These days, video is becoming more and more integrated into how we communicate. And gone are the days when you needed to invest tens of thousands of dollars to buy a  professional video camera and edit suite – today, even mobile phones allow us to shoot our own videos that we can easily edit together on our laptop or ipad.

So when budgets are low, the tools are easily accessible, and the content seems straightforward enough, why wouldn’t you just shoot it yourself?

To be honest, most of our clients these days have a number of people in their team who are video savvy. Maybe they’re photographers in their spare time, maybe they’re guys in IT who enjoy the technical side of the process, or maybe they’ve got a background in the creative arts. Rather than outsourcing all of their video work, our clients often use these internal people as their in-house video production team for smaller jobs. Let’s call these guys the ‘Video Volunteers’ (even though they’re not always entirely volunteers)…

We’ve seen a few of these internally-made videos and some of them are fun, clever, and absolutely perfect for their intended purpose (even if they’re a bit rough around the edges) – but others are unmitigated disasters, funny for all the wrong reasons, and completely distracting from the message at hand.

Reducing your expenditure by keeping certain jobs ‘in-house’ makes perfect sense at times – but how do you know when it’s time to partner up with a production company to make your videos?  Here are some reasons that our clients have given us for making the switch:

‘It’s taking up too much of our time’.
Every single one of our Video Volunteers s also had a ‘real’ job to do within the business – but for whatever reason, creating videos had also fallen into their lap. Whilst this was often exciting to start with, and a great way for the business to try out how video could work for them, it soon became unwieldy as the workflow increased.  As video projects became bigger and more popular, our Video Volunteers found themselves falling behind in their actual jobs, which impacted their wider team – and their bottom line. They ended up working late, stressing out about deadlines, and confronted with technical problems that they had no idea how to solve because, quite frankly, making videos was not their job.

‘It’s not actually saving us money by doing it in house’.
In many instances, the Video Volunteers fell so behind in their ‘actual’ jobs that the business needed to rearrange internal resources, pull people from other departments, or even hire temp workers, in order to get their work done.  Other times, they’d have someone on a six-figure salary spending four days a week trying to coordinate Video Volunteers to film and edit for them, eventually spending much more on internal wages than they would have spent actually hiring a production company to make the video (as well as getting their actual work done). The false economy of ‘saving money’ by making videos internally was thrown out the window, and it was time to do things properly.

‘We need something beyond what we can achieve on our own’.
In all fairness, some of our clients had created some great videos using Video Volunteers – but only around certain topics, or in certain styles. When confronted by a project that sat outside the scope of what they knew they could achieve themselves – either in technical ability or from a creative point of view – they knew that they weren’t quite up for the task. The time, resources, and stress that would be involved just wouldn’t be worth it – it was time to get some help.

 ‘It needs to go to a wider audience’.
Shooting a quick, friendly message on a iphone is fine if it’s just going to your direct colleagues – but is that how you want everyone to see you? Whether they needed video for a conference, a website, a special event, to show stakeholders, or to communicate with 20,000+ employees, our clients knew that they’d be judged by what they produced. Quality and professionalism was a must – and they knew they couldn’t do it on their own.  And if it’s for an outside audience, you need an outside eye.

‘This is too important to make a mistake on’.
Whether it was a delicate message that needed to be carefully worded, or a high-ranking member of the business communicating an important change, our Video Volunteers eventually found themselves with a situation where the stakes were raised considerably. They knew the limits of their skills and wanted to make sure that nothing went wrong – which meant it was time to call the professionals.

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Many of our clients had made the initial decision to produce their own videos because they were worried that using an external company would be expensive and time-consuming – but as soon as they started working with us, they realised this wasn’t the case at all.  A good production company is there to make your life easier, supporting you across the whole project and allowing you to focus on your actual job – whilst also providing you with a high quality end product. If that’s something you’re in need of , then why not get in touch?