Have you thought about what you going to do next for market your brand? How are you going to get a jump on the competition? You may notice the videos out there – that the one which attracts all our attention, Creates fun and easily make your customers feel wow and help your customers understand your business.
Yes, we’re talking about the “Animated Explainer videos”.
Sometimes words are not just enough to explain the whole business model. A 60-90 seconds explainer video explains your business quickly and clearly.
If you’ve decided to make an explainer video, then the obvious question arises, “what is the cost? “. And followed by, the second question also arises “whether it’s fit for our Budget?”
Let’s Talk about Cost:
Even though many companies create explainer videos for few hundred dollars, the most reputable production companies charge in between $2,000 to $15,000 for a minute video. Because the amount charged depends on a variety of factors, including quality of work and resources used, even for just a one minute video.
An explainer video production process needs lot of manpower like illustrator, Script writers, an art director, voice expert, sound engineer and a music composer. The list is not yet completed with manpower and still its goes on with factors like hardware’s and software’s.
The complicated Production process and the requirement of resources behind the explainer video creation feel us to rethink about the budgeting right?
Explainer Video Production Processes & Budgeting:
The below animated explainer video production processes will helps you to self-calculate, how long would take to finish explainer video and measures how much budget you need to spend on it.
Project Research:
It will take more time to write a crystal clear creative script for the researchers. Script writers will do project research and brainstorming work to understand your industry, product and your company to identify the best way of conveying your brand message to the target audience.
DIY: As you own your business there won’t be a research cost and definitely you know your business more than others. A little more market research also require before confirming the way to start your product story.
Script Writing:
A well – written script is the power of great video. The research result will make the script writers to come up with a short and concise script. Make sure to take research time to get good part of your script.
DIY: Start your own script by telling a story to catch the viewer’s attention, then introduce your company, product or service and keep people engaged. Then start presenting a common problem that your customer facing, and explain them how your company will fix it in an effective way. Include a call to action at the very end point of your script.
Style Frames and Illustration:
An animated video requires illustrations to be made for visualizing. Style frames are static images that include characters, background color, and assets. Normally characters, assets are hand drawn by illustrator and then scanned into a computer, digitized, colored and so on. Depending on the purpose of video illustrator will create many variations to show to the client.
Storyboarding:
After approval with a script, an Illustrator assembles a storyboard scene- by- scene with a finalized script and style frame. A storyboard represents how will be the final video play out.
DIY: Unfortunately most of us aren’t proficient in illustrating. So we can go for some low budget alternatives as follows: choose images from Stock Photo websites, Draw assets and do scan to save into your computer, Use screen capture tools if the business is based upon web or mobile, and in some situations use live video shoot. You may need to go for several illustrations and pick one among them that suits your preferences.
Voice Production and Recording:
A voice over artist can give life to our business stories. Based on the particular business and people a voice over artist can be chosen and will record audio version of the script. Using high end audio devices, recording will be done in a closed and soundproof booth to ensure the clear crispness of the recorded voice.
DIY: With a decent microphone and a quiet echo free space, record the voice over yourself. If you don’t have a great speaking voice, select your friend or a family member who you think might be able to do. If you want to go with professional quality voice over, check out with Voices.com with minimum dollars.
Animation and Video Production:
Now it’s a time to put all together. Animators take all the created assets, illustrations, voice over and storyboard then import them into software like Adobe After Effects. Assembling the assets and making each movement right will take many hours and so it’s the most time consuming part of the production process.
Background Sound Effects and Music Design:
Once you happy with the video looks, a sound engineer will add the composed music, sound effects and voice to your animated video.
You may have options are, either outsource somebody to have original music and sound effect composed or pick from music library with a low budget.
Editing and Delivery:
Editing techniques involved cutting video clips to fit with voice track, adding transitions in between video clips and adding necessary text into it. When video to be delivered, adjusted video settings, file type, file size and quality might be done.
If you planned to host your video on YouTube, experts suggest exporting video in MPEG-4 format, ideally in high definition. After all publish your video with a good title, clear description and with suitable tags.
Conclusion:
With an animated explainer video, most organizations want to appear bigger and better than they might really be. But if they have less budgeted, low quality, shaky or poorly framed video in their website, they can have the opposite effect and turns their prospects and customers think their product is poor. So they merely have video in their website, which doesn’t solve the purpose of making.
You know that old expression “You get what you pay for?” It’s getting more important everyday as high – quality, professionally produced video is becoming more of the norm on business websites. So however powerhouses producing explainer videos with a big budget, the return on investment is always good and high comparatively.
Professionals have the equipment, experience and know how to produce a better quality video. So with affordable cost many companies like Bode Animation can help you to create uncompromising high quality business explainer videos.
