What matters in practice
With a product video, most of what goes wrong happens before the shooting day rather than during it. The usual cause is a commission with no question behind it: “we need something for the new model.” That produces presentable footage of an object. And a video that gets nobody any further.
A product video becomes useful when it clears up exactly the points the sales team already explains every week. How big is it really? How does it go in? What happens where it meets the existing installation? Reading through the sales team’s sent folder saves two rounds of concept work.
Two kinds of product, two kinds of film
- Technical products: components, plant, building-services equipment. What matters here is scale, the installed situation and the connections. A component filmed without a hand or a surrounding in shot is a shape with no size.
- Products that are worn or handled: clothing, bags, accessories. What matters here is movement, drape and surface. Those qualities do not exist in a still image; they are the actual reason to film rather than photograph.
The practical part that quotations rarely mention
- The object has to be ready to shoot. Fingerprints, scratches, adhesive residue and temporary labels read far more clearly to a camera than to the eye. Cleaning and preparation belong in the schedule, not in a break between setups.
- Pre-production samples still change. A video of a prototype is worthless after the next design revision. Where there is no alternative, we shoot so that the parts likely to change are not held in close-up.
- Trade fair dates are immovable. Booking the shoot tight against one leaves no margin for weather, approvals or a reshoot.
- Versions belong in the brief, not in a later request. Landscape and portrait, long and short, with and without narration. Planned into one shoot they cost little; retro-fitted they cost a great deal.
One note on shelf life: a product video ages with the product. Prices, years and model designations therefore belong in the text around the video, not in the picture.