Corporate video and company film production services for businesses of all sizes
Category: Video Artisan
Welcome
Video Artisan pride themselves on producing cost-effective video communication tools for business clients. They understand their clients’ needs – and how to achieve their video production goals. This is why more and more businesses are using them for their video production needs.
These articles will keep you up to date with what’s been happening at Video Artisan. Short stories, news updates and comments are published by the company’s founder, Kevin Cook. Kevin has been in the professional video industry since 1985 and always aims to provide his clients with exceptional levels of customer satisfaction. The company motto is, “Under promise and over deliver”. At Video Artisan they always go that extra mile to provide an excellent product at a competitive price.
For further details
In conclusion, the areas of expertise include corporate video, company films and all professional video services. Please contact Kevin Cook for further advice on this website – kevin@video-artisan.com or call 020 83602 3356
Canon 5D mk ii, lots of accessories – plus grip items. Available prior to eBay listing!!!
Before it goes on eBay, I thought I’d offer up a range of surplus DSLR video kit that I am selling. Prices based on cash sale, purchased as seen and with buyer collecting from our studio in Loughton, Essex (on Central Line). Alternatively, shipping can be arranged cost.
A short guide to Media Archiving for Businesses of all sizes
Do you have videotapes, slides, photos and other media taking up too much valuable space in your business premises? This short article reveals how Video Artisan can help save you space, money and even re-purpose this media with our various media archiving services. You never know – there might even be ways you could start to make your media archive pay!
Media Archiving – part of your Spring Cleaning
We’re not quite there yet, but many businesses will be thinking of spring cleaning their premises in an attempt to de-clutter and claim back some of their valuable office, filing and storage space. In many cases, a fair proportion of that space is being filled with bulky, and hard to access, media. But before you start to throw away old videotapes, cassettes, films, negatives, slides etc. – do you really know what’s on them? Do you still have the machines to play them back or display them – without damaging their contents? It’s probably time you started to look at the various benefits of media archiving.
At Video Artisan we help businesses with their media archiving by converting pretty much any analogue media into virtually footprint-less digital files which can be easily accessed, indexed and saved to a multitude of digital storage solutions. Today, a single USB stick could contain several filing cabinets worth of high resolution photos, negatives and/or slides!
Comparative Media Source
USB size and the approx. amount of JPG images they can store
1GB
4GB
8GB
32GB
128GB
High quality 6×4 colour photos
700
2,800
5,700
23,000
90,000
High quality A4 colour photos
200
800
1,600
6,500
26,000
Note: A detailed megapixel calculation chart can be found on the Sandisk website here.
Video and film media archiving is more data hungry, but you can still store many hours of digital video footage on a single USB stick. For instance, an 8GB USB stick could contain up to 6-hours of standard definition video (for details on our basic video to USB stick service here)
These files could of course be stored on local servers or in the cloud and simply copied off when needed. However, for businesses and organisations with extensive media archives, that need to be accessed and utilised frequently, digitised media can also be incorporated into highly sophisticated digital asset management systems. In this instance Video Artisan can help by providing you with a digitisation service to get your files ready for media archiving – or manage the entire process for you.
Media Archiving for Profit
All businesses have a story to tell – some going back generations – but much of this valuable marketing material can be trapped in old photos, negatives, slides, film or video. Using these within your marketing can be extremely valuable in helping you to position your business as being established and trusted.
Businesses often struggle to find interesting and engaging content to share on social media platforms and your old media archive might not be just interesting to you and those within your business. Properly described and tagged images – including information about dates, location, people and contents featured within the media – could be of great interest to a much wider audience than your brand is presently exposed to. Who knows, you might have something in your media archives which has ‘viral’ potential!
Sharing your media archives even wider might also generate hard currency. Image database websites, such as Shutterstock enable you to freely upload your images and make them available to others to licence and use – on a fee-paying basis. When creative agencies, designers or publishers are trying to portray a specific period in history they will often rely heavily on finding images within these libraries to help them achieve this – and will pay handsomely for their use.
Restoration
Whilst there are limitations, old and damaged media can also be digitised and restored to their original quality – and sometimes even improved upon. Torn, scratched or heat/moisture damaged items can also be painstakingly touched up and made useful again – whether purely for posterity or to be re-purposed within your business. Whilst this can be an expensive process (price on application), for the right image and the right application you might be able to re-liven an irreplaceable piece of history.
Bringing images back to life
Start Media Archiving today
To find out how you can start your own media archiving, please contact us today and we’ll be happy to help bring your media into the 21st Century.
