Elevating Field Service Video Production: A Case Study in Efficiency and Creativity

Like most companies, Skillman Video Group hopes that every client will become a repeat client. They have piqued our intellectual curiosity and become our coworkers on their contracted projects.

We have come to know their stories and genuinely enjoy hearing first hand updates on their subsequent successes. There are also many opportunities to leverage the creative shorthand and economies of scale that we’ve built together on future projects, such as a recent field service video for a cutting-edge commercial building water pump system repair and maintenance vendor.

An Ideal Client: New, Complex, and with a Story to Tell through Video

They represent our ideal client, one who meets these characteristics: their products and services are innovative and/or unique; what they make or do is complex, requiring explanation; and finally, they have a story to tell about this to their target audience that can most effectively be conveyed through the medium of video. SVG helps such clients create video marketing content that explains complex things in a simple way and appeals to the emotions as well as the intellects of their audience for a more impactful connection.

The Brand Video

SVG had previously partnered with them to create their original brand video a couple of years prior (before the pandemic, when so many things were subsequently put on hold), and they were well pleased with their final product and their audience response. They returned to us in the late summer of 2022 about commissioning a new field service video. While their brand video focuses on who they are and demonstrates their culture and general value proposition in their marketplace, their field service video would explain what they do and detail the features and benefits of a specific service.

At the time of the original shoot, we had captured footage not only of interviews with key members of staff and b roll in their corporate office but also of site visits following their technicians as they serviced and maintained the industrial equipment, providing a rich supply of b roll material from the field. Around the same time, they had also commissioned drones to fly over proprietary footage of their headquarters that they were able to share with us. This pre-existing content offered us an excellent economy of scale to produce a supplemental field service video.

The Creative: A Few Polishes to the Script

Our client already understood that a video could poignantly show and tell what they do in an audio-visual format that their target customers could briefly watch but better integrate, beyond their other sales efforts and published text-based marketing materials. They also realized the ways that this type of content underlines them as the successful business that they are, not only in what they show in their video, but that they’re so well established and intent on reaching new customers as to invest in high quality B2B video marketing content in the first place.

Even though they came to us with their own draft script for their field service video, we still reviewed the document and the overall creative concepts with them before beginning the assembly, to capitalize on a few opportunities for success:

Key Themes and Key Messages

Firstly, it allowed us to reverse engineer and confirm the short list of key messages and themes. The key messages are critical points to say directly to the listener (for them to hear via the narrated script) in the field service video, whereas the key themes are things we hope to show to the viewer (for them to infer through the integrated look, sound, and feel). A creative brief such as this is a great way to “begin with the end in mind.”

Good Storytelling: Length, Language, and Layout

Secondly, it provided an opportunity to challenge any drafted language. We trimmed it down just slightly for runtime, followed the throughline from problem to solution and a call to action (CTA), and ensured that all of the syntax chosen would roll easily off the tongue of the narrator and sound natural to the listener. We wanted their field service video to satisfy three fundamental tips for increasing their audience engagement: appealing to their viewers’ emotions, keeping the length in line with attention spans, and telling a story.

Illustrating the Words

Thirdly, we were able to brainstorm about the visuals and music that would be needed to reinforce the key themes. We were able to anticipate probable wrinkles to iron out once we began cutting together the field service video, such as matching up a slideshow of accurate visuals of the equipment that they support, timed to a list being read off in the audio track.

Planning the Post-Production

With the creative polished and the post-production estimated as the baseline for an approved budget, the field service video was commissioned in early September to be completed by about the end of October over a typical four-to-six-week turnaround of four versions, with no hard deadline for delivery based on any conference or other external pressure, which allowed us ample time to plot the composite tasks in Asana, accommodating thoughtful design, reviews, and teammate vacations.

Leveraging Efficiencies

There are many residual benefits to partnering with previous clients on new projects, such as the field service video, and not merely because we’ve previously done the discovery or captured extra B roll, although those are certainly not insignificant building blocks.

Working Relationships: Shorthand

We bring an important piece of institutional memory into new projects with repeat clients like this otherwise straightforward field service video. Having worked together previously, we’d already established familiarity with background information, confidence in our creative process, cordial relationships, and facility with our practical systems. For example, there was no additional orientation needed the second time around to set up our short, weekly status update and live troubleshooting check-in videoconferences or get used to Asana for itemizing our assignments and communicating next steps. These offered a firm foundation for launching the production together without a lot of startup energy.

Because they had previously selected talent to represent the voice of their brand and wanted to remain consistent, we were able to reach out to the same actor with whom we’d already had a positive working experience to ask that she submit her audition and quote for the field service video. Once confirmed, she was glad to provide not only an original take, but a few pick-up lines to accommodate some inevitable tweaks to the final script.

Coworking in a Realm of Feelings

Despite having the storyboard, audio track, and image and video files collated, editing the final field service video product is not an out-of-the box kit to assemble but rather a collaborative creative process. That’s why we still assume four versions (with three rounds of feedback) and weekly check-ins to see what’s working and what isn’t, then figure out why not and how to fix it. We’re framing our conversations in terms of “this doesn’t feel right to me; what can we do?” so trust is essential.

We built upon that earned trust with our creativity to offer solutions, flexibility (humility) to try something else if they don’t love an idea, and diligence to catch and fix all of the minute and multidimensional changes that might be required in a video: image, audio, and text-based corrections on graphics, not to mention the timing. We could also leverage this relational capital to ask for support, like renaming all of the image files they uploaded for us to use so that the equipment was clearly identified in the filename to match up to its introduction in the audio.

Content

There was an inherent economy of scale, already mentioned, for the field service video in that there was no need for the significant added cost and scheduling involved in a shoot. We had ample good-quality proprietary b roll footage captured while filming for the original brand video to assemble for this one.

When we relayed the b roll video file copies to our editor, we also found it expedient to upload low-resolution excerpts of that legacy footage from our digital archives for the client to skim through on the video viewing platform. That way, they could tag time-coded clips for our editor to match up to the storyboard, where he should input his high-resolution copies of that content.

Even though we still had to collate all of the B-roll video, images, updated graphics, narrated audio track, and a stock royalty-free music track, we didn’t feel like we were starting completely from scratch with the field service video because we had so much of the content already available and such a strong working understanding of the client and their style.

Brand Standards: Graphics

While we had their digital source, it had been a couple of years since the previous project, and our graphics designer and animator did need to freshen up the animation on their logos in the intro and outro bumpers in the field service video, along with the lower thirds graphics that introduce any featured speakers in the video. Once we’ve created these digital assets expressly for a client’s video brand standards, we can both share those files for their further discretionary use and maintain a copy for our reuse in future joint projects.

Reaping the Benefits of Coming Back for Still More

An inaugural video project with any new client is an investment that can pay dividends for working together on future projects. If time is money, there’s a significant potential savings on future projects when we have already taken the time to understand our client and their value proposition and captured and created original content. We can then launch with a team on the same wavelength and maximize digital assets that we’ve already curated, to name a few.

It’s satisfying enough when we successfully complete any video project to the established qualifications, on time, within budget, then finally get to see that content published for its intended use. In cases such as this field service video to host on their website and link in their sales follow-up communications, it was an added bonus that we could leverage so many efficiencies to accomplish the work together. While we’re more than happy to deliver stand-alone projects, we encourage our prospective clients to consider an integrated approach to their video marketing content planning, to take full advantage of these residuals!