Production Timescale Explained
The first think you’ll need to know about how to produce a marketing video are the timescales involved.
Depending on what your brief requires, production of video marketing can take anywhere between a few days or several months. If the video marketing you’re producing is intended to sit alongside a range of other assets then getting the timing right may be key so you can release your materials on schedule.
Let’s assume that your project follows the lines of a pretty common brief in video production and that you are aiming to produce a 2 minute video highlighting the product, people and purpose. This is along the lines of something we are asked to produce quite often and will usually feature action footage of the product/service/brand in action, talking heads from either customers, staff, or both and maybe a voiceover added on top to tie the message together.
Now all projects are different, so the timings below won’t apply to all but in general they should be a good indication of what you should allow for your production.
So once the brief has been delivered here’s a breakdown of what may happen and the time it will take:
Video Production Company Meeting – 2 hours
The video production company you have selected to work with will (and certainly should) want to visit your location/office to chat to you further and get a feel for your brand. For us, this is one of the most important parts of any video production. Getting face-to-face with our clients allows us to understand them, their brand, and most importantly their customer.
Brief Response – Half Day
Whether the video production company comes to meet you or not, you should certainly expect a full and detailed response to your brief. This will usually take about half a day to produce and should contain all the key information that shows the video production company you have selected has understood the brief. The response should also go into more detail about the production and cover areas such as logistics, film content, tone and style, and scheduling.
Pre-Production 1.5 Days (actual time but this may be spread over several weeks)
Further to the brief response the next stage of the project will be the “pre-production”. The actual time required to complete the pre-production on a typical video marketing project is between 1 and 1.5 days. However, due to the nature of what can be involved, this may be spread over several weeks. This is because pre-production includes elements such as scheduling and logistics, which can depend on responses and availability from 3rd parties to complete. For example, if the video production requires interviews with existing customers to generate testimonial-type quotes then the contacting, scheduling and managing of these interviews will require feedback (on availability etc) from the intended subject. Other parts of pre-production include scripting (for voiceover), shoot day planning and scheduling, and even casting (to find the right voiceover artist or possibly models).
Shooting – 2 Days
Now we are certainly generalising here and there are many variables to this, but a typical video marketing production is usually shot over 2 days. Even a short 90 second film usually requires a great deal of different footage and capturing this footage is not something that happens in a few hours. So 2 days is really the minimum that we’d suggest for most typical video marketing projects.
Editing and Post-Production – 4-5 Days
Again this is a general guide based on the assumed brief we described earlier but we’d usually suggest allowing 4-5 days to get the project edited and mastered. This timescale factors in additional elements that are required in most briefs of this kind such as voiceover recording, making amendments to the initial edit, and mastering/compressing the video for final output (usually to a web-ready format).
So there you have it. Taking the brief described as an example, you will need to allow 9 working days as a minimum for a typical video production project. Although obviously these days will vary rarely be lined up in a row and may instead be spread over several weeks. In our experience we find that the usual timescale that forms a start to finish turnaround time for these 9 day projects is 4 weeks. This is typical of the window of time from receiving the brief to delivering the final project.
If you’d like more information about how to produce a marketing video then please do drop us a line as we’re always willing to share our knowledge.
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