If you are looking at making capital from your premium video content? This detailed blog should cover all the basic information you will need.
What is Premium Video Content?
Every now and then a client asks us how they can monetise their video content. This is generally because they believe they’ve got an idea for a film which they think there’s a paying audience for. This is a perfectly understandable desire as video is a great way to share valuable information – but ‘Premium Video Content’ has to have certain aspects about it before it can generate income and profit.
Content is King
It’s an old saying but vitally important – “Content is King” when it comes to creating truly profitable premium video content. An audience is only going to pay to watch or own a film which has value to them. Two great examples include:
Professional Development – content that will enable a professional or craftsman to do their work better, quicker and/or more economically. The viewer must believe that by watching your premium video content they will be more successful professionally.
Personal Development – content that will enable a hobbyist, artisan, sports person or novice to carry out their activities to a higher level of achievement and/or enjoyment. Your premium video content must be inspirational and empowering.
Do you have a Viable Market?
You might have the best possible premium video content idea, and the expertise to deliver a valuable video, but it is equally important to know who and what your target audience size is. These are not things you can guess at – they must be researched!
You must know how many potential viewers there are and how much they would pay to watch, or own, your video. You must also have routes to this market to enable you to communicate and market your premium video content to them. It is only when you know the cost of producing, distributing and marketing your premium video content that you will understand its viability.
If your content is of general interest and purely for personal development then it is unlikely going to attract a substantial amount of revenue per customer. You’ll therefore need a substantial audience – maybe in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Conversely, a premium video content video that contains top-tips and industry secrets aimed at a highly-paid profession might well attract substantial revenue per customer. To make these profitable might only require a handful of customers.
Controlling Distribution
You have basically two ways in which to distribute your premium video content to your audience – either on physical media (i.e. DVD or USB stick) or online (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo or your own servers). Each has its strong points – and each can be offered in combination with the other – which will be expanded upon later.
One of the greatest risks to your profitability, whether releasing on physical media or online, is copy protection. It is a major concern for all creators of premium video content and you should adopt every practical measure to ensure your content is only consumed by paying customers. Even the biggest media corporations struggle to achieve this, so the very least you can do is follow their example and account for this shrinkage within your pricing structure.
All digital content is relatively easy to copy – even for the novice. Whilst there are copy-protection technologies and systems out there an experienced media-copying specialist (a Pirate), with a modicum of investment in technology, will be able to defeat them. Piracy is still theft though, so you need to make it as difficult as possible to guard your premium video content – or at the very least make it unattractive for the pirate to steal by pricing it attractively so they do not bother to try an undercut you.
Let’s look at the benefits, drawbacks and features of the two main distribution methods.
Physical Distribution
Whilst there is a move away from disc-based media (DVDs and Blu-Ray), the saturation of disc players (set-top boxes, computers, games consoles…) means that it will be with us for quite some time and provide you with a widely acceptable means of distributing your premium video content.
DVD players are far more widely available, but limited to standard definition content. Blu-Ray discs are capable of delivering high definition content, but players are far, far less prevalent. Though you should always consider quality when selling premium video content, the fact that it is not high definition might not matter to your customers – as long as you’ve remembered that ‘Content is King’.
If you believe your customers will want high definition (or beyond!) the alternative would be to supply your premium video content on USB sticks. File-based delivery is growing very fast and most modern TV sets will play video straight from a USB stick – as will nearly every computer. The other added benefit of USB sticks is that you can easily include other digital files and assets on them. For instance, an instructional video might also benefit from having some additional printed notes or diagrams to aid the customer.
Something to put in your customer’s hands
Whilst it is still easy to copy a disc, and somewhat easier to copy a USB stick, the main benefit of supplying your content on physical media is that it gives a greater sense of value and ownership to your customer. It also gives you additional means of branding your product within packaging. Furthermore, customers who have purchased your premium video content are less likely to copy and share it.
Though a physical product will attract a higher price, there’s also additional costs and time involved in production and distribution. The cost of blank media is generally going down (a recordable DVD is pennies rather than pounds), but you also have to consider cases, postage and the manpower involved in processing orders and maintaining stock levels. That being said, the payment mechanism is reasonably straight forward… They pay you – you send them the product!
Online Distribution
The biggest advantage of distributing your premium video content online is virtually zero costs in distribution per unit. Once you have created your video and uploaded it to a server each viewing or download will be almost cost free – depending on the payment mechanism or platform you’ve chosen to host it on.
