VIDEOS – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE WHEN I PAY MORE OR LESS? - 2i1e: Digital marketing | Online creative advertising agency in Singapore

VIDEOS – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE WHEN I PAY MORE OR LESS?

By Ms PG, in-house executive producer and director

The value of products and services has depreciated clearly over the years and productising even services like video production is no longer uncommon. People churn out event videos, static visuals and wedding visuals quickly and at low costs.

So, we run into a rut when people start to question what do we get back in deliverables when we ask to create a brand or product video? The answer is obvious – no matter whether you spend $2,000 or $20,000, your output will still be a video. So, what are you actually paying for?

Some time earlier, we bumped into a person who supposedly understands the world of video, having come from a world-renown production studio. Yet, he was telling the world that a simple self-taken selfie video (alas shaky hands and all) would sell anything.

Now…. imagine your favourite branded sports brand selling you a pair of $200 sneakers with a home-made video, shaky hands and all just because they thought this would be more authentic and could sell their shoes. With all the pauses, breaks in filming, bad lighting, pimples and unintentional bloopers, it would have been a costlier mistake with more damage control required at the end of broadcast.

Take for example a luxury car maker’s blooper with a low-quality advertisement done during the Chinese New Year festive season in Malaysia earlier this year in 2017 which got netizens talking for all the wrong reasons.

Every brand has their own identity and brand values that they need to uphold. The difference between a low quality production and a high quality one includes every single factor in the list below:

Idea Generation and Conceptualisation
Scripting
Storyboarding
Selection of talents, locations, crew and cameraman
Selection of the right equipment
Actual production (usage of equipment, angles captured, emotions evoked)
Post production (colours, storyline, graphics and sound)

A video production is not simple and every person in the video/ film industry can attest to that. A significant drop in budget can simply mean a huge compromise in the final quality and output of what you’re getting.

For cheap videos, most of them are bound to be of a cookie cutter style or quality, with little creative input and possibly even compromised production or filming processes and equipment. Focusing on the quality of your output, and most importantly being able to communicate your brand story effectively should be a key priority.

Ultimately, the only other content that can be of acceptably low quality is user-generated content and not brand-generated content. Together as a whole, your content strategy should always have a good mix of the right quality branded content and user-generated content to complement it.