Lots of Shooting = Corporate Video Library

There’s power in having a lot of footage to pull from when creating the corporate video.  So let’s talk about how to build a library of footage and videos.  When we start shooting for a new corporate client, it’s usually for a very specific video… maybe a training video or a web video.  When we shoot, we don’t ever delete anything.  That footage goes onto harddrives and those harddrives are backed up to tapes.

The Corporate Office Needs a Video

Then you have a short conference that needs recording.  After that, the CEO wants to send a video message out to the corporate employees.  And there’s that new office renovation that could use a timelapse.   Oh and the corporate headquarters needs a drone shot.  All that footage starts to build up.  Your corporate video library.

Then, one day you decide you need a quick internal video on your company culture.  You send us a script (or you have us write one) or voice over and we pull from these previous shoots to put video over that voice over.  Without ever shooting anything.  And it’s fast.  Look how we made this video blog.

Clients that we’ve been working with for years, will call us and need a short, quick video that they can put on the web, sent out as a video news release, or in their e-learning portal and with a growing library, this becomes a much easier process.  Of course, sometimes it’s a mixture.  We might need to shoot a little and use some library footage.  Maybe someone needs to go on-camera with a standup to introduce something or bring attention to an important corporate strategy.  Having a library to pull from gives you the flexibility to have great looking videos at lower cost and quicker turnarounds.

And we’ll use that footage often to increase production value.  Maybe the talking head interview talks about the warehouse… we could stay on that shot, or pull from the library that time we shot in the warehouse.  This corporate image piece of our client Progressive Leasing utilizes library footage from other projects we shot for the client.

Over-Shooting for the Corporate Video Library

At SFilms, we use current corporate video shoots as an opportunity to build the library—maybe asking some questions in a video interview that aren’t necessarily the focus of the current video that can be re-purposed from something down the road.  One client we have, we were shooting events at their retail locations.  In addition to asking associates the questions of the day, we also asked them what they liked about working for the company.  Later, human resources needed a video to play at job fairs—they were extremely pleased that we were able to get them a great video from existing footage. The only expense was in editing and we didn’t have to wait to try and schedule shoots.

Who Owns the Corporate Video Footage

One note—if you’re using outside video companies, the industry standard is that you, the client, own the footage, even if the video company keeps it at their place.  You should never have to pay to get footage back from a video production vendor.