Video is becoming increasingly important in a business’ content marketing strategy. In fact, according to HubSpot, online video consumption has doubled since 2018. The problem with video however is that it can be expensive. However, there are ways to reduce costs as this case study into Cobra Network is going to highlight.
Why do videos get expensive?
There are a lot of costs that need to be considered for professional videos, these include:
- Staff
- Equipment
- Travel
- Room or location hire
- Editing time
All these costs add up but the key thing to note about these costs is that a lot of the costs are the same if you film one video or multiple videos.
How we managed filming costs for Cobra
As mentioned above, most costs associated for filming are the same if you film one or twenty. The only costs that go up with the number of videos you film is the editing time. For Cobra we decided to use this to our advantage.
In March Cobra were hosting their annual conference, this created a fantastic opportunity where all their leadership team, suppliers and customers were going to be in one place. This meant that there was an opportunity to film multiple people in one day. This meant that the film crew (who work on a day rate) wouldn’t need to travel to multiple customers to capture a lot of footage and only one room would need to be hired rather than going to multiple locations.
Plan your filming in advance
If you know what you want to achieve in advance of filming, then more can be done in the day, and you can make sure that you get all of the shots that you want. For Cobra we had a strict timetable of when interviewees were going to visit us and film their interviews. We knew in advance the questions that were going to be asked and extra shots that we going to be required, this meant that on the day we weren’t having to chase people, this meant that we were able to film 14 separate interviews in an 8.30am to 4pm slot.
To apply this to your own video shoots you need to make sure that you build a schedule, especially is you are going to be using multiple locations. Make sure the film crew know in advance where they are filming and what time and make sure that the people that are doing the filming also know where and when they are wanted. At Cobra not everything went to plan but we weren’t far off, and this is what allowed us to film so much footage.