The biggest drawback is that once your content is ‘online’ it is extremely easy to copy and share. DVDs and USB could also easily be uploaded and exploited the same way, but with online content you are only a couple of clicks away from your content being copied, shared and duplicated everywhere. Projecting margins and profits therefore must take into consideration a much higher level of shrinkage. Maybe only 1/1000 people who get to watch your content might have actually paid to do so – but on high-volume, mass-market premium video content this might still be enough to generate profit.
There are a number of online facilities which will enable you to host your premium video content, take payments for plays and downloads, create audiences and enable you to communicate with them. The two most notable are YouTube’s ‘Paid Channels’ and Vimeo’s ‘Pro’ accounts. Each has its own payment and charging model and restrictions but either could suit both mass-market and specialist market premium video content.
Setting up your own paid-for YouTube channel
You could of course use your own website to distribute your content – with your media located in password protected areas which paying customers can only access. The videos themselves could be hosted on Vimeo Pro and Plus accounts which can restrict the video from being embedded on anything other than your designated URL. You can also elect to enable or disable downloads – or even add password protection so that your premium video content can only be played by those in possession of a password.
The best of all worlds
There’s one thing that every customer appreciates today, regardless of the product or service, and that’s ‘choice’. Once you have gone to the time, effort and investment of creating your premium video content then you should release it using all distribution methods available to you. Give your customers choice – and fewer reasons not to buy!
Giving away ‘teaser’ content online is also a great way to drive sales of complete programmes. Short extracts can be edited to freely distribute online which give viewers an insight into the value of information your films contain. If you make this free content available by request (maybe by subscribing to your website) you will gradually build up a database of potential customers for you to market. This is even more important for those who believe they have material for an ongoing series of premium video content. Customers who buy part I in a series are much more likely to buy series II, III, IV & V!
The cost of producing premium video content
So… you’ve got the idea, know your market and understand about distribution – now all that’s left is to work out how much it is going to cost to get your premium video content created! This is where Video Artisan comes in.
The tricky bit is that there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf cost for video production – no matter who tells you otherwise. There are standard packages broken down into number of days to film and edit – but the all-in costs can range dramatically depending on what you are trying to create and how much work and involvement you are looking for from your video production company.
We have produced another guide which should, hopefully, give you a better idea of how video production costs can vary (see here) but your next step is to contact us for a no-obligation consultation to see how Video Artisan can help you to start profiting from your premium video content.
The story behind our Recruitment Film for Siemens Financial Services
A Recruitment Film with a difference
Earlier on this year we were approached by Siemens Financial Services (Region North) to produce a recruitment film which detailed the cultural changes that had taken place within their business. These changes were introduced in 2010 as a response to a challenge from Siemens’ Global CEO and resulted in the division increasing their profits from €47M to a staggering €61M in a little over four years.
But this wasn’t simply a case of producing a trumpet-blowing recruitment film – this film had two distinct goals to achieve. Firstly, each year the Siemens group of companies run an internal awards program to celebrate the successes amongst their many divisions – and Siemens Financial Services felt that a video submission would be a brilliant way to show their successes off to the judging panel. The film therefore had to reveal what changes had taken place in the business, the challenges this cultural change presented to the management and the impact that it has had on its profitability and, more importantly, the positive effects it had on productivity and self-worth of the staff working within the division.
With a looming deadline for entries the awards submission became the immediate requirement, but the longer term goal was to produce a recruitment film that would show potential employees what would be expected of them if they became part of the Siemens Financial Services team. Having developed a culture of trust and high levels of engagement, they wanted everyone to fully understand and commit to this before applying for a post with them.
Briefing for a Recruitment Film
An assignment such as this takes a lot of consultation with the client in order to ensure the film meets it aims and objectives. Siemens Financial Services had already been drawing up a list of things that needed to be covered in a written awards submission before considering commissioning a film. By the time they had approached Video Artisan they were very clear on what aspects and milestones within the culture change project were important, but didn’t have a clear idea on how this could be conveyed within a short film.
Our suggestion of producing a presenter-led investigative documentary was quickly adopted, and their response to our proposal of using radio and TV presenter Mary Green to front the film was equally enthusiastic. The idea, which we believe we have realised, was to produce an in-depth news report from a neutral perspective with the story being told through a series of interviews with management and staff from Siemens Financial Services.
Filmed over two days at their Stoke Poges HQ, our approach was to single out those employees who were most effected by the cultural change and those who had been influential on specific initiatives. The main storyline was drawn from a long and detailed interview with CEO James Gearey but, equally important (and in line with the cultural change itself), we gathered interviews with employees from every level within the business to demonstrate their buy-in on the initiative. Quite often in these situations you can experience resistance from staff members to being interviewed, but such is the success of the cultural change and sense of ownership amongst everyone in Siemens Financial Services, that we were really spoilt for choice for willing and capable candidates.
