Wednesday, June 04, 2008
“How Long Should Our Video Be?”
By Mike Lake
What was the last really good movie you saw? Did it seem too long? Were you preoccupied with your watch or the time displayed on your cell phone? Of course not.
I am asked the question in the title of this post almost every time I discuss the creation of an event or corporate video for a client. They usually have a length in mind of about 4 minutes, and upon asking me how long their video should be, my answer is always the same: “It depends.” My follow-up answer is that time is not very relevant if the content is great. And, you prove that every time you watch a great film or read a captivating book and lose all awareness of time.
Seldom does a video end up being the exact length originally discussed. Once production has begun, the client adds content here and there, and sometimes…
the original concept needs a little more time to develop than originally anticipated. But, unlike a motion picture that incurs cost overruns by becoming longer, a corporate video should have a set price that doesn’t increase as it goes from 4 to 5 or even 6 minutes. It’s important to know if your production company will charge for a final length that exceeds the original idea by a reasonable amount. Find out what that extra cost will be and ask what steps will be taken to adhere to a certain pre-determined length. Then finally, decide if that restriction is in the best interest of the project.
Now, there is a limit to the idea that length is unimportant if the content is captivating. A good production company must have a keen sense of rhythm in order to know where to draw the line between content in which the audience loses all sense of time, and where the video seems long. After watching samples of their work, ask yourself if the length mattered, or even occurred to you.
One of my favorite moments after showing a finished video to a client is the point when they ask how long it was. I tell them, and they usually respond with, “Really. It was that long?” They then make some sort of comment like, “I never thought we could have made it 7 minutes!” I consider that to provide the best testimony to the success of a video. If it’s true for film, it’s true for corporate video.
How long should your video be? No longer that the time it takes to tell a story in which time is temporarily suspended for the viewer.
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