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
