national advertising. They must have a loyal following, because in two months they garnered two million views for their 30-second YouTube video titled Miracle-Gro Life Starts Here (https://youtu.be/2McEpKWDkOK).

High production values, such as a well-researched and -written script, custom music, and professional narration support a montage of people happily planting, playing and bicycling. Most of the shots show young adults, some expressing affection to one another. There is one shot of a grandpa with a toddler and another of a tattooed young woman and a gray-haired woman re-potting a plant together. The product gets mostly subtle placement.

Hamburger University and Sustainability at McDonald's

Log on to McDonald’s website and you can view The Road to Sustainability, a four-minute video the company produced that shows their work “toward sustainable agriculture production by addressing ethical, environmental, and economic challenges.” A video montage set to music uses text rather than a voice-over narrator to explain such ecofriendly practices as recycling cooking oil and using recycled fiber in packaging. The video producer interested in helping the environment will be pleased to see that this megacorporation partnered with Greenpeace to support a moratorium on illegal deforestation.

This video also appears on the McDonald’s YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/mcdonaldscorp), as do about 25 others (at the time of writing) on other topics reflecting the company’s efforts at corporate social responsibility. McDonald’s has joined many other major corporations that use YouTube to distribute public relations videos to the general public. Other videos are directed at potential franchisees, with a testimonial from a woman who started as a part-time employee at the age of 15 and now owns a $2 million business. In another YouTube video, new employees and recruits hear crew and managers tell “the truth about working at McDonald’s.”

Employee training at McDonald’s is done at the company’s Hamburger University in Oakbrook, Illinois. With a student population of 5,000, the 80-acre campus includes a 300-seat auditorium and 12 interactive education rooms, and it employs 19 resident instructors. The company recently opened a second campus in Shanghai, China.

At their Innovation Center, 30 miles away, researchers, engineers, and franchise managers develop new food preparation and handling systems. Several mock restaurants at the training facility are equipped with video cameras to watch the flow of the food, the actor–customers, and the employees. Cameras show cooking activities in the kitchen and customer interactions across the counter. A wide-angle camera captures a shot from an overhead observation deck. The team reviews the video recordings as part of their efforts to improve efficiency.

The in-house video team produces 30 to 40 live webcasts each week; they also shoot and edit for the company’s YouTube video channels, as well as their own social media delivery network. They produce product videos and tutorials in the studio and on location worldwide, and they frequently hire scriptwriters for customer service video productions. Location filming includes customer testimonials and documentary-style productions.

The company has an in-house video channel that accepts footage produced by many departments within the firm. Sometimes a department will purchase and use its own consumer-grade high-definition video cameras, and then send footage to the in-house video team for editing. Then the producer shoots a wraparound opening and closing with a host to create a news-style program that is streamed to internal sales and marketing teams worldwide.

The video group is not technically a department. Rather, it is a group that is part of the customer communications department, which itself forms part of the company’s enterprise business group. Different teams of video producers, editors, and crew work for dozens of different teams within the company. When I asked what it takes to get a job or be selected as a freelancer for this company, I was told that staffers are selected to be on a team based on their depth of experience as well as their technical achievements. These may be demonstrated in their portfolios, which are usually found on the applicants’ web pages. In addition to creativity, they need to demonstrate that they have previously produced videos on time and on budget.

Consulting Firm Booz Allen Hamilton

Consulting firms are different from manufacturing or distributing companies. They don’t have a product to show, other than the ideas and solutions they can provide for their clients. The company’s video productions become tangible products that represent the intellectual capital they supply to customers. Videos not only represent the corporation’s image but also become concrete examples of the company’s output.

Senior associate Jeffrey Marino of Booz Allen Hamilton is in charge of a 17-person media unit that produces multimedia for the company’s website as well as for its YouTube channel and Facebook page. The “Stay Connected” button on the company’s home page points to such social media as YouTube, and the content is mostly short video clips distributed on these user-generated sites. At the time of writing, Booz Allen Hamilton has posted 64 YouTube videos, including the CEO’s minute-long analogy of hockey strategy and business success, a three-minute clip from the company-sponsored FIRST Robotics fair, and a three-camera 1-minute 20-second conversation about environmental management.

The 22,000-employee company has 100 offices around the world, some of which produce their own videos. At the Virginia headquarters, Marino manages a department that includes two production studios, four post-production suites, and enough gear to shoot on location. They frequently use green screen to incorporate live action with motion graphics and 3D animation to help to explain concepts and ideas.

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