Making a video for a to help promote a corporate event doesn’t need to be expensive, intrusive or difficult. The basics are:

• Film the signage
• Film parts of the event
• Film some interviews & testimonials

Then edit it all together something like this:

Tip 1 — Notice that the video is only 1 minute long. The sound bites are short, taken from much longer bites, they are all actually just part of longer sentences.

Tip 2 — because they wanted us unobtrusive during the event, this was shot in a very low light situation. Consequently, the footage is rather grainy. You can still work with this sort of video in a promotional video by color correcting, adding glow filters & textures, saturating or desaturating, etc., turning the weakness into a strength.

Tip 3 — Audio is ultra-important, especially when you have grainy video. We use Seinhauser G2 wireless lav mics and a softbox light for the interview. We use natural sounds to give the effected footage a feeling of authenticity. We also use distinctive natural sounds, the dinging glass and the champagne cork pop, to set the tone.

Tip 4 — Underscoring the event with some electronic club music can make almost every subject matter seem “cool” — even a rather dry round table about hedge funds.

Tip 5 — Pans, rack focus and reverse zooms while shooting and then edit in a path to give the video some motion. Pan over, wipe up, pan side, wipe back, pull out, cross zoom in, reverse zoom out, etc.