A detailed training video is one of most direct routes to lower employee training costs. Not to confuse an 'occupational procedures video' with a job description is another valuable tool for any organization. Job descriptions outline duties to be performed by employees. A training video demonstrates exactly how to do those jobs.

Such a video can be extremely useful in recruiting and interviewing job applicants. But more importantly, it can streamline employee training and all new people to become more productive more quickly. The out-of-pocket payroll savings alone can be substantial. Suppose it takes eight weeks to bring a new employee up to speed in a particular job, and person's supervisor must devote 25% of his or her time to training during that break-in period. A good training video should reduce necessary training time by at least 20%.

Aside from these training cost savings, there are other reasons to develop procedures videos for your organization. Indeed, very process of preparing such a video will provide invaluable insight into operations of your business.

A more involved project may have several days filming in locations around country or in a studio, may have a presenter who appears in vision (so script will be required) and may include stock footage. The editing may take 10 days, include creation of video graphics and programme may be delivered on DVD with an interactive user interface where 500 copies are required. This type of project could cost in region of £30,000 - so you can see how budget is built up.

Video Production Filming

Probably most important aspect of video production process is filming. Filming is charged by eight hour day and cannot be cancelled or postponed less than 72 hours before proposed filming day. You cannot book half a day of filming - it will be standard day rate as director and crew (cameraman and sound engineer) are unable to take on any other work that day.

You should therefore aim to maximise each video production filming day. If you want a video production company to produce a programme about a POS solution sold to a large retailer for example - they would want to interview CIO or senior project manager from customer so that they can tell audience of benefits system has brought them. This may only take a morning - so ask your customer if we can film in one of their stores in afternoon to show POS system in action.

It is pictures that tell story and so if script or interviewees are discussing a subject, then that subject should appear in vision as "cutaway" material. Any spare time on a corporate video filming day should be used to capture good video cutaway material to add to programme.

If a video production company is sent to interview someone, particularly someone who is key to programme, they will want to make interview look as good as possible. They will therefore need to have access to interviewee's office or a conference room at least one hour before interview is scheduled in order to create set and light room. It is also important that room chosen for interview does not suffer from background noise such a lift, canteen or busy road.

Finally always try to ensure that a member of your team accompanies video production company crew on each filming day. Sometimes, through no fault of video production company, things go wrong on a film shoot. An interviewee may turn up 2 hours late, a fire alarm may go off and building needs to be evacuated and so on. In such circumstances crew will need to make instant decisions about how to prioritise remaining filming for that day and it is extremely helpful to video production company if one of your team is there to help them.

Video Production Editing

Most reputable video production companies will initially create an edit for content only. This will link presenter pieces to camera or voice over with edited sound bites from interviews that have been captured. This edit will look very basic, but this doesn't matter, it is essential that content and length of corporate or training video are approved and that you are satisfied that this content clearly meets objectives and conveys messages that were intended for programme.

Once content is approved corporate video production company will introduce cutaway material, develop graphics and will cut corporate or training video to music. This will make programme polished and you will be asked to approve a final edit. Here you may wish to change cutaway material used, music levels or tweak graphics. Once these changes have been given to video production company there should be no further changes to programme. It is therefore important to get all of stakeholders involved in project to be part of this stage of approval process.

Once approved, programme will be encoded so that it can be delivered on CD ROM or DVD. Some video production companies may even develop artwork for disk labels, menu interface and disk case if required, including arrangement of disc duplication.