Posts Tagged scriptwriting
Volvo Trucks North American Corporate Video
Posted by SEO Services in Video Production on October 21st, 2010
The meat of a corporate video is the content of the video which appears after the intro and before the close. In the Volvo Trucks North American Corporate Video, found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uook3SXdZnE
, for example, the intro is a shot of a Volvo truck traveling across a bridge in the early morning light. The narrator states “another day, and another important load to carry. The intro is artistic, aesthetic creative. The body of the corporate video, on the other hand contains the content and the message, which the company needs to be conveyed.
Companies should carefully plan out what they want to say in their corporate video before actually writing the script or storyline, so that the video won’t be repetitive. What problems are they addressing, what achievements of the corporation do they wish to present, what changes in corporate policy or product focus do they wish to explain to shareholders, what new developments are down the pike, and liable to excite shareholders,
The video should address company problems early on, in order to put viewers at ease. The solution should be presented immediately after the presentation of the problem. The Volvo video, for example, addresses the following problem and solves it in two lines of narration appearing early in the script.
“In 1998, the Volvo group sold its passenger car business, and since then its focused exclusively on commercial transport including trucks. With annual sales of approximately 27 billion dollars, the Volvo group is a world leader in heavy trucks. ”
People might think that Volvo terminated its passenger line of vehicles because of financial problems. The video therefore informs us about the passenger care termination and follows that up by noting that Volvo is currently achieving approximately 37 billion in annual sales.
Content in the body of the corporate video should be solidly informative. The body may be impressive because the facts themselves are impressive. The Volvo video, for example describes the location of the major manufacturing plants in North America, and informs viewers that Volvo is now the second largest manufacturer of large trucks in the world. That’s not showmanship, that’s a truly impressive fact!
Corporate products should be described in a thorough manor, but without losing the audience in pursuit of detail. The video should maintain a balance between information and entertainment, being neither too weighty nor too empty headed. The Volvo truck maintains a balance by backing up descriptions of their truck lines with quality video snips of their brightly colored trucks riding down America’s highways.
Video producers, should know who their audience is likely to be, and tailor the content accordingly. If it will be seen by corporate investors and shareholders, then the content should be presented like pieces of steak that have been cut up into bite sized chewable pieces. The individual pieces should be appropriate for easy consumption. Taken as a whole, the pieces fit together and tell a whole story.
Impressive corporate facts and accomplishments are the delight of any corporate video. In the Volvo Video, for example, viewers are informed that Volvo is the largest heavy duty engine manufacturer. After introducing the various plants, the video goes on to describe Volvo’s large network of 250 maintenance centers which keep Volvo trucks on the road. Then the video describes Volvo’s subsidiary Petro, which provides light service for Volvo trucks. Added to this is Volvo Link, which provides satellite navigation for the trucks, and Volvo Commercial Finance , which provides financial arrangements for purchasing Volvo trucks. The video content taken as a whole gives the viewer the satisfied feeling that Volvo provides comprehensive truck manufacturing, sales and performance support.
We can learn from the Volvo video that the content in the body of the video should be substantial and presented in an orderly and non-repetitive fashion. The content must address every problem targeted by the video and inform the public of the corporate achievements in a comprehensive and entertaining manor that leaves the viewer satisfied that he has a complete picture of how the company is doing.
Incorporating Beautiful Imagery Into A Corporate Video
Posted by SEO Services in Video Production on July 20th, 2010
Beauty is one of the important elements, which needs to be incorporated into a corporate video. Beauty is a quality which imbues an object with attractiveness. In the same way as viewers are attracted to unique content, viewers are also attracted to beautiful content. Finding beautiful content to present to the public is a unique challenge for every industry, because each industry has beauty in a different form. Locating the beauty and presenting it, will greatly enhance the appeal of a corporate video to the public.
Finding that which is beautiful in a given industry is a unique challenge for every company making a corporate video. The source of the beauty is not always so obvious.In a company, which provides large above ground containers for volatile fuel, for example, a photo of the production plant with row after row of these large steely containers sitting in a lot waiting to be delivered has beauty in symmetry. A video made for an environmental group, has a much more obvious source of beauty, and it will serve to prove my point.
The environmental corporate video by Edward Wallace can be found at http://vimeo.com/3217927 . The Canadian environmental protection organization that produced this video has a very conspicuous source of beauty. It is important to point out, this corporate video has not merely thrown beautiful scenes into the video, to attract attention. The beauty of untrammeled nature relates directly to the purpose of their organization, which is to preserve these wild pristine places. This is essential. The video is not merely throwing in beautiful images to attract views so that it can then deliver the message. Rather, in a very real sense, the beauty is the message. In that sense, and in this usage the video illustrates the famous poetic adage that “Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty.”
The incorporation of beauty into a corporate video, may not always be done so appropriately. For example, if a mountain climber reaches the summit of a tall mountain, and a video captures exquisite footage of a snow capped mountain summit, a breath-taking panorama and the perilous drop below, there is certainly beauty within the segment. However, that beauty is not intrinsically related to the wrist watch which has continued to tick despite the rugged trek to the mountain peak. The sturdiness of the watch, in fact, is one of its minor feature compared to the beautiful intricacy of its dials, wheels and or digital circuitry, which never miss a beat and keep accurate time for years.
In the wrist watch video, we see that the primary beauty of the mountain summit has been transferred to the primary object of the video, the watch, even though it is not beauty that intrinsically belongs to the watch. Such a tactic can work at times, but it can also backfire as the viewer is secretly thinking, “You mean you have nothing intrinsically beautiful about your product to show me?”
On the other hand, when the featured beauty and the message of the video line up together, as we see in the environmental video, then the beauty and message work to strengthen each other and enhance the effectiveness of the video. The beautiful imagery, furthermore, imbues the video with a certain degree of sincerity and even passion. People watching the images of the environmental are moved to want to save the environment as they see the morning sunlight glistening through the trees, and here birds singing their morning songs and watch as a herd of elks standing shyly in a broad shallow creek, turn to look, with mild concern, at the humans filming them from a distance.
