webdev Actors are a vital part of all sorts of corporate videos, from viral campaigns to sales presentations and product demonstrations. With budgets tightening, a put upon marketing director will frequently (and understandably) think about using nearby staff or others to perform in front of the camera. Here are a few reasons why we think actors can add such value to corporate video production.
Firstly – the pit fall of roping in employees of the company to perform for the video production. Note – This is quite different to having the relevant person being interviewed naturally for a talking head.
Corporate dead eye
We are talking about a poor employee having to act the goat for a health and safety video or having to parrot scripted lines whilst looking as comfortable as a turkey on Christmas Eve. We get to see a LOT of corporate videos here at Hightower and it’s quite frightening how often we see dead eyed employees having to make a fool out of themselves for free. It doesn’t look good.
Having professional actors taking these roles usually results in a much more natural result. These people are used to be being asked to do odds things in front of camera. They also are aware of their performance, so can be consistent over multiple takes, which helps the edit a lot.
Another benefit of having actors play employees is future proofing your video. You may have a manager perform in a corporate video and then quit a month later – instantly outdating your video. Perhaps more worryingly – your manager may have jumped ship to a competitor – which would make the video totally unusable.
Day rate plus buy out
As I mentioned above – even for a competitively priced acting agency you might expect to have a day rate of a couple of hundred quid per actor – but then an image buy out which may bring the cost per artist over £1000. This is really a case of weighing up the options – you may be able to get a friend or colleague to do it for little or no money – but you get what you pay for. A poor performance, particularly on a launch promo video reflects badly on your organisation and could even go viral (which would be a disaster!)
Having good actors conversely will add volumes to your video and general brand presence both on and offline.
To conclude, including actors in production can take the corporate video from the realms of the embarrassing and potentially quickly outdated – to dynamic, editorially fluid and future proofed.
If you’d like our help with your next corporate video production, get in touch
