How To Decide If Your Business Video Should Be Live Action Or Animation
For creating a piece of video content for use in your business, for external marketing or internal communications, The important question to ask is whether to do a live-action video, an animation, or a combination of both? Factors to consider before making the decision include
- Your business culture, identity, and image;
- What you need to express, the complexity of the message;
- Your audience and their preferences; and
- Top objectives of your video content.
Let’s take a comprehensive look at the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, as well as the best way to choose between the two, keeping in mind your audience and goals.
Live-Action: Pros & Cons
- It is personalized – A live-action video features real people. It has the human factor which will surely draw empathy and brings a high level of involvement from your audience. It is especially important if your business revolves around people or a specific real-world location. For example, a high-class hotel chain, a travel company or a tour guide team can make the experience of location, food, and ambience more genuine and convincing by featuring a real person. Another area where live-action videos are very popular is crowdfunding campaigns.
- It can show how things work in practice – you sell a real tangible product, like cars or handbags. Generally, if your company’s USP is the quality of the product, it is good to have a Live-action video. Live-action videos also work well when you need to describe a technical gadget or showcase a manufacturing process – a car assembly process.
- It’s faster (usually), but more limiting – Live action can be quicker than animation. As soon as your strategy and plan around your video content are ready, you can shoot a live-action film can be and edit it within a short span. In case you have spent a lot on hiring the crew and actors and props along with location, you definitely want to make maximum use of that movie.
- It can be harder to alter though – Reshooting will be a challenge because re-hiring actors, same locations and equipment can be difficult, time-consuming and costly.
Animation: Pros & Cons
- It’s simplifying and stylized – one of animation’s strengths lies in its ability to express complicated ideas in a fun and compact manner. All animation has some sort of style, no matter whether it’s 2D, 3D, hand-drawn or hyper-realistic. As such animation provides a powerful and pretty flexible canvas on which a business can express their views and try to influence their viewers in a positive manner. Example: Complex subjects like bullying, women’s rights or violence.
- It can be used express abstract ideas – animation is best suited for advertising more intangible products and services which need long drawn explanations. Other abstract topics could be numbers or statistics. Say you need to deliver a business update to your internal team, but you’re uncertain of the most effective medium. An animation would enable you to convey this data in a manner that is fast, clear and uncomplicated, with supporting icons and graphs.
- It takes time to build, but allows to be more imaginative – production time associated with animation tends to be longer, given the process of putting together characters on a screen, with backgrounds, stories in a visual format, style etc. But this also gives the animation a unique strength: it can look and sound any way you want it to.
- It is easier to alter as required – While animation can be intricate and time-consuming, it also enables you to make changes to your video at any time. Or add to its flavour, build the story of your characters, as you see responses from the viewers. Let’s say you want to display a yacht or a private jet. With live videos, you’ll have to actually rent those things to be able to film them while, with animation videos, you just ask an illustrator to draw those objects. When creating an animated video, you can outsource the whole video process to a production agency, which can add /delete features whenever you want to update your video.
Choose What's Right For You
Both options can be good depending on the situation. You have a sufficient budget, and want to display your brand in a traditional way, as it is done on TV — go with Live action video.
If you need to outperform the competition, create a video on a budget, plan to market mainly on the web or you have an idea that would be hard to develop with live footage — go with animated videos.
Make sure that your marketing targets are set out clearly, as this should be your number one priority. The choice of video style, type, and format are your secondary objectives that will always stem from the desired outcome. At the end of the day, your choice between animation and live-action will help build your brand and image.
Live-Action Video Goals:
- Brand Awareness Increase
- Product Advertisement (Mostly Tv)
- Reach Out To Maximum Number Of View
Animation Video Goals:
- Conversion Rates Increase Throughout The Sales Funnel
- Product Awareness Improvement (Mostly Web)
- Educating Audiences, Partners, And Employees
General Costing for Live-Action videos and Animated Videos
Quite like many major purchases, the price range for animation and live-action is wide and depends on a variety of factors. For the sake of simplicity, an animated video that’s 90 seconds to 2-minutes long can range anywhere between RM5,000 and RM35,000. As for live-action video creation, depending on the type of video you’re choosing, the price tag could be between RM10,000 to RM50,000+.
Another great option would be to go with a hybrid ad, where live-action and animation are combined together. Well, this calls for creativity, but it can build your image in a different manner. For example, you have actors who are discussing some breakthrough experimentation in the lab. Alongside you add animated images of global warming or a hurricane or explosion to depict better imagery.
Another way is to create a live video using your branding and voice over a purchased stock video footage, something like this example.
Need help figuring out what kind of video content to produce? Connect with us for a free consultation at info@neonvideos.com
Tell us about your video
Whether you need a corporate video, marketing video, training video, or explainer video, our team has over 10 years of experience working with various businesses to create engaging and impactful content. Please fill out the form below to let us know the type of video you’re planning to make. We will get back to you with multiple options and price quotes tailored to your requirements.
Our Clients
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to make a corporate video?
Cost of video production is dependent on the following factors:
- No. of days of shoot
- Locations of shoot
- Elements of video (e.g. drone shoot, studio or location)
- If models or talents are required
- Voiceover requirements
- Background music (standard or custom)
- Translation and subtitles
- Adaptations into multiple languages
Depending on the specific requirements of your project we will provide you with a custom quote. Contact us to get your custom quote today.
What is the rate for animation video?
Animation video rates depend on the intricacy of the animation and the duration of the final edit. There are various types of animation we provide:
- 2D vector animation
- 2D custom illustrated animation
- Kinetic typography animation
- Whiteboard animation
- 3D animation with objects
- 3D animation with characters
Depending on the animation style or your ideas we can provide you with a custom quote for your video. Contact us to get your custom quote today.
Who will develop the script for the video?
Yes we will provide you with a script for your video which you can use or suggest to make changes. To develop your script we will understand your business objective and come up with a draft copy. Alternatively, you can provide us with a script which we can help you to polish up to make it into a captivating video.
Contact us today to find out more about our script writing services.
Do you provide a storyboard?
Once the script is finalized we will provide you with a detailed storyboard. We need all our clients to approve the storyboard before they go into production.
The storyboard helps all stakeholders to visualize the final video and allows us to make changes easily if something is not according to your requirements. Contact us today to find out more about storyboarding.
How long does it take to make a corporate video?
Each corporate video is developed in 3 stages: Pre-Production, Production and Post Production. The pre-production stage consists of the script, storyboarding and recce of the locations. Production is the actual shoot and voice recording stage. The post production involves editing, music and special effects.
Considering 1 week for each stage of the process we normally estimate 3 weeks for the production of a corporate video. However, there has been cases where we have done corporate videos in much shorter duration for our clients.
Contact us today if you are planning for a corporate video within a tight timeline.
How many revisions do you provide?
Revisions at every stage is as per follows:
- Script writing – 4 revisions
- Storyboard – 2-3 revisions
- Animated sections – 2 revisions
- Final video edit – 2 revisions
Video production is a co-creation process and at every stage you (the client) will be involved to give feedback and suggest changes.
Our objective at Neon is to make sure 100% customer satisfaction and realization of your vision in a video format. To know more about our process, please contact us today.