Demonstrating the use of your product and what it does is essential for creating brand awareness, generating interest in buyers and increasing sales. The best way to demonstrate your product is with a high-quality and engaging product video.

While ‘product demo’s’ may not sound like the most exciting content, they are absolutely critical in giving would-be customers the more detailed information they need in an engaging and easily digestible way!

The following are the five steps that a professional production company should take when creating your product video production.

1. Writing a Script

It’s essential to write a script that features the product, but also focuses on how the product will be used by the customer. The following are a few of the essential elements of a product video production:

• It should focus on what the product is, what purpose it has, and what problems it helps to solve.
• It should focus on the needs of the customer rather than the agenda of the company.
• It should be engaging and information should be easily digestible by the viewers.

These elements need to be considered in the scripting stage of the product video production. A fully realized script will help your video production be focused and professional.

A script will help you nail every point that you want to make as well as how you want to deliver it. For example, do you want professional actors demonstrating the use of the product while they explain everything you want to say?

Or do you want a voice over that explains what’s happening on screen so that the actors don’t speak? Or maybe you want to use a mixture of both? Writing a script allows you to create a narrative for your product video.

Moreover, storytelling is one of the best ways to keep your audience engaged. You can establish a character (the customer), a conflict (the customer’s need) and the solution (the use of the product.)

2. Creating a Storyboard or Shot List

Once you’ve signed off on the script, the director will sit down with the producer and director of photography (the camera man) in order to break the script down into shots. The shot list determines how the story will be told visually and ensures that you get all the coverage you need to create your video.

If you shoot without making a shot list, you may end up missing some visuals you need to accompany your narration or voice over. Sometimes a simple shot list is enough to ensure you capture everything you need during filming.

Other times, a storyboard can be helpful. Storyboards illustrate each shot so that you can get a good idea of how your product video will look. This can be helpful especially for videos that involve multiple people or a variety of alternating angles or types of shots.

Storyboards can range from being static images, still shots and notes compiled using storyboard or layout software; or, they can be more elaborately drawn out and presented in a comic-book like fashion.

3. Developing the Visual Style

An experienced video production company can also help develop a distinct look and feel to your videos, essentially a visual style that fits with your brand image. There are a lot of stylistic elements to consider, including:

Lighting

There are many ways to light a product video. You can create a natural look in which the lighting is effective but subtle, or you can go with a more stylized look that uses light and shadow as deeply contrasting elements.

Colors

Coloration can be tweaked in different ways. Certain colors can be used in the production, in wardrobe or props, that either relate to the brand or communicate a certain quality such as financial wealth, loyalty or creativity.

Coloring can also be adjusted in post-production with color-correction or specialized color-grading, casting certain tones over your footage. An expert video production company will collaborate with you to create a look and feel that best represents your product and brand.

4. Important Audio: Voice Overs and Music

While the storyboards and visual styles are being worked on, you’ll want to find voice over actors to work with. You’ll listen to a number of voice over actors sample-reads before deciding which voice will best represent your brand.

The voice you choose can be very powerful in connecting your viewers with your product video. Music helps to create atmosphere and mood, and can have a big impact on a viewer’s decision to keep watching.

Poor music, or a lack of music, can turn a viewer off. A professional video production company will provide you with options of music tracks to choose from, typically stock audio files that can be licensed for your use within your budget.

5. Editing the Final Product Video

Once the footage is filmed in the visual style that was developed and story-boarded, it’s time to enter the post-production phase and edit the footage together with the selected music and other audio. Editing is a crucial part of your product video production, as it brings all components together to craft your overall message.

An experienced editor will have a great sense of the ideal pacing and continuity of your video and will know how to get it to be the desired length according to the script, storyboard and/or shot list. Editing is a process in which you will be presented with an assembled edit, but be given opportunities to address details or shots that you’d prefer to tweak or update.

An expert video production company will want to ensure that the video shows everything you need to about your product, but also keeps moving at a pace that will keep viewers engaged and able to retain information.

These five steps of the video production process will allow any professional video production company to ensure that your product video is flawless. Now all you have to do is be ready for what happens next in your customer’s journey. Position your product video so that when they’re ready to buy there is a button, link or contact information right nearby!