How Long Does Corporate Video Production Take?

Most corporate videos take 4 to 8 weeks from kickoff to final delivery, and a simple single-shoot video can be done in about a week. At Lightswitch Video, shoots can usually be booked with one week's notice, first drafts land within 10 business days of the shoot, and revisions come back within 5 business days of your feedback. The days that blow up a schedule are rarely camera days. They're approvals, calendars and permissions, (and most of those sit on the client's side of the table.)

The five phases of a corporate video (and how long each takes)

Every project goes through the same five phases. What changes is how far each one stretches.

1. Kickoff (1-2 Calls). You meete with one of our producers to discuss goals, audience, deadline, budget and who approves. Sometimes on the first call our client has to go back for more clarity and we'll schedule a second call to make final plans.
   
   Kickoff is short but it matters a lot. A 45-minute call that nails the deadline, the goal and the single person with final approval saves more calendar time than anything we do in the edit bay. We wrote up exactly what we cover in How Lightswitch Kicks Off a Project.
   
   
2. Pre-production (1-4 weeks). Creative brief, script or interview questions, crew booking, locations, permits and talent scheduling. This is where the production is really made. This can go very quickly if there are only a few decision makers, or take much more time if there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. We do our best to establish approval processes in the Kickoff.
3. Production (half a day to 5 days). This should be no surprise, our shortest shoot commitment is a half day, and we'll sometimes film over multiple days. All of this will be established in the pre-production calls and scope of work.
4. Post and review rounds (2–4 weeks). Edit, graphics, music, color and sound, then your feedback and our revisions We deliver a first draft within 10 business days and revisions within 5 days of receiving notes. We will always keeo our timelines, but it can sometimes take a while to gather everyone's feedback on the client side. We've had videos take over 2 years to get approved due to slow client feedback
5. Final delivery (1–3 days). Final approvals, exports, cutdowns, captions and file handoff. We always keep everything stored on our end for a minim of 2 years should you need it down the line.

Where corporate video projects actually stall

When a project runs late, it's almost never because the camera broke - that hasn't happened to us in over 10 years.

It's one of these three things, and (nearly) every one of them can be cleared early.

Legal and compliance review

In regulated industries, legal review is a hard gate, and it often comes twice: once on the script, once on the final cut.

Financial services is the clearest example. In many cases everything that is said on screen must be signed off by the corporate compliance team, and the final video must receive their sign off before it can be published.

We combat this in a few ways.

1. Template what can be templated - if we are doing the same type of video for multiple institutions,we don't need to reinvent the wheel every time, starting from a compliance approved place makes each approval move faster

2. Pre-clear it: show compliance the interview questions before the shoot, and ask what disclosures need to be on screen.

3. Shoot with compliance in mind - when we know compliance will be a hurdle, we plan ahead so that we only capture things that will get sign off. The edit is easier when you know everything is approved.

Executive availability

Your CEO has 40 minutes free three weeks from now. That's the shoot date, no matter what anyone else says. Pre-clear it: lock the exec's slot at kickoff, before the script exists, and send talking points a few days ahead so the 40 minutes go to filming, not briefing.

Our teams are very flexible and spread throughout the globe, making tricky schedules a non-issue

REVIEW

Tale as old as time. Everyone wants a say. 3 people disagree. The person who decides doesn't know what they want. We've shot the video 2 months ago but stakeholders have been going back and forth for months.

We once had a banking institution that needed to approve every single shot, as it was filmed, from a timezone 8 hours away

We have tools and tricks to avoid this, but we can only control so much. Our biggest tips:

1. Decide who decides. Before you film anything, determine who has the final say

2. Spend the time in pre-production clearly defining what you are trying to achieve so that review is benchmarked against real goals

3. Take the time to get feedback from everyone before submitting for a round from us.

Rushing production: what can be compressed, and what can't

We can move fast when we need to - especially if we know when we'll have to do it.

• Same-day edits. An editor on site or working remotely turns a highlight reel the same day. This is pretty common for our events.
• Parallel crews. Ten cities in one week instead of ten weeks - this is kind of our claim to fame
• Parallel editing. Several editors on one series, sharing a template. This is how we were able to produce 1,300 near identical, but custom insurance agent videos in 2 years
• Rush edits. Rush pricing is available - as long as we know ahead of time. We can sometimes accommodate last minute, but the best thing to do us is let us know that you'll need the videos quickly after we film. This shouldn't ever be a surprise with how we handle pre-pro.

What we cannot always guarantee we can speed up:

• Booking a crew - we can always guarantee it with 2 weeks, can usually do it with 1, and will try for a good client next day, but more notice is always better when booking a team on the ground

We always do our best to meet our clients needs, and are the best in the business at keeping up with scope, scale and speed - but we are unfortunately bound by the limits of space and time.