Creating Brand Consistency within the Frame-How To Raise Your Level Of Video Production

William Blair Corporate Webcast Studio (Designed by Provost Studio)

The importance of communicating your brand consistently across all platforms including video increases the quality of your brand while keeping your audience engaged. Video as a medium has matured significantly over the past few years and is now seen as a critical component to the corporate communications mix. This video platform explosion has exposed audiences to a greater number of quality of video productions and as a result, audiences have higher expectation of brands when experiencing those brands through video.

From a visual perspective, we often see a disconnect between how a company expresses themselves across typical platforms (web, print, meetings & events) and how that same company expresses who they are in their video environments.

There are a few basic practices that can help elevate your brand’s visibility and platform alignment.

Lighting, lighting, lighting

The lighting techniques in your video will make a big impact on the quality of your final image. Understanding the basics of 3-Point-Lighting can drastically elevate your project. In addition to 3-Point-lighting basics you can use lighting to:

• Control the mood of your video

• Direct the eye of the viewer where you want it to go

• Emphasize and de-emphasize elements within the frame

• Add texture and color

Use a consistent color temperature across all lighting fixtures. Trying to figure out which color temperature to use can be tricky. Most of the webcast studios we design are lit within the daylight range of 4500-5500k. Daylight color temperature also works well if you are using technology on camera and reduces the amount of color balancing for the monitors. Also, ensure that your subject is well-lit and hard shadows are minimized.

Creating context in-studio with the background environment

Not all video productions have the luxury of using a custom designed and branded studio. If this is a challenge, keep it simple. Consider using materials that have texture and color that can be beautifully lit. By using lighting to your advantage, a textured surface will look far more dramatic if you light it from the side, because side lighting brings out the shadows.

Integrate AV Technology

Consider integrating video display technology (ie. video monitor or video walls) with existing branded video assets in the background to add a dynamic visual element to the frame behind talent. This helps keep audience interested and focused on the content. Better yet, create an opportunity for talent to interact with technology on-camera with a touchscreen monitor.

Matching Brand Colors

Matching brand colors from ink (CMYK) to pixels (RGB) on-camera can be just as tricky as picking a color temperature, typically, the richer the color, the more difficult to render. We like to use internally lit light-boxes on-set to dial-in brand colors on camera. We usually use 4-diode LED fixtures (RGBA or RGBW), which allow us to get the widest range of colors. In addition, if budget allows, we apply a gray transparent film (like Oracal) to all front surfaces. This helps prevent the color from blowing out on camera and allows a more even and rich color definition on camera.

For companies who do a great job at communicating their brand and messaging across other channels, often fall short when migrating to video. While we can’t expect every company to produce video content at the same level, these few practices will elevate the quality of their “in studio” video content for their audiences.