B-roll is the supplementary footage intercut with the main shots you want to capture, to add dimension to your project.
We’ve all seen Hollywood films that use footage to show flashbacks or simultaneous action within stories but this footage is also very important to telling your company story. Whether your company is looking to produce a promotional video, a company profile video, a product or service video, or an event video, B-roll is your best friend. This type of footage not only serves a purpose as a useful tool in the flexibility of editing your video, but it enriches your company story with colour, action and layers of meaning that gives the audience a better understanding of what you want them to know.
B-roll footage links what you’re speaking of or describing to the viewer. If your video is about a product, the audience doesn’t just want to see you or an actor talking about your product. They want to see a professionally lit shot of your product in all its glory, and possibly most important, they want to see it in action. After all, what is form without function? If your video is a company profile or promo video, your audience is going to want to know more about your company and what it actually does. You can tell them what you do through on-camera interviews but it is much more powerful when you actually show them. This is what B-roll is all about. B-roll is responsible for shaping the other information gathered by your audience to create a more complete picture and a better understanding of your company.
In the editing process, B-roll is an extremely useful tool used to make editing appear more seamless to the viewer and to ensure continuity of your story. B-roll can be used to tell another part of the story that the viewer wouldn’t otherwise see. If a manager describes machinery integral to the process of their business, no matter what the purpose of the video is, it makes the video more dynamic to include shots of the machines in action. If an executive is describing a successful fundraising event in an annual review video, the viewer will want to see footage of that event. For a company profile video, your audience is going to want to see who makes up your business and how it runs, which may include shots of the exterior or interior of your offices, employees at work, products in action, etc. Without B-roll shots in these cases, part of the story is missing.
Most people consider B-roll to be secondary footage as it is meant to support your story, but it in fact plays a huge role and takes up more screen time than you think. It is for this reason that it’s very important to discuss details of the vision you have for your company’s video when hiring a professional #VideoProduction company. The details you provide will help them form ideas of what to capture, and will aid in creating a shot list. Integral B-roll shots will help tell your story, not only through the content of your message, but also through engaging visual cues.
At Key West Video, our team will work with you throughout the process of producing your #CorporateVideo with support and consultation at every stage. However, it is the pre-production and production stages when B-roll is essential. During pre-production #KeyWestVideo will gather pertinent information that will help us develop ideas of what to include in B-roll footage to complete your vision, and include these necessary shots to the shot list we create for your project. During production, having a shot list that includes necessary B-roll footage creates a blueprint and a checklist for everything you want represented in your video, and it will also help to remain focused on your objective. B-roll is quite simply a big deal.
The Importance of B-Roll in Corporate Video
No comments:
Post a Comment