How To Create A Documentary Video For Your Business
If you’ve got a topic you really care about, you can make a documentary video about it. Be it a freelance tutor, showcasing art, or DIY at home recipe, or an established brand, we can’t just bombard our audience with sales messages. We’ve got to bring value and insight to our content – otherwise, no engagement can be sustained for long!
A documentary video is a video or film that examines a real-life theme, person, event, or problem. They are often educational and/or instructive in nature, very specific, and have an appealing tone to them. Finally, a story is usually recorded with sincerity that, in theory, moves anyone who sees it. Making a documentary video for your business can attract new customers and retain new ones. A documentary video, with the insight and education it provides to viewers, can be a real asset to your business. They’ll be thirsty for more knowledge and stories from your business – which means you’ll need to keep up the good work!
How to go about making an attractive documentary video for your target customers. We hope these informative points will be useful.
Stage 1: Planning
Documentaries are all about deep-diving into a topic, uncovering truths, giving voices to the unheard and having a profound emotional impact on the viewer.
Making a documentary video isn’t just a tick-box exercise; once you have identified a story that you care about and you know your audience will also lap up, or you know which topic can create a need, it is good to get acquainted with your topic pretty well beforehand. This will ensure you know all the best questions to ask, after a proper research.
Make a plan and outline for your documentary video – To ensure your documentary video production goes as smoothly as possible, draw up a detailed but clear outline.
Say if you have chosen an Interview type documentary video, Jot down the exact things you want to shoot, and when? This includes filler footage, or b-roll. In addition, think about your interviewees. Who do you want to talk to? What do you want to talk to them about? How will these interviews slot into the wider documentary?
To make a high-quality documentary video, you need high-quality video production equipment. It doesn’t always have to equate to a big, bulky kit. Rather you’ll find more flexibility with smaller equipment you can easily carry around with you. For example, if your documentary goes on the road, you’ll want to keep the equipment light. Just make sure you don’t sacrifice quality in the process.
Check legal, copyright and ethical issues before shooting – Before filming on locations or interviewing people for your documentary video, get the required permissions, clearly informing that the documentary will be aired on various platforms. Also inform how you will be crediting them, in writing so that it minimises any misunderstandings. A written agreement can be simple laying out facts, about your subjects’ consent to film them, about social media, time frame if required, credits, disclaimer, etc.
2: Filming the documentary video
Get a variety of shots to keep things interesting – If this is your first time making a documentary video, research on the different shot types you can take advantage of. Besides the basic long shots, wide shots and close-ups, consider these.
Vlogs (the cameraperson holding and speaking to the camera on the go)
Talking heads (filming people straight-on; extempore interviews – involves telling the core argument, along with reaction shots that help make the video engaging)
A-roll (your best footage that focuses on the main topic, or the critical element)
B-roll (filler footage of the surroundings that can be pleasing to the eye, but not distracting)
Filming the interviews – To ensure your interviews make pleasant viewing.
Make the setting comfortable for the interviewee, and quiet so there are no disruptions or distractions
Choose emotive interviewees who will give engaging reactions. Audience gets influenced by relatable reactions.
Stock your footage safe and organised – During the shooting period, keep filing your footage away regularly in a well-organised folder. That way, you’ll make it much easier for yourself when you get to editing.
3: Editing and distribution
Editing process – For edit 1, gather all the good footage you captured and scrap the rest. Edit 2 should be a further cut of edit 1, chopping the documentary into an appropriate length. For edit 3, add your b-roll to fill it out and give your viewers a brisk perception of the critical matter with enough breathers.
It’s almost always a good idea to add a subtle background music track to your documentaries. Not only will this clean up the sound quality of your video, but also enhance its mood and atmosphere. Desktop apps like iMovie are good places to add music to videos and edit their timing and volume, faze in, etc.
With the advanced detailing, there is so much more that can be delivered via a short documentary video. Sociological documentaries, for example, can contain graphs, charts, and still photos to show all sorts of information that videos cannot.
A big part of your visual language is the text – In a truly multimedia documentary project, text is central throughout the video. Say, if your documentary is on mediaeval history, your text cards can be written in cursive or calligraphy font, on a background image of parchment.
Finally edit 4 – add all your extra decorative bits – animations, transitions, etc. You may also have a narrative voiceover running through it; if so, you should have already written a script for this and recorded the audio.
In case you have to later edit the size of The same documentary for uploading to different media, you can enhance the same visual content by voiceovers (and subtitles!): To make your project more accessible to disabled audiences and the significant portion of viewers who watch videos with no sound, always add text transcription so everyone gets the most out of your film.
Think about news TV: pictures, cards of just text, infographics, and recorded audio can be vital to any documentary, and keep your audience engaged while making sure you get all your information across.
Distributing your documentary video
Finally, you can share your documentary video with the world! Depending on the purpose of your documentary and how much money you have, you’ll either share it in cinemas, on TV, DVD, streaming or YouTube. Teasers of the same documentary can be flashed on facebook, Instagram, twitter etc with a link guiding the audience to your youtube channel or website for full viewing. Time your flashes in regular intervals as a reminder for the audience as well.
Alternatively, you can also hire an agency to create these videos for usage in the long term. Agency will help create a high quality documentary video, addressing the critical message and branding to your varied audience. The agency (like ours) will also help you with prominent placement on your intranet and internet pages, and advice on timely sharing on corporate social media channels.
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.
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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.