A PR Video for Broadcast

While on this blog we have discussed set dressing, casting, post production, and many other aspects of video production, the simple fact is: there isn’t always enough time. Sometimes a video needs to be prepared, shot, and ready to go in its final form in only a matter of days.

That was the case this week at Skillman Video Group when Aspen Dental came calling. On Monday they came to us with an urgent video request, by Tuesday it was shot, and by Wednesday the footage was cleaned up and given to them to edit themselves. At times like this, a quick turnaround is necessary.

For this case, the urgency was due to the video being produced for broadcast television. With broadcast, there are a few stipulations: it needs to be short, sweet and quick.

The video was a PR piece for Aspen Dental. A Purple Heart-awarded army veteran was on the verge of being homeless a few years ago. On Tuesday, Aspen Dental planned on surprising him and revealing that they’re going to be giving him free dental care. They wanted us to capture the big moment and then do some short interview pieces with the man and some company employees. Only organic shots were wanted and rightly so, since people would immediately be able to tell if any of it was staged.

While PR videos do exist to showcase a company in a positive light, they can also (like this) be a great means of showcasing deep human kindness. The video was simple enough so that SVG just had to grab one of our shooters for only half a day, have him film the reveal and afterthoughts, and then put all the files in an acceptable form to hand to Aspen Dental. In this case, due to time constraints, they wanted to handle the quick editing job themselves.  As you can probably tell, with both parties aware of the time constraints, the video was a case of shooting-to-edit.  Remember, it’s not that certain aspects of video production have to be cut or ignored when pressed for time, but, rather, compressed properly in order to fit the specific needs of each individual situation.

Skillman Video Group LLC is a Boston video production company. Call us anytime at 1-800-784-0140.