The Pros and Cons of in-House Video Production

The Growth of in-House Video

In-house production has become more common and it’s mainly as a result to the fact that businesses are making a lot more videos these days, partly due to social media or training videos and so there’s some that have either set up their own internal production department or it might just be part of their design department where they have you know a graphic designer or a web designer who’s developed some camera skills or it might be sort of a fully fledged film maker who’s in there and it’s not an either or. Companies who have in-house production departments an still work with external production companies on the right project and sometimes the collaboration of the two and having that mix of the two can be really effective.

The Risk of in- House Production

Many businesses might just have one person in charge of video production, combining videography and editing,  so they’re putting a lot of reliance on that one person. What happens if they leave? What happens if they’re sick? What happens if they have too much work and they’re unable to hit their deadlines? And so that’s where it’s good to have a production company there as well who can work along side them who they can bring in when you have a lot of work to do, but also can bring in specialist skills that you might not have in-house. So often for in-house production you’ll have someone who is a competent generalist, but they might not have very specific skills to make particular types of videos whether it’s animation, motion graphics, documentary, or something that’s a little bit more sophisticated or something that requires you know more high end camera work. And that’s where being able to have a relationship with a production company can work really well.

Case Study

We’re doing a video for a client at the moment where they’ve recorded a whole lot of case study videos and these were shot in-house by their in-house department and one of the things I like about these videos is they’re no too slick and professional. They’re short messages by the staff to camera all about what it’s like working there and I think because you know it was done in quite a casual way there’s some you know really fun sort of footage that’s in there that might have actually been a little bit more challenging for a production company to do. And I think when they realised the amount of editing that was involved, that it was actually more effective for their team to work on other things and to be able to bring in a production company to do the editing. And so we’re able to work together and they were able to give us time codes of content that they wanted to use where our team would put the video together and send it to them. They will give feedback and it’s turned out to be a really smooth process.

Collaboration

In some cases combining the resources of an in-house video production department with the specialised skills of an external production company can bring together the best of both worlds.