Project Overview: Animated Business Video

I’m excited that we recently wrapped up another great animated business to business (“b2b”) video for a tech client.

For this project we were brought in to write and produce an animated business to business video that would help explain a new mobile marketing service our client was rolling out.

Beginning the Project

The project began with a few phone conferences as they explained the technology based service to us.  When we do these types of client conference calls I typically record them with the Voice Memo App on my iPhone. I’m sure you know how hard it is to listen to a group of people on speaker phone while taking notes and following along.  Extremely difficult!

By recording it I’m able to later listen back slowly and transcribe the call into a shared Evernote project note. I’m able to make note of key points or phrases from the client that we take into consideration as we begin working on script.

Script and Visual Approaches

After a few round back and forth on script revisions we would up with the final draft and began to work on visual designs that would bring the story to life in the animated business video format.

We presented about four different original visual approaches and working with the client, narrowed it down to one clear winner.

 

From there we storyboarded out all key sequences of the animated business video so that 1 – our client would understand how scene would work and 2 – our animation staff would have a feel for how we intended to tell the story – how many scenes, key elements, type on screen vs imagery percentage, etc.

Once the storyboard is complete we begin creating the visual assets – based on the overall approved visual approaches – and laying out each scene as it will really appear.

Voice Over

Meanwhile we record the voice over. In this particular case it was GI Jason here who got the gig.  If possible we like to record voice over in house. That way we can be nimble making any voice over changes the client may have when they view the final drafts. (It happens a lot actually!)  And, people almost expect to hear more “casual” voice over for online videos these days. As opposed to a highly produced commercial sounding voice.  Though of course  that approach does have it’s place… like on a recent sales conference kick-off video we did for another client).

And Finally… Animation!

Then our talented animator gets to work making the video come to life.  As he works we work on finding just the perfect music track to the animated b2b video.

The whole process took about six weeks. (Part of the production period was over the 2014 Holidays).  Not every video animation project takes this long and some take longer, but that was the time needed to produce this particular project with this particular client.

The final deliverable was a hit with the client and a piece we’re all proud of here at the studio 🙂

Click over to our Portfolio entry to see the final product (at the bottom of the page).