Posts Tagged scriptwriting
Volvo Trucks North American Corporate Video
Posted by SEO SERVICES in Video Production on October 22nd, 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,
Corporate problems can often be addressed succinctly and should be tackled towards the beginning of the video. 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.
If the body of a corporate video is impressive it should achieve that effect by the presentation of solid facts. Corporate videos are no place to be gimmicky or sensational. 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. A corporate video must maintain a balance between factual presentation and entertainment. 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.
The content should be directed and tailored to the audience. 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. One fact included in the Volvo video, is the that Volvo is the largest heavy duty engine manufacturer in the world. 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.
The Volvo video teaches us that the meat of a corporate video should be substantial content that is well ordered. 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.
Showing Off The Beauty Of Your Product
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.
Locating that which is most beautiful in a given industry 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. At times beautiful scenes, which are merely tangential to the main thrust of the video, are thrown in as attention grabbers. For example, a watch company has used scenes of a breathtaking climb to the summit of a mountain. The captivating beauty, which stretches out beyond the precipitous drop, is merely tangential to the fact that the watch keeps ticking despite the beating it took on the climb to the summit. 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?”
When, as in the environmental video, on the other hand, the beauty directly relates to the message of the video, a resonance is created, because the increased attractively directly touches on the heart of the matter. 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.
