In-house Video Production vs. Video Production Company

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In-house Video Production vs. a Video Production Company

I see it in a client's eyes after we complete the second or third corporate video for them - they are ecstatic with the results achieved; a great looking video, a concept explained, video for social media, and improved SEO results due to video production.

They start to think, "What if we could produce video in-house? We could produce video regularly AND save the costs of going a production company for our video content?".

Half of the concept is correct, there is nothing better than video production for your website, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media video content, and marketing in general...but are you really saving money?

Let's examine that question...

There are several things to consider when thinking about in-house video production vs. hiring a local video production company. The following is a short list of reasons why in-house production might not be the best investment for your video content.

Labor. Let's, do the math. Think about your communications goals versus cost of a video production company . You just produced your first video and it cost you $4K, or maybe only $2K. You want to produce 12 explainer videos next year. Simple, multiply your single video budget by the number you wish to do. One a month? One a quarter? What number did you come up with?
Payscale.com suggests an entry level video production specialist will expect between $32-69K in salary (without any additional benefits added), the median is $47,334! That's just for one person, what if you need an entire video crew? How much did you "save"? You probably didn't. 12 videos at $4K cost you $48K, which is about the salary of that video producer you needed to hire (now you still need to add in benefits, vacation, insurance, etc.).
Also, is your new hire fluent in the production of marketing video, animated explainer video, social media video and other video marketing concepts? If not, you're paying them to learn the production process instead of producing your video content.
Equipment. Is this bill right? These days anyone can purchase a subscription to professional editing software for $50/month, but then what? There's a lot more to video than just editing. Going to film all your branded content videos on your phone? Maybe. But better results come from professional gear, and that gear costs money. So you go buy a camera, then you need a tripod, then you need additional batteries, monitor, lights, etc. Audio into the camera? Buy a microphone. Then you might need an audio interface when you can't get the audio into the camera....it goes on & on. It can be a huge outlay of cash.
Most importantly, commercial video production gear goes out of technology fast these days. The first camera Acclaim Media purchased was $16,500. In the end, it was sold on Ebay for $500 as it was only standard def, when the world moved to HD. Is depreciation something you can carry on your books?
Know-how. Acclaim Media has been a Chicago area based corporate video production company since 1998 and produced a lot of quality video. When a client commissions a video project we take the time to understand the client goals and unerstand who the target audience is. That is task number one in our video production process. We manage the entire process for our clients.
The entry level person mentioned above? Maybe not. Experience counts for everything in video production services. After all, often our video crew cannot go back and re-create an event. Miss the ribbon cutting with the Senator? That can't be re-created.

Recently we were hired to handle a press conference in Pekin, IL (2.5 hours away from our offices). Our video production team brought more video equipment than needed for the job. Our experience told us to be ready for anything with regards to March weather. Good thing our team brought rain gear (for ourselves and the camara)! Our video production process saved our gear and allowed us to get footage from the "presser" that the company can use in their video project.

Decisions, Decisions. We are aware of several area businesses who brought production "in-house". That was a few years ago, and we're now producing more content for those companies than ever. They discovered the concerns mentioned above through trial and error.

Their entry-level person could not keep up with the award winning level of production they expected. Specifically they had no exprience in animation and motion graphics. Both were very important to these clients to explain complex issues in their promotional video.

Video production deadlines were missed and marketing efforts scrapped. The gear they purchased is now sitting in a warehouse and technology is passing it by daily. It's a shame, but their final video did not reflect the gear that they had purchased.

One client of ours even stated, "We're not going down that 'gear' road again, that was a waste."

There are many more factors we didn't have the space to list. I would suggest you have a conversation with your corporate video production company about the volume of work you hope to produce, your video budgets and your storytelling goals .

Often video production companies like ours can creatively bundle production services to save you money when they look long-term. We can work with our video production team to deliver the best final product to clients. This will save you a lot of time, work and money in the long run. After all, getting creative is what we do!

Acclaim Media works with several companies on a retainer basis to help them produce more digital marketing, social media and YouTube video. Because we film on a consistent schedule we can build a library of video "assets" while keeping costs down. This library can later be used to help to build us build video content for them. The relationship has worked well for both companies.

Many of our customers consider Acclaim Media their "off-site, in-house, production company".