Never short on volunteers to interview for the Siemens recruitment film
Going forward with the Recruitment Film
Whilst this was a very rewarding commission to work on, it is tinged with a little disappointment. Unfortunately, despite their entry being received very positively at global board level, their awards submission was up against incredible competition entries from other Siemens divisions and therefore wasn’t selected for the finals. On the positive side, and as testament to our treatment of their main objective, the film now plays a pivotal role in their recruitment programme.
Are you thinking of commissioning a Recruitment Film?
A recruitment video is an incredibly powerful tool in attracting and retaining the right personnel to your organisation. The production process itself can help you to develop and share your core values and business ethos – therefore pre-qualifying candidates by revealing your expectations of them. Furthermore, it can also be used to share your ideals and ways of working with existing and potential clients.
If you would like to explore the possibilities for your organisation, please contact us today for a no-obligation consultation on 020 3602 3356.
Discover the benefits of using video for team building
Video Team Building for M&IT
We’ve just completed another M&IT Agency Challenge event, this time held at The Lensbury in Teddington. This is the fourth Agency Challenge event we have covered for M&IT (Meetings and Incentive Travel) but our remit goes way beyond just producing a short documentary on the event. M&IT are well and truly sold on the value of using video as a team building activity for their delegates and it is often quoted by them as the most memorable and fun part of the event.
Team building events and activities come in all shapes and sizes. Some are purely a means of getting people within an organisation together in one place to network, share ideas or simply get to know each other better. However, the more effective ones are those that get groups of people thinking and working towards a common goal or achievement – and often taking part in a challenge which is way outside their usual area of work and expertise. A good team building activity will also challenge their creativity, develop leadership and demonstrate the true benefits of collaborative effort.
Why Video Team Building works
Using video for team building, where teams are assigned a task to create a short film or sequence as their exercise, has many benefits. First of all it can be a whole load of fun. We find that many delegates relish the opportunity to get in front of, and behind of, the camera and “make movies”. The filmmaking process is, after all, a very collaborative process which involves technical and creative skills in bringing a story together on the screen. It has the potential to serve all types of characters – from those who have a longing to perform and act, to those who enjoy hands-on activities (camerawork, sound recording or lighting) through to those who want to lead the creative process through script writing and directing. We also provide delegates with coaching on the filmmaking process too, so they’ll also come away a little better informed about framing, composition, sound recording and how to tell a story using video.
Having fun – building teams
M&IT use video team building very effectively with teams assigned to make a short commercial about one of the presentations made to them during the main body of the event. It is the team’s choice, but it has to be based on one of those subjects. In M&IT’s case these presentations are made by suppliers to the meetings and incentives industry (airlines, hotel groups, national tourist boards etc.) and the delegates are made up of representatives from agencies who are likely to book their services. This results in the delegates paying particular attention to their presentations as they might have to make a short film about them when the video team building part of the day starts. They also combine this with ongoing quizzes throughout the day, again based on the content of the presentations, so by the time the event finishes they are extremely well informed about various suppliers, locations and facilities available to them.
Team Building for any occasion
This formula can be easily adapted to any business event or conference where you want delegates to come away better informed; for example, when running a sales event at which you are introducing new products or services to your sales force. Pre-warning your delegates of the forthcoming video challenge will guarantee they listen during briefing sessions where the new products and services are introduced. The other benefit of using video for team building is that it can also give a focus to the end of an event, using it to screen the edited films and announce the winning entry. This is generally very entertaining but, more importantly, gives yet another opportunity to share the message.
There are also further benefits to using Video Artisan to provide this activity for you. At little additional cost we can also produce a short film about the event. In the case of M&IT the following short documentary is used to promote future events to delegate attendees and sponsoring companies wishing to put on presentations.
If you think your next team building event could benefit from incorporating a video production exercise then please get in touch. Whilst this can be extremely beneficial, and lots of fun too, it does require a fair amount of planning and experience in order to get the most out of it. Please call 020 3602 3356 to talk though the possibilities – and see how you can use video to bring your teams together.
You must know how many potential viewers there are and how much they would pay to watch, or own, your video. You must also have routes to this market to enable you to communicate and market your premium video content to them. It is only when you know the cost of producing, distributing and marketing your premium video content that you will understand its viability.
