Video: Duration, Cost & Impact

When discussing about video with people, either friends and family, either clients and partners, the question of the duration of a video often comes into consideration, whether it is to speak about cost, whether to consider the impact on the audience.

Duration and Cost
It is a common confusion to think that the longer the video is, the higher cost will be. Well, it is right in some proportion but the reality needs to be refined.

As big picture of the video industry, generally yes, a long film, let’s say about 2 hours, will cost more than a short film about 15 minutes long, which will cost more than 5 minutes interview. The team size is different for each of these formats, the shooting duration as well, together with the post production work to provide.

Let’s now re-frame the debate and speak about video customised for communication and marketing, from 15 – 30 seconds up to 8 – 10 minutes. Well, in this case, one of the major element having an impact on the cost is the shooting. And by mentioning shooting, I mean the overall shooting duration and amount of places. Then it’s about common sense to understand than the more different places will be included in the shooting, the longer will be the shooting time and… the cost is rising up.

Now for a video company, producing a video which is 2 or 4 minutes long as final editing will not make a big difference in the amount of work in the post-production. And I would rather say that being able to pass a message in 2 minutes instead of 4 can be more challenging; in this case, the shorter the final video is, higher the cost will be!

So prior to speak about duration and cost with a production company, better to identify the type of video you want and see with the production company what will be the best format.

Duration and Impact
The impact on your audience will depend of the quality of the video, including its duration; It all depends of what you want to say, who is your audience and how you are going to reach your audience. A video produced to raise fund for a charity NGO will inevitably be different than a video promoting the new watch design , right?

Let me go through example: lately a client came to us requiring 1 video only for launching a new fashion collection. After brainstorming ideas and considering the profile of the company, we came to the conclusion it would be more beneficial to produce series of short videos from 15 seconds to 1 minute long for uploading and sharing through website and social media, rather than having only 1 short video about 2 – 3 minutes long.

This example is great to highlight that the targeted audience is linked to the video format, and saying so, to the duration of the video. If you want to speak to the young generation, then the video will have more impact being short, quick, easy to share and spread on social media. If you target to senior generation, then video will be longer, with slower pace and generally more often shared through newsletter and website.

What is important here is to know the audience you target, to understand how to reach it, then to customise videos with the right duration.

If duration is an important element when considering cost and impact of videos, the most meaningful item is: what you want to say.