What we shoot
Video, shot on the same day, while the lights are already up.
Video placements are where the cheap reach is on every platform right now, and most local businesses do not have a single usable clip. The good news is that the expensive part of video is the setup, and if you are already shooting stills the setup is paid for.
What is actually worth shooting
Small businesses tend to imagine video as a two minute brand film with music and a voiceover. Those have their place, and they are almost never the thing that earns anything. Here is what does.
Short vertical clips, six to fifteen seconds
The pour. The cheese pull. The hands doing the work. The door opening at six in the morning. No script, no voiceover, no talking to camera. These are the workhorses, they run on Reels, Stories, Shorts and TikTok, and they are the cheapest video reach available.
The interview, cut into pieces
Twenty minutes of you answering real customer questions on camera becomes fifteen separate clips, each one answering one question. That is a month of content and it doubles as the most trust-building thing on your website, because people buy from a face.
One proper brand film
Sixty to ninety seconds, for the homepage and the top of a funnel. Worth doing once, worth doing well, and not worth redoing every year.
The clip shot on a phone in the kitchen frequently beats the polished film. Not always. But often enough that spending everything on the film is a mistake.
The economics
Why it belongs on the stills day
| Booked separately | On the stills day | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and lighting | Paid twice | Paid once |
| Your space | Disrupted twice | Disrupted once |
| Your team | Pulled off the floor twice | Once |
| Styling and product prep | Done twice | Once |
| Look and feel | Two shoots, two moods | One consistent set |
| Extra cost | A second full booking | Additional time, not a second day |
This is the single most practical piece of advice on this whole site regarding video. If you are booking photography and not capturing motion at the same time, you are paying for the hard part twice.
Getting it right
The things that make video usable rather than just filmed
- Shot vertical first, because that is where the reach is, and cropped to landscape afterwards rather than the other way round
- Captions burned in, since most social video is watched with the sound off
- The first second doing actual work, because that is where people decide to keep watching
- Filmed at a higher frame rate so it can be slowed down without looking broken
- Clean audio wherever anyone speaks, which is a separate microphone and not the camera
- Delivered as short cuts as well as a long edit, so there is something to post on Tuesday
On set
Not every job is a national campaign.
These are the last three shoots: a tool shop, a restaurant kitchen and an interview in a designer's own office. Lights, stands and a field monitor, in somebody's actual place of business. Nothing here is stock footage of a film crew.
Behind the scenes with Allen Velasquez, on location for DV8 Web clients.
The one most businesses need first
If you only shoot one thing, shoot the interview
For a realtor, a designer, a contractor or anyone selling their own judgement, video of you answering real questions outperforms everything else we make. It is also the cheapest to produce and the longest to stay useful.
Common questions
Video, answered
Do we have to be on camera?
No. Plenty of the best small business video has no faces in it at all, just hands, product and process. That said, if you are comfortable on camera it is the strongest asset you own, because people buy from people and a local business owner talking plainly outperforms almost anything produced.
Is a phone good enough?
For a lot of social clips, honestly yes, and we would rather you posted phone video consistently than posted nothing while waiting for a production. Where a phone loses is anything involving controlled lighting, low light, or a product that has to look better than expected.
How long should a brand film be?
Sixty to ninety seconds for the website. Anything longer and the watch-through collapses. If you have three minutes of material, that is three separate films, not one.
Do you handle the editing?
Yes. Editing is most of the work in video and it is where an unedited pile of footage goes to die in a folder. You get the finished cuts, sized for the places they are going.
Keep going
Where to next
Next step
Let us look at what you have got.
Send over your website, your Google profile, whatever photography you already own. We will tell you straight what is worth keeping, what is costing you, and whether you need a shoot at all. No charge and no pitch attached to it.